Book reveals bully claims

STAFFERS DENY ARCHER’S VERSION OF EVENTS

MAVERICK Bass Liberal MP Bridget Archer says senior members of former prime minister Scott Morrison’s staff sought to bully and intimidate her because she was considering voting against a piece of government legislation.

But the senior staffers deny the claims.

Ms Archer, who was reelected to her notoriously fickle seat on May 21, makes the explosive claims in a new book, Bulldozed: Scott Morrison’s Fall and Anthony Albanese’s Rise, by renowned political journalist Niki Savva.

The former George Town mayor told Savva that Mr Morrison’s former principal private secretary, Yaron Finkelstein, and backbench liaison, Bronwyn Morris, had stood over her in her parliamentary office in October 2020 after she informed the prime minister that she was weighing up whether to vote against the government’s proposed extension of the cashless debit card.

“Archer says that she felt bullied, threatened, and intimidated for weeks by the staffers, both of whom had been around politics a long time, seeking to persuade her to vote with the government,” Savva writes in the book.

Mr Finkelstein told Savva that the pair had tried to talk Ms Archer out of crossing the floor and the reason they had “stood over” her was due to there being a lack of chairs for them to sit on. Ms Morris, meanwhile, said they had not been asked to sit down.

“We did not tell her what she had to do,” Ms Morris told Savva.

“We were trying to ascertain Bridget’s concerns, because she had not articulated them to us.”

Ms Archer ultimately spoke against the Bill in the House of Representatives in December that year before abstaining from voting and therefore allowing its passage.

In the book, Savva says the Bass MP was under such pressure during this time that she at one point “had to ring her doctor from a booth outside the chamber to ask for a prescription to help her cope”.

After Ms Archer crossed the floor on November 25, 2021, to second independent MP Helen Haines’ motion for a national commission against corruption, she was hauled into Mr Morrison’s office, where the prime minister asked her why she hadn’t warned him of her intentions beforehand.

Ms Archer told him she hadn’t wanted his staff to bully her like she said they had over the cashless debit card.

“Keep them away from me,” she is said to have told Mr Morrison. “Just keep them away from me.”

When contacted, Ms Archer said she stood by her statements in the book.