It’s been an honour and a privilege to have represented the SA Greens as an MLC for 15 years.

So it is with immense sadness that today I ‘spill’ the Leadership of the South Australian Parliamentary Greens by not only relinquishing my role as Co-Leader but also leaving the SA Greens Party room and also the Greens Party whose charter I have fought for, nurtured, supported and been loyal to for decades.

I declared my decision to resign from The Greens to the SA Greens Party room this morning.

Later today when sitting commences I join the cross-bench as a progressive independent.

I do so having not only been a Greens MLC for 15 years, four of those years as either Leader or Co-Leader, but also having served as a former SA Greens party convenor, an election campaign convenor, a member of the national election campaign committee and an active volunteer prior to holding Parliamentary office.

I’ve made so many strong friendships and have comrades across the nation within the Greens family. I have also taken counsel from some of them about this decision and discovered in those conversations that sadly too many times this has happened before.

I still believe in a Greens’ vision for a better world and know there are many, many wonderful, committed, and well-intentioned people within the Party.

But not all have such noble motivations, and they and their scheming are being too often enabled.

As a former Premier would often say to me, “don’t reward bad behaviour”.

So, I won’t.

Anymore.

They had wanted me to run in pre-selection against a sitting Senator. I wouldn’t.

They wanted me to step out of their way, so I did – I even opened the door for them.

But still wanted me gone. Further, faster.

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So today I have left.

“As you wish”.

Just not as far away or as quickly as they wished.

To them I say be careful what you wish for.

I leave the Greens today having hoped that those with thwarted ambitions, grudges and grievances would have focused on building up not tearing down.

Especially once I moved aside for those with ambition and self-interest.

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Unfortunately, they have not relented.

A small coterie colluded against me hoping to sabotage my work, to wear me down and dissuade me from continuing.

They also acted as a clique to the detriment of not just me, but others working around them.

In the past two years I have experienced significant health issues including chronic joint pain associated with menopause and so their attacks were most keenly felt when I was at a very weak point.

After I announced I would not re-contest I was then hit with an internal group complaint orchestrated by a current SA Parliamentary staff member.

Untrue but calculated to create maximum damage me with a quick political hit in what they thought would be when the SA Greens pre-selection was underway.

However, I was no longer a candidate for that.

The Greens are a political party, and their processes should accordingly recognise the often mercenary tactics used by those who seek control, power and promotion.

Staffers are well positioned to wield power often without accountability.

Worse still, without purpose.

I was gaslit and told there was no possible political motivation behind the group’s actions.

Instead, the matter was largely ‘managed’ by a volunteer Misconduct Committee who rather than following procedural fairness by refining charges and testing evidence then attempted to apply a ‘narrative therapy’ practice to the situation based on their experience working with DV perpetrators.

I was presented by that SA Greens ‘Misconduct Committee’ not with specific particularised charges of misconduct as defined in the Constitution and by-laws, but with rambling and changing accounts which consisted of feel-pinions and groundless accusations, the over 100 page document’s gripes ranged from my use of voice to text technology to send messages and emails, false claims of arriving late to an event, being a supposed ‘Zionist sympathiser’ (for having a Jewish academic speak to MPs about organ-harvesting), supposedly bring the Party into disrepute by promoting my radio interviews with the ABC on my social media through to purported bullying which was based on untested and untrue claims.

My ‘favourite’ being an accusation I had not informed a staff member of a position reached in Party Room meeting that they had taken the minutes for.

Perversely, I was further accused of ‘disrupting’ the very staff meetings that I chaired. (That is because one definition of misconduct in the SA Greens is the disruption of meetings.)

A loose assertion that these things could create a negative media story and that then meant it was therefore ‘misconduct’ was made.

A Catch 22 was created where because an accusation said a ‘terrible thing’ and so a leak of that may see an accusation of a ‘terrible thing’ in the media means that I was accused of causing the potential bad press rather than being blackmailed with the threat of those who sought to create bad press. Rather than investigate the allegation properly as of course any media outlet would do the Committee attempted to performance manage and provide therapy.

I’ve also no doubt that some of the complainants were actually good faith actors but they were misled and manipulated by others around them.

Witnesses who were provided by me to the Committee to respond to the allegations who held views of events counter to the claims were not appropriately interviewed and the subsequent complaints of those witnesses about their own experiences of the flawed process and subsequent concerns now go without response from the Party leadership for many, many months.

I doubt they will ever see a response.

There had also been concurrent complaints made to the Department about my ‘direct’ communication style despite the accuser’s agreement that I had never shouted or raised my voice, just called it as I saw it. Debate and difference of opinion has been presented in these documents as ‘discrimination’.

This placed me in a situation that is almost comical except that it too had a profoundly negative impact on my mental health.

This mobbing and organisational bullying led me to make a report through appropriate channels regarding my lack of psychosocial safety in my workplace. I took my concerns about this to the People and Culture Unit of the Parliament for support and was grateful for their professionalism and care for my wellbeing and mental health.

I feel for Greens’ grassroots members currently grieving the loss of good MPs right across the nation and can only imagine this might feel like betrayal. I share that grief, but I have held on as long as I could and did so hoping to see gains here in SA.

I had no desire to hurt those campaigning in the recent federal election and supported two of my staff who ran in lower house seats to have the flexibility to undertake that important effort.

They have been outstanding candidates for The Greens and are also highly valued staff members in my team.

However, the dual naivety and/or complicity of key people in the Greens SA Party leadership in the face of what was clearly the political manoeuvring of a small group has been both devastating and debilitating.

As was the silence required by my maintenance of my Party membership and my previous loyalties.

I’ve now come to recognise my loyalty was misplaced and I won’t be silenced any longer.

I cannot properly do the job I was elected to do until March 2026 of representing and serving constituents when trust has been broken, and I spend more time watching my back than thinking ahead.

The ringleader remains employed in the other state MLCs office and I do not feel safe in the situation where we are meant to work together.

I’ve found myself caught up in a bizarre nightmare where I have been accused of misconduct by this group, gaslit and subjected to a Kangaroo Court all masterminded by a staffer I am now meant to work with. It has gone on too long.

Those complaints should have been investigated externally by an organisation with expertise in conducting workplace investigations. The Greens Constitution and by-laws provide for that. That option was ignored.

The trust that is essential in a Parliamentary Party for good outcomes has now eroded with evidence it was misplaced.

I say with a newly found voice I’ve seen this unfold in Greens party internal process before.

Where exceptional candidates have left the Party and politics because Greens failed the basic standards of due process and good governance and that these failures can weaponise grievance processes, enabling them to be used for political ends.

It’s almost a playbook used across the country.

These failings reward those willing to be ruthless in their pursuit of power. Particularly when it comes to pre-selections. They shouldn’t.

Therefore, I will be taking forward my concerns about what I experienced to be unfair and oppressive conduct by the Party that I firmly believe contravened their obligations to me under the provisions of Associations Incorporations Act.

I intend to sit as an independent I have no current plans to run again but I don’t rule anything out.

I certainly will no longer be a silent bystander.