Albanese is riding high. Why did he take on a senator with so much baggage?

Dorinda Cox’s decision to leave the Greens is a bitter ending to one of the most difficult internal issues the minor party has ever wrestled with. Her joining Labor could be the beginning of a risky manoeuvre with seemingly little benefit for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the government.

While Cox’s defeat in the Greens’ recent deputy leadership ballot may have been the final straw for the senator, her decision to defect has been months in the making as she grew increasingly disenchanted with the views of some of her colleagues.

Dorinda Cox and Anthony Albanese at the press confrence where she announced her defection.Credit: AAP

And then there was the fact that 20 staff had left Cox’s office in about three years, revealed by this masthead last year, with several lodging formal complaints alleging a hostile culture where employees felt unsafe. Cox has consistently denied the claims and argued they lacked context, though she apologised for any distress felt by her staff.

An inquiry by WA firm Modern Legal into the allegations was still under way, much to her frustration. That inquiry is now over.

The WA senator’s move to Labor is the first time a federal Greens MP has switched to another party, the second time in two years an Indigenous woman has quit the party, and comes after the party lost three lower house seats, including that of former leader Adam Bandt, at the recent election.

By any measure, it has been a disastrous couple of months for the Greens.

But current and former Greens staff, though conceding the loss of a senator hurts, welcomed Cox’s exit almost universally on Monday after having to defend her for months.

The majority view within the Greens is that the party no longer has to play a straight bat to the allegations and deal with them internally. That is the silver lining. Already, additional allegations about Cox’s conduct while still within the Greens have begun to leak out.

The fact that the WA Greens still had an internal inquiry under way into the senator undercuts the prime minister’s claim that the matter had been examined and dealt with.

But before the Greens feel too pleased with themselves that they no longer have to answer for Cox, they should stop and reflect on their party’s internal culture too, which did not handle the complaints against the senator in a way that ensured the complainants felt heard.

That is a damning indictment on the Greens. But it is now in the past.

Labor owns any mistakes by or allegations against the senator from here on.

Albanese played a key role in Cox joining his government, but spoke to his leadership group and Indigenous members of the caucus before deciding. He took the proposal to Labor’s supreme decision-making body, and the national executive too.

They would have seen the political upside in gaining a senator, meaning both the Greens and Coalition need a crossbencher to join them to stop legislation. Yet the government still needs the Greens to pass bills.

So this was no captain’s call, but that does not mean it is risk-free. Far from it.

Labor is a more structured and hierarchical party than the Greens, with clearer reporting lines, more staff as the party is in government, and potentially better systems to manage a senator with personnel issues.

It could well be that the Labor caucus is a better fit for Cox, and she flourishes on the government benches – or she could chafe at the internal discipline and rules, resent them, and even move to the crossbench.

If Cox and Labor can’t accommodate each other, then this could turn into a failure spectacular enough to rival Peter Slipper’s 2011 move to become an independent speaker – a move Albanese played a major part in engineering.

The prime minister will bear the blame if that happens.

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