Page 2602 - Week 08 - Thursday, 14 August 2014
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An article in the Canberra Times by Christopher Knaus has referred to this. It would appear nobody is happy with this practice except the individual who has got the money. Even the ACT branch secretary of the United Firefighters Union has condemned the incident, labelling it appalling and labelling the delayed action disgraceful. We always talk about justice delayed being justice denied. It has certainly been denied here. In the article the UFU secretary said:
“It is also disgraceful that workers affected by this were not protected, that due process was not observed, and that it took over a year of bungling for the bureaucracy to resolve this shabby episode,” …
“It’s time they had a real dialogue with us—
the union—
to fix these process problems, so that history doesn’t repeat itself.”
The incident, and one other, helped mark a major … review, which has now been completed.
That is all well and good. The article mentions:
ACT Fire and Rescue stations have also gone through a “respect, equity and diversity” program.
I assume that is the officers at the stations. But again, it is not going to change if that is the way that this government deals with bullying. Then it says, “We will note this and we will just have a program.” Then recommendation 110 says:
The Committee recommends that the relevant Minister detail to the Assembly the manner in which the Justice and Community Safety Directorate managed allegations of bullying, sexism and misogyny in the ACT Emergency Services Agency.
The response is:
Not agreed.
“We are not going to tell you what we did. We are not going to tell you what went wrong. We are not going to tell you how we fixed it. What are we going to do? We are just going to refer you to the things that were in place when this happened.” Yet the response, as I said, is:
Not agreed.
The JACS Directorate including the 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.
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