Former Victorian Greens MP Samantha Dunn quits ‘toxic’ party

Ex-Victorian Greens MP resigns with a furious tirade, saying she can no longer put up with the ‘megalomania and virtue signalling’.

Victorian Greens MPs Colleen Hartland (left) and Samantha Dunn react as the state's assisted dying bill passes the upper house in 2017.

A former Victorian upper house MP has resigned from the Greens, saying the party has become “too toxic”.

Samantha Dunn, who represented Eastern Metropolitan Region from 2014 until last November, posted to her Facebook page on Thursday announcing her resignation because she could no longer accept the culture in the Greens.

“The Greens are distracted by populism, self interest, power, ego, narcissism, megalomania, appealing to narrowcast demographics and virtue signalling while exercising that old war strategy of divide and conquer,” she wrote. “Aversion to conflict resolution means that tensions fester, no one is ever pulled up for poor behaviours, the behaviours escalate and become legitimised because no one ever says no or stop it or that’s inappropriate.” While the minor party managed to claim Brunswick off Labor at the November 24 state election, Northcote went back into ALP hands and four upper house MPs including Ms Dunn didn’t make it through.

Former Victorian Greens Upper House MP Samantha Dunn.

The party’s percentage of first preference votes also dropped - in 2018, they garnered 10.71 per cent and 9.25 per cent of the vote in the lower and upper houses respectively.

But state leader Samantha Ratnam regularly claimed “our vote held despite a very strong swing to Labor” in the weeks after the poll.

Ms Dunn attacked the continued trumpeting of success at the election.

“If this is what success looks like then the benchmark is very low,” she said. The party has been hit by internal disharmony for some time including allegations of bullying and sexual misconduct.

Repeat federal candidate Alex Bhathal also quit the party in February, after she was accused of bullying during the Batman by-election.

Upon leaving Ms Bathal said she had lost faith in the party’s governance and felt bullied out of the party.

Ms Dunn joined the Greens in 2004 inspired by founder Bob Brown’s stance against the Iraq war and her passion for the environment and action on climate change. She said she would still be an environmental activist despite of her resignation.

The Victorian Greens have been contacted for comment.

AAP