Labor's Secret Harbour candidate Georgia Tree said the NRL had a better sexual assault policy than Labor

Labor's candidate for Secret Harbour, Georgia Tree, told a podcast in 2021 that her own party handled sexual harassment the way the Catholic Church did, that staffers who spoke up were told to stay silent, and that nothing had been fixed yet. Voters go to the polls on Saturday 29 August, and she is the candidate who hasn't been permitted to answer a question.

The interview ran for 50 minutes on In the House and In the Senate on 27 July 2021, hosted by former Labor staffer Alisha Aitken-Radburn. Tree was then a policy adviser to Madeleine King, Labor's shadow trade and resources minister, and had organised a sit in at Parliament House four months earlier over the treatment of staff. One News has transcribed the episode in full, and she stood by the comments this week.

The seat fell vacant when Labor veteran Paul Papalia retired in July. One News has followed the contest since, from the full field of 16 candidates and the Karnup station Labor funded four weeks out, to the dry run One Nation is using the by-election for against Andrew Hastie in the federal seat of Canning that surrounds it.

Georgia Tree said staffers were told to stay silent and protect the brand

Twenty two minutes in, the conversation turned to what happens to a staffer who tries to raise something inside a party.

"The culture of party political culture is like you as a staffer, you need to stay silent, like you're not meant to have a voice, you're not meant to make any waves, which is very disempowering."

She said the powerlessness of harassment in the workplace was "further compounded by the fact that we're not allowed to talk about it because of this silence". There was an unspoken rule, she said, that staff shouldn't detract from what the big players were doing. When the host said the job was to protect the brand, Tree agreed and took it further.

"It's like the Catholic Church, right? Like we don't want to taint the brand, so let's deal with everything in house and everyone just shut up."

Tree then narrowed it to her own side, saying that from Labor's position it was "somewhat of a government problem", and the instinct was don't make any fuss from our side because the government is already shooting itself in the foot.

Labor men told her to point at the Liberal Party instead

A minute later Tree described what happened inside a Labor staffer alumni group online as the reckoning spread through Parliament in 2021. She said women in the group had lived experience of how the power dynamics worked, and that the response from some of the men was to change the subject.

"You've got like these literal old men being like, you know, one either being like, look over there, look at the Liberal Party, don't bring light to us."

Tree named nobody in the group.

After the sit in, Georgia Tree says the union didn't turn up

Her March 2021 protest came in the wake of the reports about the treatment of staff that dominated that year. She told the podcast that when it was over, everyone went back to work as though nothing had happened.

"The union didn't even rock up. It took a while to even hear from them... does anyone give a shit about us? I don't feel like anyone cares."

She added that she didn't want to discount the work the union later did on the Jenkins review. On the day of the sit in itself, by her account, it wasn't there.

Tree said the NRL had a better sexual assault policy than the Labor Party

Asked what she would say to young women thinking about a career in politics, Tree said she understood why they hesitated, and gave the comparison she had been using at the time.

"The NRL had a better sexual assault policy than we did. They have like a standout policy."

Earlier in the interview she and the host agreed it was beyond belief that Parliament House had no human resources function at all, which was the first of the three recommendations she put to the review with Labor MP Josh Burns.

At 46 minutes into the interview the host put it to her directly. A Liberal staffer friend had said the tide had shifted on her side of politics and she could now say anything without consequence. Was the Labor Party there yet?

"No... I think that it's not because we haven't heard anything. I think that if we had heard something, then that would say it all. That would be the tester. It seems like people are still keeping quiet. Maybe the stories aren't out there, but you know, I think we both know they are."

Five minutes later she was asked what was next for her. "Working on the next election hopefully, and getting the Labor government in power," she said. Both answers are in the same conversation, and five years on she is on a Labor ballot paper.

Georgia wanted the skeletons dragged out, not buried

Tree described the argument she was having inside her own party. Colleagues would tell her offhand that the party shouldn't go too hard on an opponent because of "the skeletons in our closet". She rejected it.

"No, this is the time, this is the time the skeletons are coming out... If we lose a couple of people in the process, and they need to resign, so be it. Frankly, if they've done the wrong thing, they've done the wrong thing. Make room for someone who hasn't, because there's plenty of good people out there."

Across 50 minutes she never once argued for keeping any of it quiet. Five years on, nobody has put the obvious question back to her. Did Labor drag those skeletons out, and can she name one?

Tree stands by everything she said. She has pointed out that she led the sit in against a don't ask, don't tell culture, and that Madeleine King backed and fully supported her at the time and since. She says she has always been outspoken and will always fight for what is right, particularly when it comes to women. Wanting more young women to enter politics and not be afraid to speak up is, she says, one of the reasons she is running.

Labor deleted the definitions of man and woman, then voted last month to keep them out

The party Tree wants to represent has a wider record on this. In the final months of the Gillard government in 2013, Labor's Sex Discrimination Amendment repealed the federal definitions of "man" and "woman" and added gender identity as a protected attribute. Julia Gillard has defended it as the product of "a different time", and has for years declined to answer what a woman is, calling it a gotcha question. Protesters have followed her across Britain with a banner branding her the "destroyer of women's rights".

Last month Labor and the Greens voted down attempts by One Nation and the Coalition to restore the biological definition of sex to that Act. Labor has voted to leave the Act as Gillard's amendment left it.

And now Georgia Tree is the candidate who won't answer a question

Labor holds Secret Harbour on 11.5%. When Premier Roger Cook and Deputy Premier Rita Saffioti came to the electorate to announce a $156 million Karnup train station, first promised in 2013, Labor's candidate wasn't permitted to answer a single question. Only $10 million of that money has actually been allocated, and works aren't due to start until 2028.

Tree doesn't live in the seat she wants to represent. The West Australian reported in July that her home is in Inglewood, more than 60 kilometres away, and that she had bought a $1.4 million house there. Her personal blog and her social media accounts are no longer online, and One News could find no archived copy of the blog. The podcast episode and the show's own promotion of it are still public.

Tree has not been asked publicly whether Labor ever acted on any of what she described in 2021.

Luke Herdegen is the candidate in Secret Harbour who does take the questions

One Nation's Luke Herdegen stood in the same spot at the Karnup announcement and answered everything put to him. He is 39, grew up in Newcastle, worked as an electrical trade assistant, a concreter, a traffic controller and a marketing consultant, and moved to the City of Rockingham in 2023, where he runs a chain of gyms including one serving Secret Harbour and lives in the district he's contesting.

He says he is running for a fair go, a stable society, and making sure hard work is rewarded while people who need a hand actually get one. He has spent the campaign door knocking, most recently through Port Kennedy with One Nation WA MP Phil Scott, and told One News that people were clapping him through the doors of local pubs and venues.

Labor won Secret Harbour in 2025 on 46.5% of the primary vote, so under half the people who turned out backed it. One Nation's Liam Hall banked 8.4% there with no campaign to speak of, and DemosAU had the party on 18% of the Western Australian state primary vote in its most recent state poll. The WA Liberals have already preferenced One Nation above Labor in the seat. Our full guide to the 16 candidates sets out how the preferences decide it.

Secret Harbour votes on Saturday 29 August, with 16 names on the ballot and Labor defending a margin of 11.5%.