Statement from Ellen Sandell

Statement from Ellen Sandell, Leader of the Victorian Greens

1/11/2024

Late on Tuesday, I received information from Parliamentary Services detailing serious and concerning allegations regarding the member for Prahran behaving inappropriately towards a staff member over a period of time. 

This behaviour was a clear breach of our Greens guidelines and rules for MPs, I and my Greens MPs acted immediately to suspend the member for Prahran that evening and remove all his roles and responsibilities. He has since resigned from the Party Room and I have also requested his resignation as a Greens member, which he has provided.

I’ve spoken to the staff member and my primary concern throughout all of this is her wellbeing. She’s asked for her privacy and her confidentiality to be protected and as we’re a small team, I hope you’ll understand that there are a number of details that I cannot share in order to maintain this privacy. Women do not deserve to have their lives dragged through the media because of the behaviour of men. 

None of my MPs or supervising senior staff had any knowledge of this incident before it was brought to me on Tuesday.

We take the behaviour of our MPs extremely seriously. We require that all of our Greens MPs must undergo management training and a series of other trainings when they first get elected to make sure that all MPs are fully aware of their responsibilities and standards of behaviour that we expect when they become an MP. The Member did those trainings.

I want to say very clearly that I am angry. Everyone, especially women, deserve respect and safety in their workplace. 

The Member for Prahran has completely lost my trust, and the trust of his colleagues, and he will never be welcomed back to our Party Room. 

We have clear rules and processes in our efforts to keep our staff safe and the Member for Prahran chose to breach those rules. We, as well as Parliamentary Services, are providing full support to the staff member who made this report, and we are also providing support to our broader staff team. 

We understand this can be an upsetting topic, and we encourage you to reach out for support if you need it.