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IN JANUARY 2007, as Nancy Pelosi was sworn in as Speaker of the US House of Representatives before a packed chamber that included more than 100 children, she invited some of these children to join her at the podium.

As the votes for her were tabulated, she held an infant in her arms and was surrounded by children.

She ended her inaugural speech by saying: “For these children, our children, and for all of America’s children, the House will come to order.”

It wouldn’t happen in Canberra.

The day after a Liberal staffer sexually harassed several women at the press gallery’s annual Mid-Winter Ball, and the PM used his BlackBerry to photograph the Opposition Leader confronting one of his staff at the same function, the president of the Senate ordered a two-year-old to be removed from the chamber.

This child was not a stray intruder. Her mother, Greens’ senator Sarah Hanson-Young, had been with her when a division was called unexpectedly. It was an important one, on a piece of legislation the Greens were sponsoring, so Hanson-Young faced letting down her party or letting go of her child.

She chose to bring the kid with her for the 10 minutes or so it takes to conduct a vote.

She was not the first MP to do so. Mark Latham, Jackie Kelly and Anna Burke all took their children into the lower house. Nor was Kora the first child to grace the Senate. Natasha Stott Despoja’s two children had already done that.

So why all the fuss?

It is obvious that Senate president John Hogg handled the matter badly. He should have been aware that children have been in the chamber before and he should have been more sympathetic. Instead he opted to order the child removed so that the nation was confronted with the sight of a screaming toddler being ejected from the place where the nation’s laws are made.

What has been most instructive about this brouhaha is how it has brought into the open the still archaic attitudes towards mothers in the workplace. The response was predictable — and savage.

Senator Barnaby Joyce dismissed the episode as a “stunt”, then went on to make this amazing statement: “There are 21 million people who rely on the way that Senate votes, you’ve got to take that job seriously … Do not ever lose sight of how important it is, the job inside the rails of that Senate chamber, and so this requires certain sacrifices.”

In other words, according to Joyce, a woman cannot care for her child and attend to affairs of state! This is close to asserting that a woman’s place is in the home — and only in the home if she has children.

You’d have thought we’d moved beyond that. Previous generations of women often had to choose between careers and motherhood. Today, women can have both.

One of the most pleasing changes of the past two decades has been the increased numbers of women in parliaments and the fact that so many have had babies during their time as MPs.

Twenty years ago, women entered parliament after their families were grown. That started to change when Ros Kelly became the first sitting federal MP to have a baby (in 1983). Since then, countless MPs have had children and that has increased pressure to make parliaments more family-friendly.

In February 2003, Kirstie Marshall was evicted from the Victorian Parliament for breastfeeding in the chamber. That prompted a national re-examination of the standing orders on this issue.

In October 2007, NSW became the first breastfeeding-friendly state parliament when it allowed mothers to nurse in the chambers of both houses. Late last year the Federal Parliament became an accredited breastfeeding-friendly workplace after setting aside two rooms for mothers to nurse or express milk.

Yet last week’s eviction shows that these changes are not yet embedded in the minds of the men who still run Canberra. Nor in the community. Public comment seemed overwhelmingly against the idea of children in the chamber. Even Kirstie Marshall said it was “inappropriate”.

Why?

Is it that a mother (or father) would be unable to concentrate on the issues? The opposite could be the case; the parent reassured by the child’s presence rather than worrying if it was being properly cared for.

There seems to be a fear that having children in the cabinet room or the board room will somehow produce deterioration in output.

It is instructive that the Protecting Children from Junk Food Advertising (Broadcasting Amendment) Bill 2008, a private senator’s bill proposed by the Greens, was defeated at its second reading just after little Kora was thrown out of the Senate chamber last Thursday. There were only five votes in favour, one of them Senator Hanson-Young’s.

Anne Summers is a journalist and author