Page 5866 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 7 December 2011
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Mr Hanson: Don’t you, Katy?
MS GALLAGHER: Thank you very much, Mr Hanson, as usual, for that very helpful interjection. It is pleasing to see that we have a motion here that all parties can agree to. We are happy to provide the information that the Assembly calls for with some minor adjustments to some terminology that exists.
The ACT government takes its legal and moral obligations towards the men and women of the ACT public service very seriously. We value the work they do and we recognise that in some instances it is difficult and dangerous work. We also take strenuous efforts to minimise those difficulties and dangers.
When it comes to inappropriate behaviours, threats, bullying, intimidation, and verbal and physical abuse, we need to come at the problem from two directions: firstly, to address the behaviours within the workplace itself so that all workers treat each other with respect, and I will speak more about what the government has been doing in that regard in a moment. Secondly, we also need to protect our public servants from inappropriate behaviour from outside—verbal abuse from members of the public, bullying and threats from the clients they are trying to serve and even physical attack.
That challenge is of quite a different order. The government cannot insist that a member of the public behave respectfully towards its officials. As the Minister for Health, I do not have the power to stop members of the public swearing or shouting or acting in a threatening way to nurses, but I can ensure that nurses understand that they are not expected to tolerate this behaviour and that they are entitled to remove themselves from harm or potential harm. The government needs to ensure that our public sector workplaces have in place the formal strategies and procedures to allow this to happen.
No member of the ACT public service is expected to accept verbal or physical abuse as part and parcel of their daily work. It is, of course, a reality that front-line staff in many of our agencies by the very nature of their jobs deal with some of the most stressed and vulnerable members of our community—individuals who are at breaking point, individuals who are angry, scared, sick or emotionally fragile. That does not excuse poor behaviour, but it does mean that we should not assume that the statistics at the heart of today’s motion indicate some general breakdown in civility or a rise in the incidence of abuse.
The vast majority of the millions of interactions between Canberrans and members of the ACT public service are cordial, professional and calm. Since January 2010 there have been approximately 1,600 reported incidences of harassments, threats, verbal abuse, physical violence, bullying and assault on ACT government workers. These incidents are reported through the whole-of-government accident and incident reporting system. They are risk rated, reviewed and acted upon.
Most of the reported incidences relate to violence or harassment by members of the public and, of course, some agencies are particularly vulnerable. Unsurprisingly, most of the reported incidents involve front-line staff from the health, education and
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video