Former One Nation Candidate and Ex-Esperance Councillor Gemma Johnston Pleads Not Guilty to Stalking Senior Shire Staff and 41 Alleged Breaches of Violence Restraining Orders
- Gemma Johnston, 56, who ran for One Nation in the federal seat of O’Connor, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of pursuing another to intimidate and 41 alleged breaches of violence restraining orders.
- Prosecutors allege the stalking involved two senior Shire of Esperance staff members, with most of the alleged offending said to have happened while she was an elected councillor.
- Court staff reprimanded her several times over mobile phone use before and during Tuesday’s hearing in Esperance.
- Her brief time in local government included three sanctions from the state’s conduct watchdog and a month-long suspension.
For the people who run a small coastal shire on Western Australia’s south coast, the workplace should be a place of routine: agendas, planning applications and ratepayer inquiries.
Instead, a courtroom in Esperance has heard allegations that two senior council employees were targeted by someone who once sat at the council table above them.
Gemma Marie Johnston, a former Shire of Esperance councillor and One Nation candidate, now faces a criminal trial. She denies every charge.
Ms Johnston, 56, appeared before Magistrate William Yoo in the Esperance Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday.
She pleaded not guilty to two charges of pursuing another to intimidate, the offence commonly known as stalking, and to 41 separate counts of breaching violence restraining orders.
The court was told the stalking allegations concerned two senior shire staff members over a period running from February 11, 2025 to May 11 this year.
A separate allegation covers a shorter window, from August 8 to August 26 this year.
The 41 alleged restraining order breaches are said to have occurred between May 2025 and May this year. Throughout that time, Ms Johnston was a serving councillor.
The hearing was not uneventful.
Court staff reprimanded her several times for using her mobile phone in the courtroom, both before and during her appearance, and reminded her of court etiquette.
Her lawyer, Nick Terry, asked for a copy of his client’s phone records, which police had downloaded as part of their investigation. The prosecution said the volume of data was extensive and would likely take several weeks to provide.
Magistrate Yoo ordered the material to be handed over by December 18. Ms Johnston is due back in court on January 12 for a trial listing hearing.
The charges are the latest chapter in a turbulent political career that began when Ms Johnston was elected to the Shire of Esperance in October 2023.
Her profile grew quickly beyond local politics.
At the 2025 federal election she stood for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in O’Connor, a huge regional seat that takes in the Goldfields and the south coast.
She campaigned alongside Senator Hanson in Kalgoorlie-Boulder and won about 11 per cent of the primary vote. Liberal incumbent Rick Wilson held the seat with roughly 34 per cent.
Inside the council chamber, things were much rockier.
The Local Government Standards Panel found that Ms Johnston breached its code of conduct three times during her term. In one case, she engaged an external planning consultant to rebut information the shire had included in a council agenda.
The panel ordered her to complete seven hours of training for elected members.
She did not complete it. In August 2025, the State Administrative Tribunal of Western Australia suspended her from council for a month.
She was also caught up in one of Esperance’s most heated local fights: the proposed South Coast Marine Park. In April 2024, about 300 protesters gathered outside the shire’s administration building to confront then-fisheries minister Don Punch.
Ms Johnston was accused of using “inside knowledge” as an elected member to organise the flash mob. She was later cleared of that allegation.
However, the panel did order her to publicly apologise to fellow councillor Wes Graham over disparaging social media comments she made at the time.
In May this year, she was ordered to make a second public apology, this time for what the panel called improper conduct.
It found she had involved herself in an administrative task without authorisation and spoken to a shire contractor in a disparaging way about a council staff member.
She resigned from council in August.
Analysis: What This Means for Australia
Whatever the outcome of the criminal case, it raises an uncomfortable question for every council in the country: how well are local government employees protected when the alleged threat comes from inside the chamber?
Council staff occupy an unusual position. Elected members set policy and scrutinise administrators, but they are not meant to direct or harass them.
When that line blurs, the people at risk are often senior officers in small regional towns, where everyone knows everyone and there is nowhere to hide.
A violence restraining order is one of the strongest civil protections available in Western Australia.
The allegation that dozens of breaches occurred while the accused held public office will put the existing safeguards under scrutiny, including conduct panels, training orders and suspension powers.
The wider debate about workplace safety in the public sector has largely focused on frontline workers abused by members of the public. This case shows that pressure on council employees can also come from within the organisation.
For regional communities, the stakes are practical. Small shires already struggle to recruit and keep experienced planners, engineers and executives.
Prolonged conflict, legal costs and reputational damage make those jobs harder to fill and leave ratepayers with fewer services.
The case also lands at a time of growing concern about stalking and intimidation laws and whether restraining orders are enforced strongly enough across the country.
Local government observers say the conduct system in Western Australia was built for disputes over manners and process, not alleged criminal behaviour. Sanctions such as apologies and training are designed to correct conduct, they note, and are not intended to stop determined or repeated behaviour.
Workplace safety specialists warn that council employees often feel unable to speak up against elected members, who are in effect their bosses’ bosses. Many incidents, they believe, never reach a regulator, let alone a court.
Governance experts also say the case highlights the need for faster information-sharing between conduct panels, councils and police when allegations escalate. They argue that a regulator seeing a pattern of complaints should have clearer pathways to act.
Legal observers stress the most important point of all: Ms Johnston has pleaded not guilty to every charge, and the allegations have not been tested at trial.
She is entitled to the presumption of innocence.
That testing begins in earnest in the new year. Phone records are due by December 18, and Ms Johnston returns to court on January 12, when a trial date is expected to be set.
Until then, a small coastal town will wait for the outcome of a case that has already exposed deep divisions in its local politics.