The deputy prime minister’s chief of staff has accused the government of ignoring her bullying complaint and stonewalling on her unresolved employment situation, appealing directly to the prime minister to intervene.
Guardian Australia reported three weeks ago Jo Tarnawsky’s concerns she had not heard from her boss, Richard Marles, since May and had been barred from her office without 24 hours’ notice, after she made a complaint about behaviour by some staff that she felt was bullying and was moved out of her job.
She remains technically employed but is unable to perform her role and has been forced to take blocks of miscellaneous leave since the short-term contract for a specially created position ended last month.
Tarnawsky has now written to Anthony Albanese urging him to resolve the impasse, which she alleged in her letter had not progressed since she publicised her situation on 10 October.
Tarnawsky’s letter, seen by Guardian Australia, asked Albanese to deal personally with what she described as “matters of accountability”. She wrote that there had been no official contact from the government in the past three weeks.
“My lawyer’s letter on 16 October to the Deputy Prime Minister and your office proposing a resolution remains unacknowledged,” she wrote.
She sent the letter to Albanese on Thursday and, 70 minutes later, received the first formal response to her 16 October letter – not from Marles but from the commonwealth’s lawyers.
In her letter to Albanese, Tarnawsky wrote that she had not been made aware of any investigation into her complaint since she raised it.
She said the matter has been shifted away from the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service and that Marles has now referred it to Comcover – the government’s insurer.
“I was taken aback to learn that not just the same external law firm, but the same individual lawyers engaged by the ‘independent’ PWSS have now been appointed by Comcover to act for it,” she wrote to Albanese. “They have indicated my case will not be resolved quickly. Further, Comcover does not have any remit to engage on the most important items I have raised – namely, on accountability for the failures I have highlighted.”
The letter Tarnawsky received on Thursday afternoon came from the lawyers representing Comcover.
In her letter to Albanese, she asked him to consider taking action under the ministerial code of conduct by referring her allegations to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission for investigation, reviewing Marles’ position as chair of the government staffing committee and issuing an apology acknowledging that her treatment “has fallen short of the standards set by your government”.
A spokesperson for the prime minister said that as lawyers were now engaged, it was not appropriate to comment in detail.
“There are established and appropriate processes that must be followed when a claim is made against the commonwealth and those steps are being followed,” the spokesperson said.
Tarnawsky’s lawyer, Marque Lawyers’ managing partner, Michael Bradley, said his client was “doing everything within her power” to have the situation resolved, short of suing her boss.
“Her preference would be that this is resolved,” Bradley said. He said his client had proposed a solution but declined to detail it publicly.
“She wants her situation resolved because she’s in exactly the same situation she was in three weeks ago. Nothing has changed at all and she’s still in exactly the same limbo and that’s untenable.”
In parliament on 10 October, Marles called Tarnawsky a “wonderful person” who had worked for him in 2012 and who he re-employed as his chief of staff after Labor won the 2022 election.
“It’s to state the obvious that, in this moment, I feel very sad that events have got to where they have,” Marles told the House of Representatives in response to an opposition question about the workplace situation. “This is obviously very difficult.”
Marles insisted he had upheld workplace standards in his dealings with Tarnawsky and had managed the situation “with Jo’s welfare in mind at every moment”.
In response to questions from Guardian Australia about the status of Tarnawsky’s complaint and her criticisms of the government, a spokesperson for Marles pointed to the deputy prime minister’s comments in parliament in which he said that as the matter was in the hands of lawyers, it was difficult for him to say any more.
Tarnawsky told Guardian Australia on Thursday that Marles – who remains her employer – had not responded to correspondence that proposed a resolution.
“My personal belongings remain in my office,” she said. “I retain government IT devices. The situation is completely untenable.”
She said she had tried “incredibly hard to resolve this privately over many months” and was asking the prime minister to “meet the standard his government set”.
“It was never my intention to go public. But the government’s continuing inaction has pushed me to this. They’re not taking this seriously … The government seems determined to bury its head in the sand in the hope I will magically disappear. But I will not.”
