Australian Senator David Van faces sexual misconduct claims

Senator David Van has been removed from Australia's main opposition party after sexual misconduct allegations.

Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe accused Mr Van of harassment and sexual assault during an exchange in parliament on Wednesday.

Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton then removed Mr Van from the parliamentary group on Thursday, after saying "further allegations" had emerged.

Mr Van calls Ms Thorpe's accusations "unfounded and completely untrue".

Later on Thursday, former Liberal Senator Amanda Stoker accused Mr Van of inappropriately touching her when they were colleagues three years ago.

"He did so by squeezing my bottom twice. By its nature and by its repetition, it was not accidental. That action was not appropriate," Ms Stoker said in a statement.

She added that when she confronted him the next day, he had apologised and said "he would never do it again".

In response, Mr Van said he has "no recollection" of the incident, and that "it is not something I would ever do".

He told news.com.au that he had a "very friendly" chat with Ms Stoker when she complained.

The Australian news website also reported he had told colleagues the room was crowded and he could have inadvertently touched Ms Stoker, however.

Mr Dutton's decision to remove Mr Van came prior to Ms Stoker revealing her allegations publicly.

"I advised Senator Van of my decision that he should no longer sit in the Liberal party room," the opposition leader told reporters in Canberra.

"I'm not making any judgment on the veracity of allegations or any individual's guilt or innocence."

The claims come amid a political firestorm concerning the handling of a separate case involving the alleged rape of a former parliamentary staffer, Brittany Higgins.

In an extraordinary exchange in parliament on Wednesday, Ms Thorpe interrupted a speech Mr Van was giving about the Higgins case to accuse the senator of misconduct.

"I just want to relay that I'm feeling really uncomfortable when a perpetrator is speaking about violence. This person harassed me, sexually assaulted me," Ms Thorpe said.

Mr Van immediately dismissed the allegations. "It is simply not true," he told the chamber.

Ms Thorpe later withdrew the claims in order to comply with parliamentary standing orders - which are a series of rules that govern conduct within the Senate - before announcing she would address the issue further.

On Thursday, Ms Thorpe said she would not name her perpetrator to comply with Senate rules, before then alleging she was "cornered in a stairwell" by a male colleague.

"As all women that have walked the corridors of this building know, it is not a safe place," she said.

Ms Thorpe also alleged she had "experienced sexual comments and was inappropriately propositioned by powerful men" when she first became a senator.

"Let me say this in the clearest possible terms, Senator Thorpe's allegations are concocted from beginning to end. Nothing she has alleged against me is truthful," Mr Van responded on the Senate floor.

Ms Higgins' allegation that she was raped in Parliament House in 2019 triggered a wave of wide-ranging allegations in Canberra in 2021.

It prompted a landmark report found that a third of employees in Australia's federal parliament had been sexually harassed.