Page 4280 - Week 13 - Thursday, 19 November 2015
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contacts regarding bullying or harassment that were received directly by the HR departments in the directorates went up by 84 per cent from 2013-14 to 2014-15: not a particularly good record. Yet the number of misconduct investigations involving bullying and harassment decreased by some 73 per cent. The government brags about the fact that 100 per cent of all agencies now have a formal reporting system in place; yet what is the point of having this when allegations are up but investigations are down?
Let us face it; the problem is that the senior executives entrusted to manage staffing issues also have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Hence we need an independent public service commissioner—someone that members of the ACT public service can go to because of their independence, not somebody who is also an assistant director-general in the Chief Minister’s department. No matter how good a person is in that role, they will always have the conflict of interest of being in the Chief Minister’s department and trying to be an independent commissioner.
If we look at the history of the public service commissioner in the ACT, I have not asked recently, but for years I asked how many independent investigations the commissioner had undertaken, and the answer was always “nil”. Yet when I wrote one year to ask whether there had been an investigation into some allegations that had been made to me, I was told that I had to go to the Chief Minister to ask the commissioner to make that investigation. Like that was going to happen!
We have a problem, and what we do not seem to have is a solution. I will read from the Canberra Times article from 17 November. And well done to Mr Coe, who brought this out in the hearings. It states:
Liberal deputy leader Alistair Coe questioned Ms Ekelund about the survey in parliamentary hearings on Friday, revealing that bullying has been an issue for at least two years in the directorate.
In a 2014 survey, 27 per cent of staff said they had been subjected to bullying and harassment. In February this year, numbers had improved, but still 20 per cent of staff claimed bullying in the previous 12 months
Staff also complained that “political decisions” were affecting satisfaction and creating additional stress—but what they meant by this has not been detailed.
Ms Ekelund told Mr Coe there had been no formal or informal reports of bullying to senior staff or the human resources section in the 2014-15 financial year.
And therein lies the rub and the proof of what I have said. Twenty per cent of the staff feel harassed or bullied but nobody complains. And nobody complains because most people do not believe you get an answer—an adequate answer. Most of the staff do not believe that they will actually get justice. So they put up with it or they go. That is the problem when you do not have a good staff culture in the ACT public service.
There are assurances from the government and from senior bureaucrats that they are taking it seriously, but you have only to go through the litany of events. We had the
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