Scott Morrison is a bully. Just ask Bridget Archer and Julia Banks

“Liar” is a tag that’s really started to hurt Scott Morrison. It sticks to him like tar. His instinctive response to its exposure — lying some more — isn’t exactly helping. The same might be said to apply to the prime minister’s other obvious negative character descriptor: “bully”.

Bullying is an insidious behavioural trait whose social unacceptability is almost universally accepted. It was effectively declared aberrant in schools long ago, and in recent years has become explicitly unlawful in the workplace. Its relationship to coercive control and other forms of abuse is obvious. All in all, we now consider bullying to be a reprehensible thing for anyone to do in any context.

The allegation that Morrison is a bully has been around as long as he’s been in politics. It was sharpened dramatically by former Liberal MP Julia Banks’ revelations of how he dealt with her during her departure from Parliament — “menacing, controlling wallpaper” is how she memorably described his presence — and last week honed further by the story of Bridget Archer.

After multiple government MPs crossed the floor last week, Morrison declared:

In the Liberal Party, we encourage our members to be themselves. I don’t lead a team of drones and warm bodies that I just move around in the Parliament. I want people in my team who speak their mind.

My team. Can’t help himself. 

Anyway, Archer, a backbencher, exercised her right by crossing the floor to vote against the government on a procedural motion in support of Helen Haines’ anti-corruption commission bill. It was an act of independence and courage, given Morrison’s determination that no such body will exist under his watch.

Archer, on her account, went to Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s office directly afterwards to be comforted by him. She found herself then being immediately manipulated/coerced into walking with Frydenberg to Morrison’s office where the prime minister awaited with Marise Payne, of whose presence Archer had no forewarning. Frydenberg has confirmed it was all prearranged with Morrison’s office.

Archer was explicit: she had earlier been summoned to Morrison’s office by text message, and had said she was not ready, she needed a break. She did not want to have the meeting.

Finding herself in Morrison’s office nevertheless, she “felt emotional. I couldn’t think straight. I needed to calm down.” 

She went on: “I spent the first half of the conversation crying and apologising. I just really felt that I would have liked to have had the conversation later in the day.”

As reported by Niki Savva in The Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday, there had been an earlier occasion when Archer had given Morrison’s office advance warning that she was considering crossing the floor. Two senior members of his staff, according to Archer, then came after her: “She felt bullied, threatened and intimidated by the staffers … seeking to persuade her to vote with the government.”

Savva says that is why, this time, Archer gave no notice of what she was going to do. When she was hauled into Morrison’s office she didn’t back down and asked Morrison to keep his staff away from her. Apparently, she told Morrison she was neither a “drone” nor a “warm body”.

Morrison’s version of what happened in his office is that he and Archer were close friends and colleagues having a chat and he was only interested in ensuring she felt supported.

Identify her by her first name only: check. Allude to her mental frailty: check. And, as it turns, out, co-opt her own words against her. Gas burners on full.

Workplace bullying, as proscribed by the Fair Work Act, is defined as occurring when someone repeatedly behaves unreasonably towards a worker at work, and the behaviour creates a risk to health and safety.

Bullying is one of those things we all recognise pretty easily when we see it, because we’ve all experienced it. Unless you’re one of those rare beings who have never been on the receiving end of it, you also know how debilitating and destructive it is.

Reducing that to a legal definition is hard, and the courts understandably struggle to apply a coherent and consistent set of principles. That’s one reason why, in the legal context, the only available remedy for a finding of bullying conduct is a protective order, not damages.

But legal niceties aside, you’d have to be Scott Morrison to not instantly recognise the indicia of bullying in his treatment of Archer, as plainly as it was present in his handling of Julia Banks. And they’re just the ones who’ve been prepared to speak up — at enormous personal cost.

The point is that the evidence is clear: Morrison is a bully. Watch how he reacts as he is increasingly held to account for this aspect of his character and behaviour.