An Aboriginal elder who alleged she was verbally abused by Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe during a 2021 meeting at Parliament House says her formal complaint has never been acknowledged by Adam Bandt as the party leader stated he had full confidence in the controversial senator.
Aunty Geraldine Atkinson wrote to Bandt in June 2021 to complain that Thorpe’s “vicious” and “abusive” behaviour toward her during a meeting days earlier had left her “physically ill and shaken”.
Geraldine Atkinson, co-chair of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, said she was yet to receive any acknowledgment from Greens leader Adam Bandt of her written complaint about Senator Lidia Thorpe’s conduct during a meeting in Parliament House in 2021.Credit:Justin McManus
As revealed by this masthead, her account of the incident has now been reinforced by Thorpe’s former chief-of-staff David Mejia-Canales who, in a leaked email, said the senator’s behaviour had left him “scared and in shock”, describing it as among the most unprofessional conduct he had ever witnessed.
Atkinson, a co-chair of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, confirmed on Tuesday she never received a reply from Bandt despite the seriousness of the allegations contained in her letter.
“I said everything I wanted to say about this matter a year ago. I never got an apology and neither did I get an acknowledgment from the Greens leader Adam Bandt about the letter I sent,” she said.
The meeting between Atkinson and her co-chair Marcus Stewart and Thorpe, who was accompanied by Mejia-Canales, was held in a committee room in Parliament House on June 22, 2021. It was convened to discuss Victoria’s treaty process.
Before resigning from Thorpe’s office in June this year, Mejia-Canales emailed Atkinson and Stewart to apologise for how the meeting had unfolded, describing the senator’s conduct as “appalling” and “one of the most unprofessional displays I have ever seen, not just during the length of my career, but in my life”.
The Greens have refused to say whether Atkinson’s written complaint to Bandt – or a separate written complaint she made to the then-Senate president Scott Ryan – triggered an internal review into the incident.
Bandt declined to respond to a series of written questions, including whether the party had investigated if internal Greens codes of conduct had been breached by Thorpe’s behaviour during the meeting.
He declined to say whether he had spoken with Thorpe following the publication of her former staffer’s account of her conduct, and instead stood by his characterisation of the meeting as involving a “robust discussion” stemming from a “range of views about First Nations politics”.
Greens senator Lidia Thorpe has so far refused to apologise for her alleged conduct in the June 2021 meeting, and instead maintains the meeting involved a “robust discussion”.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
“Mr Bandt reiterates the statement provided yesterday, including that the party has updated internal complaints handling procedures following the Jenkins Review,” a spokesman for Bandt said.
“Mr Bandt has full confidence in Senator Thorpe.”
In a statement on Monday, Bandt confirmed he spoke with Thorpe last year about the meeting as well as with staff from her office after receiving Atkinson’s complaint, but he did not elaborate.
Thorpe was absent from parliament on Tuesday, with the party confirming she had been paired for the rest of the sitting week. She has maintained that the meeting involved a “robust discussion” about Victoria’s treaty process and, to date, has declined to apologise.
Under the Greens’ “federal party room guidelines for ethical behaviour”, MPs are required to be “responsible at all times for maintaining a healthy and safe working environment” and behave in a “professional manner at all times when engaging in interpersonal relations” including with stakeholders and staff.
The guidelines state they are binding on elected federal Greens members and “a contravention of them may constitute misconduct”. Potential sanctions include loss of leadership roles, portfolios, committee membership, or compulsory training and counselling.
One senior Greens party member, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly about the allegations, said there were growing concerns across the broader party membership about Thorpe’s conduct and approach to political issues.
“It is a growing concern among members that our behaviour needs to reflect our values. It is difficult to raise issues and matters relating to others when poor behaviour goes unchecked and unchallenged in our own ranks,” they said.
Greens MPs closed ranks on the issue on Tuesday, with senators David Shoebridge and Janet Rice rebuffing questions on the allegations and whether there should be an internal investigation during a press conference on Labor’s federal integrity commission bill.
“We’ve got Greens processes and we’re not going to be saying anything more than what Adam [Bandt] said,” Rice said.
WA Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John also declined to weigh in when asked about the allegations on ABC TV, saying he was focused instead on increasing the representation of people with a disability on the board of the National Disability Insurance Agency.
“If anyone wants more information on anything related to, you know, to Senator Thorpe, or her team, [it] would be [good] to actually ask Senator Thorpe for comment on those matters,” he said.
With Rachel Clun and Mike Foley
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