Page 2601 - Week 08 - Thursday, 14 August 2014
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To which the government has only said:
Noted.
This is what you say when you do not have an answer and you do not intend to do anything. The response is:
ACT Emergency Services takes bullying and harassment seriously and manages issues in line with the ACT Public Service Respect, Equity and Diversity Framework and the Public Sector Management Act.
In addition, in the 2014-15 Budget the Government announced the development of a ‘Women in Emergency Services Strategy’ and reallocated $0.160 million for this initiative.
I think if you want women in Emergency Services, the best way to do it is provide an environment for them to prosper and thrive and to be allowed to do their job, as well as allowing the male officers in the service to do their job. It is interesting that these inquiries and these recommendations stem from an incident where a firefighter placed a camera in the female toilet. I asked several questions of the commissioner who just waffled on. I will give Mr Corbell his due. In the end he said, “What happened was this.” I think we all knew what had happened but it was interesting to get the government to fess up to it. But I give Mr Corbell his due.
I did not follow it through and I regret perhaps not following it through further, but it had taken so much effort to get the admission that it had happened. What members might not know is that the firefighter who was responsible was eventually suspended, almost a year after the event, and then left ACT Fire & Rescue. But he received a payout as part of a confidential agreement with the government for his departure from Fire & Rescue.
You put a recording device in a colleague’s cubicle in the bathroom at your fire station, you get caught, initially you get a slap on the wrist, there is a fuller inquiry which reveals your part, you leave the service and on the way out you get a payment for it. That is not going to engender in women in the ACT the desire to become part of Fire & Rescue. If that is how that works then that is appalling and there is no justice in this. Women in the service currently must be scratching their heads, and women thinking of joining would be going, “How does that work?” I would be interested in a response from anyone on the other side as to whether or not they think that is just.
The female firefighter, I understand, is still there. She had to go on a different shift to avoid the complications of these things. I understand that she went to the police but withdrew her complaint, and you can understand why. It just gets too hard. It is not worth the effort when the system does not back you up and the individual that did the act gets a payment for it.
I think you can spend your $160,000 to develop a women in emergency services strategy but I would simply give you one piece of advice: do not pay those that commit the insult, the injury or the action to leave the service. If that is your way of dealing with this then you have no idea about staff management. I think it is just appalling.
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