Page 1725 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 1 May 2012
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obligations under the Public Sector Management Act 1994 and the Work Health Safety Act 2011.
The journey embarked upon by CIT is not one limited to the remedial action required to acquit the WorkSafe improvement notice or my direction. The journey is the longer and broader one of comprehensive systemic, structural, cultural and attitudinal change. On this difficult journey, the CIT needs the encouragement and support of all of us, both in this Assembly and in the community at large, to meet and best the challenges it faces and will face. In succeeding, as it surely must and will, it will earn our confidence both as an exemplary employer and as an honoured educator.
MR DOSZPOT (Brindabella), by leave: I welcome the statement from the Minister for Education and Training and the tabling of the response to WorkSafe ACT’s report on bullying and harassment at the CIT. I welcome the statement because it demonstrates the value of persistence on behalf of several former CIT staff who have, frankly, been to hell and back in trying to have their complaints heard and responded to over a period of over two years. It is the persistence also of the ACT Liberal opposition. We have raised these issues over the past two years. They are the same issues that were raised with our colleagues the Greens. The same people who came to see us went to see them. They were the same people who sought the government’s assistance from the previous minister and recently from this minister. We raised questions in estimates; we raised questions in the Assembly. On each occasion we were told that the issues were not a matter for the minister and that if staff had a reason to complain there were “processes available”. They are the same processes you now admit were broken.
I quote the former minister for education in last September’s Hansard:
… there are processes available to staff members of the Canberra Institute of Technology who may feel aggrieved by a variety of particular issues.
If ever there was a statement that summed up the arrogance of the former minister, that must be it. He said:
… there are processes available to staff members of the Canberra Institute of Technology who may feel aggrieved by a variety of particular issues.
Those “particular issues” indeed led to aggrieved feelings—in fact, far worse than mere hurt or upset. The treatment of several staff led them to experience serious depression, serious illness and an overwhelming sense of abandonment by their employer and abandonment by a system and a vocation to which they had dedicated their lives.
Careers have been destroyed, individuals have suffered serious health issues and some are still suffering as a result of the treatment they have been subjected to over the years. As if their issues and the hurt were not sufficient enough, Minister Barr applied plenty of salt to these open wounds. The former minister repeatedly and wilfully duckshoved the issue. His replies to correspondence were at best bland and at worst glib. By no measure were they informative or offer any compassion whatever. These
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