Greens senator bullying complaints in legal limbo

Greens leader Adam Bandt will have to confront the mounting number of bullying complaints made about Senator Dorinda Cox, which are in limbo after parliament’s support service wound up its involvement without resolution.

Cox has demanded copies of other complaints made against her by party members and former staff to the WA branch of the party, while also questioning whether the complaints against her “ever existed”.

The fallout from the complaints in the senator’s office has prompted Jesse Smith, a member of both the party’s governing body, the National Council and the Australian Greens First Nation’s Network, to accuse the Greens of a racist intervention in the party’s Indigenous group after a Greens-commissioned independent report found the network had failed to provide First Nations members “safe and productive spaces to support policy design”.

Eleven former staffers of Dorinda Cox and Greens party members have confirmed they have lodged complaints about Cox. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Last month, this masthead revealed that Cox had lost 20 staff from her office in just three years. Five lodged some form of complaint with the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service, while several lodged complaints with the leader’s office and with the WA branch of the Greens.

Cox has previously said there was “significant missing context” in reporting on her office, which was responsible for five portfolios and Australia’s largest state. The pandemic, setting up two offices, leading committee inquiries and the Voice referendum were further challenges, she said.

“As the employer, I take responsibility for any shortcomings in what has occurred during this period and I apologise for the distress this may have caused,” Cox said last month.

Bandt has repeatedly insisted the Greens have taken the complaints seriously, that the welfare of Greens staffers is foremost in the party’s mind and that the complaints were being handled by the parliament’s support services.

Asked this month what action he had taken when allegations about Cox’s conduct were brought to his office, Bandt said the matters were confidential and that it was up to the support service to investigate.

“The PWSS has the power to not only receive complaints from staff members, but also to investigate them and also to then make findings,” Bandt said.

While PWSS received complaints about Cox’s conduct and reviewed them, the body confirmed it did not have the power to investigate. Instead, when a complaint is made to PWSS, it reviews and assesses whether an independent workplace review, which can make findings, should occur.

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission said that it could not “disclose information of any alleged breaches of the behaviour codes”. Cox’s spokeswoman said the IPSC was not investigating the senator’s office.

Bandt did not answer questions about whether the party leader would take steps to investigate the complaints about Cox, whether he was aware there were no current investigations under way or whether he was satisfied with PWSS’s handling of the complaints.

A spokesman for Bandt said the PWSS was the first body responsible for handling complaints in a parliamentary setting “including through a process called a ‘workplace review’, which the PWSS confirmed could be referred to as ‘an investigation’.

“All the complaints referred to were at the time before the IPSC was established. Since these complaints a new body with broader investigative powers, the IPSC, has been established, and is now the appropriate avenue for current or former staff to pursue formal complaints.”

A spokeswoman for Cox said PWSS had never made “any findings against Senator Cox, and PWSS advises that there are no current investigations,” while confirming the senator had asked for copies of the complaints.

In comments likely to infuriate the staffers and Greens members who have complained about Cox to Bandt’s office, PWSS or the WA Greens head office, Cox’s spokeswoman stated: “Neither the statements nor any description of their contents have been able to be provided by Greens WA, and there is real concern as to whether they ever existed”.

This masthead has spoken to 11 former staffers of Cox and Greens party members who have confirmed they have lodged complaints about Cox with the party’s state office, Bandt’s office, WA head office or a combination of all three officers.

The Greens WA state office, which is considering conducting its own investigation into the complaints it has received, also confirmed the party’s previous co-conveners Chloe Durand and Nat Tang had received complaints.

Smith, who is Indigenous, quit the Greens’ top decision-making body after the National Council ordered a major overhaul of the Blak Greens after an independent inquiry recommended sweeping changes to the group.

Smith in his resignation letter, shared by another member of the Blak Greens, said “I will not be assisting in this racist Howard-style intervention that National Council has agreed” and criticised the party for its handling of the allegations against Cox.

In response, Greens national conveners Caroline Atkinson and Gemmia Burden rejected the charge of racism, but acknowledged that some members “may be distressed that the independent First Nations organisation’s findings may not be what they anticipated”.

The council, which has to date protected Cox, intervened in the WA branch to delay a vote on a censure of Cox last month.

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