How to kill a story: The secret dossier the Greens used to protect Steele-John

The Greens created and maintained a secret dossier that catalogues allegations against Senator Jordon Steele-John and set out ways to shut down media coverage and monitor members who raised concerns on social media.

The crisis communications strategy obtained by this masthead reveals that as far back as 2016, before Steele-John was parachuted into the Senate in 2017, the party was managing complaints. The document reveals that one senior Greens official quit her role because Steele-John was reinstated as the WA branch’s volunteer co-ordinator, even though two women had lodged complaints alleging Steele-John had made inappropriate remarks while working with them.

The 47-page dossier, stored on a Google Drive folder accessible to Western Australian Greens and national Greens staff for close to a decade, was first drafted in 2016 and has been updated in the years since. It sets out ways to shut down media coverage of allegations about Steele-John, while also instructing taxpayer-funded Greens staff to monitor social media discussions and take screenshots of comments posted by party members.

This masthead has confirmed with four former Greens staffers that the dossier was real and that it was used by the WA Greens and the national leader’s office to manage stories about Steele-John.

Steele-John on Thursday took leave from the Greens party room after leader David Shoebridge received a letter from seven active Greens members demanding an independent investigation into allegations from party members that the WA senator made multiple inappropriate comments to women over the past decade.

The senator referred the matter to the WA Greens for an independent investigation, while rejecting the allegations.

“I utterly reject this characterisation of me, which tries to assert I am someone I am not,” Steele-John said in a statement provided to this masthead.

“These claims are made without specifics, any allegation of this nature is extremely serious and must be treated accordingly. If someone has made an allegation, I am prepared to address it.”

On Friday morning, Shoebridge confirmed Steele-John would take a leave of absence from parliament during the investigation.

The resignation

In an email sent to WA Greens members on July 29, 2017, Sarah Nielsen-Harvey – then a party co-convener – announced that she was resigning after less than a year in the job, saying she wanted to focus on her university studies. Co-conveners are administrators who oversee the party’s governance and provide day-to-day management and co-ordination.

The letter contained an oblique reference to turmoil inside the WA branch: “There are also a few things that over this year that have manifested in behaviour and culture that I cannot in good conscience continue being involved with right now”.

Five days later on August 3, the independent website True Crime News Weekly published a story about allegations made against Steele-John by two volunteers, whose names this masthead has chosen not to publish. The story alleged that Steele-John, who was not yet a senator, had been accused of making inappropriate comments by “at least two young female members of the Greens in Western Australia.”

Eventually, the two women decided not to pursue the complaint and, as the crisis communications dossier makes clear, a form of words was agreed: the two women had had a “dispute of an interpersonal nature” with Steele-John but had decided to leave it there.

The real reason she resigned

However, the dossier includes a follow-up email sent on August 17, 2017 to senior party office bearers, including former state Greens leader Elizabeth “Giz” Watson and co-convener Grahame Bowland, in which Nielsen-Harvey made clear the real reason she had quit the party.

“I would just like to clear up a few things after receiving accusations that I am ‘about to wreck the good reputation of the Greens’. I am incredibly hurt by this and it is an unfair allegation,” she began. “I could have included my concerns of… allegations in my resignation email. I did not.”

She then detailed contact with journalists, including at Junkee, True Crime News Weekly and The Australian, about her resignation and the allegations against Steele-John, but states that she had not assisted any of the journalists.

“I would like to know where along this journey, since this time last year, it is me ruining the good reputation of the Greens,” Nielsen-Harvey wrote.

“I am not the one allegations were levelled at. I am not the one who, after being made aware of the allegations, decided to still dismiss member involvement in choosing their senator, despite the very real risk that these allegations could very well come up and jeopardise retaining our Senate spot on this rotation. I am not the one who has chased down and tipped off journalists.

“I am not the one trying to silence members into not talking about this at all. The bullying that has happened since Jordon’s decision to accept the role has astounded me. Never have I felt unsafe to go to a Greens meeting or office. Thanks.”

In a separate post to a private Facebook group on August 4, Nielsen-Harvey wrote that she was “disgusted” by the Greens’ decision to re-employ Steele-John as volunteers co-ordinator in the lead up to the 2017 WA state election, when the party was aware of the allegations against him.

Nielsen-Harvey remains a member of the Greens, but holds no administrative or elected positions.

Watson, a former leader of the party in state parliament and now a co-convenor of the WA Greens with Simone Collins, said on Thursday the branch was supporting the commission of an independent inquiry into Steele-John.

In November 2017, Steele-John was parachuted into the federal Senate when former WA Senator Scott Ludlam was disqualified because he held dual citizenship. Steele-John has since made a name for himself as the party’s chief spokesman on the NDIS and mental health. He has cerebral palsy, uses a wheelchair and has advocated for disability rights throughout his nine-year tenure in the Senate.

Monitoring Greens members

But the dossier contains more than the complaints of one former party co-convener.

It contains more than a dozen screenshots from a private Young Greens Facebook group, and from X, in which party members and supporters discuss the allegations made by the two women against Steele-John and the party’s handling of them.

Then state convenor Sophie Greer, who helped deal with the initial complaint from the two women, was required to “reach out to them” – Greens members – if they had posted something negative about the newly minted senator and to take screenshots when people discussed the allegations.

