{"id":24657,"date":"2026-06-04T08:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T08:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/24657\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T08:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T08:17:08","slug":"canberra-liberals-say-alleged-violent-threat-made-against-former-leader-leanne-castley-was-misunderstanding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/24657\/","title":{"rendered":"Canberra Liberals say alleged violent threat made against former leader Leanne Castley was ‘misunderstanding’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Canberra Liberals have hosed down allegations by their former leader Leanne Castley that she had been threatened with physical assault.<\/p>\n

Ms Castley quit the party yesterday to sit on the crossbench as an independent<\/a>, saying she had had “enough of being part of an organisation with such a toxic culture”.<\/p>\n

She alleged that over the past 18 months, she had “experienced bullying, intimidation, lies, and even a threat of physical assault”.<\/p>\n

Ms Castley did not provide more specific details about the allegations.<\/p>\n

Today, current Liberal leader Mark Parton held a press conference, saying an “animated discussion” had taken place between himself, Ms Castley and Ginninderra MLA Chiaka Barry last month.<\/p>\n

Mr Parton said there was a “misunderstanding” during that conversation that he believed had been “instantly cleared up”.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Chiaka Barry and Mark Parton say they believed Leanne Castley’s claim of a physical threat was resolved at the time of a discussion. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)<\/p>\n

“During the conversation, Chiaka said to Leanne, and I’ll quote directly, ‘If you come for me again, I’ll come for you’. That’s what she said,” Mr Parton said.<\/p>\n

“I instantly intervened. I said ‘Woah, just back it up there for a moment’.<\/p>\n

“When I heard Leanne raise allegations of threats of violence this week, I thought maybe she was talking about some other incident that I didn’t have any knowledge of because, to my mind, this one had been dealt with.<\/p>\n

“Although I have discussed it at management committee level, it’s not being investigated because I’m not sure what we would investigate.”Barry says Castley ’embarrassed’ her in chamber<\/p>\n

Ms Barry echoed Mr Parton’s account of events and added that the heated discussion was in response to what she described as Ms Castley “verbally embarrassing” her in public.<\/p>\n

“I was debating a matter in chamber and Ms Castley, verbally said to me, ‘F***, you’re debating the wrong bill’,” Ms Barry said.<\/p>\n

“And that was incorrect. She slammed her laptop and walked out of the chamber.”<\/p>\n

Ms Barry said she later went to Mr Parton’s office where they all met to discuss the incident.<\/p>\n

Ms Barry acknowledged, in hindsight, she could have handled the situation differently.<\/p>\n

“As Mr Parton has reflected, I said ‘If you come at me the way you did, I would have no choice but to come back at you’,” she said.<\/p>\n

“My intention was, if she wants to keep verbally embarrassing me, I would verbally embarrass her.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Leanne Castley says she experienced bullying, intimidation and lying within the party. (ABC News: Ian Cutmore)<\/p>\n

Castley accuses party of tolerating, minimising ‘poor behaviour’<\/p>\n

In a statement this afternoon, Ms Castley confirmed she had now made a formal complaint about the matter.<\/p>\n

“Opposition members’ comments in the last 36 hours demonstrate the culture I have walked away from: a party that tolerates poor behaviour and then seeks to minimise it when concerns are raised,” she said.<\/p>\n

“This is now the subject of a formal complaint and I will not be commenting further.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Canberra Liberals have hosed down allegations by their former leader Leanne Castley that she had been threatened…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12072,4817,18880,22,21,9654,2184,5118,22773,22774,4807,22775,22090,5116,12121,19479,11879],"class_list":["post-24657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-accusations","tag-act","tag-act-legislative-assembly","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-bullying","tag-canberra","tag-canberra-liberals","tag-chiaka-barry","tag-disagreement","tag-independent","tag-leader","tag-leanne-castley","tag-local-stories","tag-mark-parton","tag-politicians","tag-resignation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}