When journalist, broadcaster and author Indira Naidoo was asked to audition for new Australian play Housework, a sharp black comedy about the realities for women working in politics and Parliament House, she was surprised.

“I thought, ‘OK, not really my oeuvre’,” Naidoo, a media veteran across TV and radio, says. “‘But let me read the play’. Because it’s always about the play. So I read it and it was just brilliant.”

In Housework, a fictional story inspired by conversations South Australian playwright Emily Steel had with Australian politicians and political and parliamentary staff, Naidoo plays two roles. One is a cleaner working in Parliament House in Canberra and the other is a character kept secret for theatregoers only.

These two roles explore a gap in Australian politics, between people who wield political power and those who are overlooked. They appear beside other characters, including a freshly elected MP and an experienced chief of staff, in a play that unveils the personal, demanding and sometimes farcical side of working in the House.

“The quality of a workplace determines the work that is done there and Parliament is no different a workplace than anyone else’s,” Naidoo says. “For some, you’re in there, you’re exhausted, you’ve been up through the night up with a sick child. Or you can’t be home to be with your sick child because of legislation going through. Add all the other challenges that go with that. You’re not living in your own home. You’re sharing rooms in flats in different suburbs around Canberra. We’re not putting our lawmakers in the best possible environment for them to make the best decisions on our behalf. I don’t think we think about that much either.”

Against a set design inspired by architect Romaldo Giurgola’s Parliament House facade, Housework also features Emily Taheny (Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell, Comedy Inc) and Susie Youssef (Deadloch, The Project). Directed by Shannon Rush, artistic associate at State Theatre Company South Australia, the play, which premiered at State Theatre Company South Australia production in 2025, originated when Steel spent time at Parliament House in 2022, observing and asking politicians and staff about their daily lives.

“What really struck me was how much motherhood is a barrier to a political career,” Steel says. “Yes, the attitudes of individuals in that world affect women but the structural problems are much bigger. Women were telling me you can now breastfeed in the Chamber and there’s a childcare centre. But they said the difficulty comes when your child starts school, they can’t travel with you any more and, at that point, you have to leave them behind. That was the part that the women I talked to found really difficult.”

It’s why Taheny’s character, chief of staff Anna Cooper, who is trying to juggle family life with a political career, became the heart of the play. Steel didn’t record her conversations with staff and politicians and protects their identities.

“I let people talk about what they want to talk about,” she says. “It’s a weird thing that I go, ‘Hello, I’m a playwright, would you please tell me about your job or about your life?’ But I’m always really struck by how generous people are with their stories and how willing they are to tell me things. It’s a real privilege of my job.

“Often, the things I need to know are not the things they think are interesting. So I’ll ask, ‘Can you please tell me how your day goes from the moment you get up?’ They’re like, ‘What?’ I ask them, what happens when you get into work? What do you do? That’s the stuff. And, all of a sudden, they will tell me.”

From Steel’s research, the challenges for a parent working in politics are felt mostly by women, partly because of social expectations around women and caring. “I also talked to men who spoke about how difficult it was to leave their kids behind when they were gone Sunday to Thursday,” she says. “One of the dads was quite upset about how his kids reacted to him leaving on a Sunday. It hurt. So, it’s not just the women. But I think women are very conditioned to physically being there for our children. I also think women expect different things of themselves.

“One chief of staff told me that, before she left on a Sunday [for work at Parliament House], she prepped her daughter’s clothes for every single day she was going to be away. She would cook for the family and put it in the fridge. I don’t think you’d expect a man to do that.”

Emily Taheny, who spent years portraying politicians and political staffers on ABC’s satirical show Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell, says playing chief of staff Anna Cooper, was about becoming an entirely different persona. “She’s so compromised and so competent, and she’s everything that I’m not,” Taheny says. “In my head, she’s been to law school, she’s whip-smart, but she’s having to make concessions in her personal and political life because of the nature of being in politics.”

Likening Housework’s black humour and rapid-fire dialogue to TV shows such as Veep, Utopia or The Thick of It, Taheny says studying politicians for so long inspires apprehension about them turning up in the show’s audience. “I’m a little fearful of them,” she says. “But I also idolise them. People get excited when they see rock stars in airports. I love seeing politicians in airports. I’m a bit of a weirdo like that.”

Housework’s cast each have multiple roles, with some swinging between characters from the sitting government and the opposition. Because the side of politics is not specified, audiences draw their own conclusions. “It’ll be interesting to see how the dual roles land in the current climate,” Taheny says.

Youssef, who plays first-time MP Ruth Mandour, says Steel’s script balances deep research with great wit and revealing truths. “She doesn’t over-egg anything,” she says. “It’s a political play, and it’s about these crucial topics we need to talk about, but it’s also an office comedy at times.

Anyone who’s ever been a new person in a space will identify with the characters. “And Emily Steel watches the world with the sort of eyes that soak up everything. When you read her work, you take notice.”

In Housework, the question of whether women should adapt to a traditionally masculine political system, change the way it operates, or opt-out remains unanswered. ”I don’t have the answers,” Steel says. “I don’t want to blame anyone and go, ‘Oh, you need to do better’. It’s really a structural problem and that’s much harder to solve than having a policy about it.

“I write plays because I’m interested in questions. I can’t tell people what to think,” she says. My great hope is that there will be elements in the play that make people disagree, have a lively discussion in the bar afterwards because they see it in different ways. That’s my dream.”

Housework is at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, September 5 to October 17