The former president of the Country Liberal party in the Northern Territory has quit, adding further claims of sexism and poor management within party ranks.
Sue Fraser-Adams is the latest high-ranking female CLP member to leave, just days after Robyn Lambley resigned, citing a “boys’ club” in the party. Lambley was sacked from the frontbench for her part in an attempted leadership spill.
Fraser-Adams, who resigned with her husband John, said the CLP was “disengaging from Territorians”, the ABC reported on Monday.
She also took aim at chief minister Adam Giles, whose “very masculine” style of leadership would make many women feel “uneasy”, the report said.
“There are a lot of men who have difficulty dealing with strong, assertive women, and I think it’s a real shame that they don’t feel comfortable in that environment,” she said.
“I think we’ve lost a great deal of talent, enthusiasm and brains out of the organisation.”
The former deputy chief minister Lambley announced her resignation from the CLP in a speech to parliament last week in which she accused Giles of driving her out.
She said Giles would be judged by history as “the worst ever” chief minister and said a few unnamed colleagues had made her life “hell”.
She warned women contemplating entering politics in the CLP to “think carefully about your ability to endure what I can only describe as abuse”.
“There can be no doubt Adam Giles has driven me out of the party,” she said. “This is the chief minister whose modus operandi is to eliminate, execute, annihilate, assassinate and who, of course, has no use for the truth.”
The CLP has also lost the support of the former opposition leader Jodeen Carney, the mayor of Katherine, Fay Miller, and Indigenous MPs Allison Anderson and Larissa Lee, who resigned last year.
Both Carney and Miller pointed to a lack of integrity in the government, while Anderson and Lee accused their former colleagues of racism.
Speaker Kezia Purick has not left the party but has threatened resignation over development proposals on the fringes of Darwin.
After the news broke, Fraser-Adams posted on social media: “Now to begin the work of building a political party that listens to Territorians.”
Following her resignation, Lambley said she did not believe anyone would follow in her footsteps because they would not want to be the ones who brought down the government, which now has a majority of just one seat in the single-house parliament.
The chief minister’s office has been contacted for comment.
