Global Courant
SYDNEY – A senator from Australia’s largest opposition party, the Liberal Party, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by several female politicians, has resigned from the party but will remain in parliament, the senator’s office said on Sunday.
The claims against Liberal Party senator David Van follow a 2021 study into the culture of the Australian Parliament which found that one in three people working there had experienced sexual harassment.
Mr Van, who denies the allegations, said in a message to the chairman of the Liberal Party’s Victorian branch that he would resign his membership immediately.
“I cannot remain a member of a party that tramples on the premise on which our legal system is built,” he said in correspondence accessed by Reuters, which was confirmed by a spokesman for the senator.
Mr Van would remain in parliament as an independent senator, the spokesman said.
Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton asked Mr Van to resign on Friday after Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe, using parliamentary privileges, said she had been sexually assaulted during the previous term – an allegation Mr Van immediately denied .
Following Ms Thorpe’s comments, former Liberal Senator Amanda Stoker said in a statement that Mr Van touched her inappropriately at a party in 2020 by squeezing her buttocks twice.
A third claim has also been filed against the senator, Dutton told media on Friday, without giving details.
Mr Van said last week that he was “utterly shattered” and “amazed that my good reputation could be so willfully tarnished”.
The controversy comes after the Liberal-led government of former Prime Minister Scott Morrison was rocked by the high-profile case of a former government adviser accused of sexually assaulting a colleague at Parliament House in 2019. REUTERS
