Page 5864 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 7 December 2011
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will bear the scars of those experiences for a very long time; they may never recover. Only last week we saw claims of bullying at the Cotter Dam site, which the minister responsible, wearing a number of hats, showed that he knew nothing about today.
There are even new branches developing in relation to workplace bullying. It is not only wielded by people holding power of rank. Subordinates, in what might be described as reverse bullying, have used bullying tactics up the line to their superiors. Ms Bresnan sees these issues as so important that she introduced a bill on this today. Ms Bresnan’s action begs the question as to why she did not propose this motion rather than Mr Rattenbury and why, on the same day that she has introduced this bill, we are having another motion from Mr Rattenbury. Perhaps the Greens are still doing their research.
It is clear that the government has a responsibility to combat bullying and assault in the workplace. Indeed, the government should be the leader in reducing the incidence of assaults and bullying in the workplace of its employees. Sadly, there is some doubt about the government’s record and behaviour in this regard. The data outlined in Mr Rattenbury’s motion underscores this concern. At paragraph (1)(c) of the motion, it concludes that there is a disproportionate incidence of assault and bullying throughout the ACT public service compared to territory-wide offences against the person. That conclusion is perhaps a somewhat simplistic form of statistical analysis; nonetheless, it is important and worrying and should be looked at more carefully.
The ACT public service should be a leader, not a follower, in reducing and ultimately eliminating workplace assault and bullying. Mr Rattenbury’s motion, even as amended by the Chief Minister, is a simple one. It seeks to get some data that can be analysed in a more scientific way than Mr Rattenbury has been able to do so far.
We would like to see the comparative figures between the public service and the private sector over the past three years, as well as what the government has learned incrementally over the years. Then we would like to see what the government has done with the data it has obtained over the past few years. Finally, we would like to see how the government works with the ACT public service as well as the private sector to promote assault-free and bullying-free workplaces. This will show the community just how proactive the government has been in addressing the issue of workplace assaults and bullying. Importantly, it will show the community whether the government is a leader or a passive bystander when it comes to assault and bullying incidents in the ACT public service.
I thank Mr Rattenbury for bringing this motion forward today and I thank the Chief Minister for her contribution to the debate.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Minister for Health and Minister for Territory and Municipal Services) (5.27): It is nice to have a motion in this place that all three parties can agree to, and I now move:
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