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Key points
- A Victorian Greens internal disciplinary body found local government councillor Tim Baxter should be banned from the party over a slur.
- Baxter falsely claimed former state convenor Linda Gale was a transphobe and the party unsafe for trans and gender diverse people.
- But Baxter has not been sanctioned as the party’s governing body refuses to recognise the decision or the panel which handed it down.
An internal disciplinary body of the Victorian Greens recommended that a local government councillor should be banned from the party for falsely claiming that former state convenor Linda Gale was a transphobe and the party unsafe for trans and gender diverse people.
But the finding against City of Port Phillip councillor and outspoken queer rights campaigner Tim Baxter has not resulted in a formal sanction because the party’s governing body refused to recognise the decision and the standing of the misconduct panel which handed it down.
Port Phillip councillor Tim Baxter, Victorian Greens leader Samantha Ratnam and Greens Senator Janet Rice at a trans rights event.
The misconduct finding against Baxter, which the councillor rejected in his submissions to the three-person panel, is the latest episode in an internecine gender war which has prompted an exodus of party members and damaged the Greens’ electoral prospects.
It has also created a bizarre circumstance where a disciplinary body sacked earlier this month by the state council – after it recommended that Senator Janet Rice be censured for her own comments about Gale – delivered a finding from beyond its administrative grave.
The panel, on 14 June, delivered a stinging judgement against Baxter for his “completely unrepentant” attack a year ago against Gale, a long-serving party member and senior union official briefly elected as state convenor before the result was overturned.
“He falsely uttered the egregious slur that Gale was a transphobe and attempted to coerce her to resign from the office she had just been elected to,” the panel found.
“He brought the party into disrepute by stating, without providing any evidence in support either in his statements or to the sub panel, that the party was undemocratic and not a welcome place for trans members and prospective trans members.
“It is hard to imagine a worse practical example of a member who holds public office using their bully pulpit to hurt members, the party and the party’s future prospects.”
The panel recommended that Baxter be suspended from the party for six months. If the sanction was endorsed by state council, he would have become the first party member to be banned for calling someone transphobic.
State convenor Sarah Jefford said the finding and recommended sanction carried no weight. “This document is not an official party communication and the author is not a member,” she told this masthead. “The document has no standing and will not be considered.”
The misconduct panel was chaired by David Eldridge, a senior solicitor with the Central Australia Aboriginal Family Law Unit in Alice Springs. Its other members are Judith Baldacchino, a Geelong-based psychologist, and former economics teacher Earl James, a Greens candidate in last year’s state election.
The state council sacked the panel at the start of this month when it changed the party rules to exclude Eldridge, who this year shifted his party membership from Victoria to the Northern Territory, from serving on any disciplinary body.
Eldridge said the rule change had no impact on matters already under consideration by the panel. “You can’t simply unappoint a duly appointed disciplinary panel,” he said.
“In my view, the confidence they have lost is not in the capacity of the panel to apply the rules fairly, it’s in the capacity of the panel to apply the rules with results that suit them. Disciplinary tribunals aren’t impanelled to suit the professed needs of a particular body.”
Eldridge formally resigned from the misconduct panel on Friday.
Baxter did not respond to requests for comment.
In June last year, Baxter posted a lengthy Twitter thread decrying the election of Gale, who previously raised concerns about the party’s embrace of trans ideology and potential areas of conflict with women’s rights. This led to her being branded a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) and transphobe by other party members.
“Gale’s (narrow) victory sends a clear message to all members of the Victorian Greens: Trans people are not safe in this party,” Baxter posted. “There are a small number of institutionally powerful people in the Greens, who hold transphobic views, and have been fighting to silence trans members and allies in the party.”
In his response to the misconduct panel, Baxter rejected the complaint against him but did not resile from his previous comments about Gale.
“The attitude that reprehensible behaviour and views should be tolerated, but public calling out of them should be punished, is a disgraceful betrayal of everything the Greens stand for,” he said.
Long-serving Greens member Linda Gale has been cleared of allegations of transphobia.Credit: Joe Armao
“Ms Gale and those others who have written transphobic documents, acted in a manner that has driven trans members out of leadership positions or even the party, and created an unsafe culture in our party that we are still struggling with – these are the people who have brought our party into disrepute.”
Gale declined to comment about the misconduct panel finding but said Baxter’s social media posts against her election as state convenor “were a lightening rod for wild and unfounded accusations against me and against the party.”
She said Baxter’s claim that the party was unsafe for trans people was a self-fulfilling prophecy. “When people see an elected representative reporting the existence of transphobia, they will tend to believe him and will feel less safe as a result.”
A backlash against Gale’s election, led by Senator Rice and Victorian leader Samantha Ratnam, prompted the party’s administrative committee to set aside the result. Gale chose not to run again. She has been investigated and cleared of transphobia and other misconduct allegations by Eldridge’s panel.
In the year since the furore over Gale’s election, the Greens have commissioned a special inquiry into transphobia within the party, spilled all the positions on its misconduct panel, changed the party rules to exclude Eldridge from serving on future panels and expanded the party’s definition of transphobia to proscribe gender critical speech.
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