The opportunity soon came for Elle to prove her journalistic skills when she found some horses being neglected on a nearby farm. After finding that the horses had been hidden away in a barn, and spending the night with the police and the RSPCA, Elle and Riley decided to write a newspaper article about the situation. But, as the article went to print, Elle learnt that the farmer, Gary Allen, had been suffering following the recent droughts and the death of his wife, and went to Brad with the suggestion that she write a series of articles on local people whose lives had been affected by the drought. However, after doing plenty of research and spending hours on her article, Elle was shocked when Brad rejected it, telling her that the news had now moved on, and he wasn't going to be part of her little quest to defy daddy by becoming a journalist. Determined to make a point, Elle then took her story to the rival West Waratah Star, who made no hesitations in printing it. Having realised that he'd met his match, Brad then offered Elle a cadetship alongside Riley, but she told him that she was no longer interested.

Elle was quickly convinced that she was just cutting off her nose to spite her face, so she accepted the cadetship, but, on her first day, she immediately made an enemy of Brad by using his parking space. When Brad turned up, ten minutes late, he demanded to know who had taken the space he'd spent ten years working towards - and told Elle that, having only been working there for quarter on an hour, she was already skating on very thin ice. Elle, however, was desperate to get her teeth into a big story and, despite Brad giving it to older reporter Ken Smith, Elle convinced Riley to join her in researching some illegal raves that had been taking place in the area. Before long, Elle and Riley were attending one of the raves at a warehouse, only for the building to collapse, leaving dozens, including Brad's teenage daughter Taylah, injured and three teenagers dead. At the hospital, Brad caught up with Riley and Elle - who was lucky to be alive after fracturing a rib and puncturing a lung - and warned them that if he couldn't trust them to follow his orders, he might as well no longer employ them. Though he hadn't come to a decision about whether or not to sack them, he warned 'Parker' and 'Robinson' that they were on their very final warning.

After a couple of weeks off, Elle returned to work, where she and Riley set about competing to keep their jobs. With Riley already working on a follow-up to the dance party disaster - something that she was desperately trying to avoid thinking about - Elle started work on an article about local student Rachel Kinski, who had been discovered having a relationship with her teacher, Angus Henderson. When Rachel's stepsister, Libby found out what was happening, she marched over to the Erinsborough News offices and asked Brad to drop the story, pointing out that it could also hurt Taylah, who was in a relationship with Rachel's brother Zeke. Brad refused, telling Elle to continue with the story and, after picking up on the tension between her and Riley, told her not to mix her work life with her love life, as it never ended well.

Meanwhile, at home, Brad was unaware that Taylah was harboring runaway Rachel in her bedroom. Rachel was attempting to escape her problems - and the feeling that she'd let down her stepparents Susan and Karl - but Taylah admitted that she'd do anything to have just one parent who cared that much about her, and went on to tell Rachel how her mum had walked out when she was eleven and, although she'd enjoyed staying with her dad at first, he'd soon become a workaholic again. But the news of Rachel's disappearance, combined with the recent death of Taylah's best friend Jessica Wallace in the warehouse collapse, had made Brad try to reform his ways and he went to Taylah's room and told her how much he cared about her - with an upset Rachel hiding in the wardrobe. Eventually, Taylah contacted Zeke and he came, with several of Rachel's friends, to the Jordan house where an argument broke out and Brad overheard, promptly phoning her parents to collect her.

With Elle struggling at work, suffering panic attacks due to memories of the roof collapse, Brad received a visit from her father, Paul. Having been unable to talk his daughter into quitting her job, Paul decided to force the issue, threatening Brad into sacking her, or he'd take legal action against the newspaper, for whom Elle was working when the accident happened. Brad gave in to the threat, but was unable to bring himself to sack her, instead telling her that he was making her take sick leave until she'd sorted herself out. A few weeks later, Elle spotted an opportunity to get back onto the newspaper when her dad's girlfriend, legal secretary Rebecca Napier came to her with a story. Legal firm Rebecchi Cammeniti had learnt that the council had removed 24-hour security from the warehouse to try and cut costs, and Councillor Steph Scully's vote had been the decider, though she'd been ill and given her proxy to Mayor Jackie Jones. Believing that the whole thing was being covered up by lawyer Toadie - Steph's ex - Rebecca leaked the story to Elle, only to later learn that Toadie had been delaying as he had got hold of some more documents from Steph, which showed that Jackie had known for several weeks that the warehouse was unsafe. Though Toadie and Rebecca tried to convince Brad not to publish, he refused, but a bigger story then came along when a panicked Jackie leaked some different documents to Brad, this time proving that Steph had known about the building problems but had still voted to remove security, with council secretary Lydia O'Brien backing up this version of events. With Steph having left town to get her head together, a story then appeared in the newspaper implying that she had done a runner, with Jackie only too happy to further fuel that rumour during a press conference.

Personal problems then returned to plague Brad when he learnt that Taylah and Zeke had been caught drinking and in a state of undress. Though the kids tried to be honest and explain that they'd decided to sleep together for the first time, Brad wasn't prepared to listen and dragged Taylah off home, later telling Karl that if he couldn't keep Zeke away, then he'd have to stop them himself. When Zeke paid Taylah an illicit visit and ended up falling asleep on the bed with her, it caused chaos, with Susan and Karl finding him missing and heading over to the Jordan house, where the parents walked in on them in each other's arms. As relations broke down, Brad announced that Taylah was in the process of applying for girls' boarding schools and she'd soon be far away from Zeke. Over the next couple of weeks, it looked like the young couple might have another chance, as Brad seemed to calm down, and Taylah, still wanting to get more serious with Zeke, went on the pill. Unfortunately, Brad found her prescription and it was the final straw, as he turned up at number 28, angrily took his daughter home and announced that she'd be starting at a boarding school in Sydney the following week.