Greer is now Steele-John’s chief of staff and is a frontrunner to win the number one spot on the party’s Senate ticket ahead of the next election.

Under headings including “what is to be shared on background”, “potential initiators of media story”, “complaint received by the party” and “external management plan if story printed”, the dossier sets out how the party should kill the story.

Steele-John was to “undergo training with Will [Kelly, a senior media adviser for Greens leaders Richard Di Natale, Adam Bandt, Larissa Waters and now David Shoebridge] in case he was asked about the allegations.”

Kelly and Steele-John were instructed to “ensure RDN [then leader Richard Di Natale] are [sic] provided with information”.

It adds that “Sophie [Greer] & Tim [Oliver] to keep an eye on Australian Young Greens discussion group”.

Di Natale was contacted for comment, and subsequent former leaders Bandt and Waters. Steele-John, Shoebridge, Bowland, Watson, Nielsen-Harvey, Greer, Oliver and Kelly have also been contacted for comment.

A statement provided by Shoebridge’s office on Friday says: “This is not a document made by, used by, or seen by the Leader’s Office. The office is committed to having the matters comprehensively investigated with a fair, independent and timely process.

“Everyone deserves a safe workplace, and all complaints should be considered in a fair and robust process.”

In a statement from the WA Greens, current co-conveners Watson and Collins confirmed the authenticity of the leaked crisis communications manual.

“The Greens WA responded to allegations about Jordon Steele-John in 2016. The allegations were not substantiated and the named persons have never lodged a formal complaint,” they said.

“Reference has been made to an internal document that has been provided to the media. This document outlines the management of communications about this matter.”

The pair said that Greens WA support the commission of an independent inquiry and that they had no further comment.

The dossier provides “pivot responses” for Steele-John if he was asked about the allegations made against him in the True Crime News Weekly article. He was to issue the following statement: “The Greens take allegations like those in that article very seriously and the Party has never received a complaint of the nature outlined on that blog. I’d suggest you talk to The Party for more on that one”, and afterwards, alert Greer and Oliver.

Other scenarios are also war-gamed – such as Steele-John being asked about “Greens and Women”, “Young Greens not supporting Jordon” and Nielsen-Harvey’s decision to quit, with a stock response instructing journalists to seek more information from the WA head office of the party.

When a journalist calls

Page after page of screenshots show inquiries from at least five media outlets over the next three years following the story in True Crime News Weekly.

The journalists were provided with the stock responses set out in the crisis communications dossier, including that “the allegations were investigated by The Greens (WA). As The Greens (WA) had not received a complaint ... they were only able to identify the individuals concerned as media outlets had their names.”

“The individuals identified had previously spoken to a Party Co-convenor for advice on handling a (sic) interpersonal conflict between themselves and Jordon Steele-John. This was of an interpersonal nature... Jordon has not behaved improperly.”

Who might leak?

In the section titled “potential initiators of media story”, senior party officials are assessed on the likelihood that they could assist journalists pursuing the story.

Nicole Harvey and Grahame Bowland, both former state co-conveners, were considered “unlikely” to assist in a story about Steele-John. “Nicole is unwilling to break the confidentiality of her conversation with the women,” the dossier states.

It goes on to say that “Grahame has a friendly relationship with one of the two women, and wouldn’t put them in a harmful situation. He also does not know details of what the two women brought to the Party”.

But former co-convener Nielsen-Harvey is listed as a potential risk to the party’s reputation because “Sarah has already written on AYG [Australian Young Greens] Discussion Group, personal Facebook page & spoken to journalists, none of these have landed articles”.

It goes on to state “Sarah is still a member of The Greens (WA) – Sophie [Greer] or Chilla [Bulbeck, another party official] to attempt to call SNH” and warns “Do not put anything in writing to SNH in first instance”.

What Shoebridge knew

At a snap press conference on Thursday after this masthead revealed the letter, Shoebridge said he was not previously aware of the allegations reported by this masthead against Steele-John.

“No, I received the correspondence in my capacity as leader of the Australian Greens, and I’ve dealt with it with … urgency,” he said.

Asked in the press conference about the NSW Young Greens raising claims against Steele-John in 2018, Shoebridge said he had not known about this.

“I was in a different parliament,” he said. “I do not recall having any involvement at all in that, and I don’t think people would expect an upper-house MP in a state ­parliament to have any role in that.”

The Greens have previously faced questions about the transparency of their complaints handling.

Former leader Adam Bandt was briefed in 2021 on a series of scathing assessments of his party’s culture, leading him to order compulsory workplace training for all parliamentarians in the party, but his office still failed to stop a subsequent alleged culture of bullying in the office of then-Greens senator Dorinda Cox.

This was revealed by this masthead in 2024, after 20 staff left Cox’s office in just three years and several lodged formal complaints alleging a hostile culture.

Cox defected to Labor last year.

In 2021, Victorian Indigenous Aunty Geraldine Atkinson sought a formal apology from then-Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe over what she characterised as “a tirade of abuse” and later said she received no acknowledgment from Bandt.

In 2023, Thorpe quit the Greens, claiming she had been bullied and undermined by several of her party room colleagues and had lodged a written complaint about her treatment with Bandt and the parliament’s workplace misconduct support service.

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