Arguably, if this is true, The Greens are even worse given their high moral attitude:
Bandt has ducked questions, including cutting short a press conference, over complaints about Senator Dorinda Cox’s behaviour and 20 staff quitting her office and several making complaints, underlining the sensitivity for a party that has led the charge calling for an MP behaviour watchdog.
In a staff-initiated survey following the Four Corners report into political culture in Canberra, 11 Greens advisers filed anonymised responses about the toxic workplaces run by the minor party hoping to win the balance of power at the election. Around 100 people were employed by the federal Greens at the time of the survey conducted in late 2020 and released in 2021 and 33 responded to the survey.
“There is a culture of servitude that results in the covering up or excusing of bad behaviour,” one complainant wrote.
It’s not exactly what you expect from a party that has largely abandoned the environment for progressive social policy.
The Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission was only just legislated:
Independent Senator David Pocock failed in a bid to include staff of the Department of Parliamentary Services within the remit of the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission.
The IPSC legislation passed the Senate last Thursday with the backing of the government and the opposition without the inclusion of DPS staff in the scope of the commission’s activities.
That commission — a key plank of 2021’s Jenkins Review of behaviour in parliamentary workplaces — will commence on October 1 and has the power to investigate allegations of misbehaviour of politicians and staffers.
Any finding related to breaches of standards or codes of conduct could result in either a sanction being imposed or a sanction being recommended against the individual subject to investigation.
Who’d be a DPS employee now? What are they, debauchery fodder?
The IPSC doesn’t directly cover alcohol and drugs so party on dude!
There are also fears that NDAs will hide transgressions and that the lack of more serous punishment, such as expulsion from the parliament, which is unconstitutional, will limit the fear factor.
Plenty of loopholes, happily agreed to by all.
