Book 8 - Parliament of Victoria

CRIMES AMENDMENT (BULLYING) BILL 2011
1546 COUNCIL Tuesday, 31 May 2011
have to say many of them reflected the sorts of
behaviours that Brodie Panlock was subjected to in her
workplace.
In a motion we had a couple of weeks ago on JobWatch
Ms Pulford was talking about several workers she knew
who had been bullied — and in fact, I think, assaulted.
If you pour something on someone, set them on fire, hit
them or throw something at them, you have gone past
bullying; you are assaulting someone. That is a much
easier issue to deal with, because it is very clear in the
Crimes Act 1958 that you cannot assault people. It is
also pretty clear what assault is. It is a little bit harder
with bullying. That is why during that campaign we
were trying to raise this issue. Bullying was something
that it had been said to us was occurring in the
workplace.
I found the helpline very distressing over the first two
weeks. The campaign in fact went on for about six
weeks, but it was very intense in the first two weeks as
people called this helpline as a result of hearing about
the campaign in the media or receiving one of our
leaflets, which had the helpline number on it. That was
in 2000, as I have mentioned. We are now in 2011, and
this is still a very big workplace issue, which I would
suggest has not been addressed anywhere near enough.
Only just this year Trends in Bullying in the Victorian
Public Sector — People Matter Survey — 2004–2010
was released. That was a survey, as the title suggests,
taken between the years 2004 and 2010. The report on
the survey, released by the State Services Authority, is
unsurprisingly a very large document. In a section of
the executive summary entitled ‘Trends in bullying
since 2004’ the report says:
There has been very little change between 2004 and 2010.
Around one in five People Matter respondents report having
experienced bullying and one in three, witnessing bullying in
their workplaces. This is despite the survey sample changing
each year in composition of organisations and respondents,
changes to the question wording … and the inclusion of the
current definition of bullying …
Members may recall me saying earlier that in the 2000
ACTU survey in answer to the question of who does
the bullying most people said the person who did the
bullying was a manager, a supervisor or an employer
and that only around 30 per cent said it was a coworker.
In the ‘People matter’ survey, which covered the period
2004 to 2010, in answer to the question about who
people were bullied, by around 32 per cent — the range
was 31, 33 and 32 — said it was a fellow worker and
only 7 per cent said it was a group of workers. The type
of terrible campaign that Brodie Panlock was subjected
to therefore where a group of people gang up on one
person, tends to occur less often, although it can of
course be the most serious type in terms of the effect on
the person. It can tend to happen not so often but be
very serious in its ramifications.
In the ‘People matter’ survey the figures on the
question ‘Who were you bullied by?’ were that 22 per
cent reported having been bullied by the immediate
manager and 21 per cent by the senior manager. If you
add those two together, you get 43 per cent, so you are
coming up to half of the survey respondents. This
followed the very large ACTU survey results and the
even larger ‘Stress at work’ survey results in showing
that managers, supervisors and employers are the
biggest perpetrators of bullying in the workplace.
I raise this issue because it makes this matter difficult to
deal with. Under the occupational health and safety
legislation the employer has a duty of care to provide a
safe workplace. The implication is that it is the
employer’s duty — and it certainly was the employer’s
duty in the Brodie Panlock case — to put a stop to the
bullying. This is especially so if the employer knows
what is going on — and the evidence presented to the
coroner in the Brodie Panlock case was that the
employer did know but did nothing to prevent it. It is a
bit more difficult, however, when the employer is the
perpetrator; in that case they must provide a safe
workplace by stopping doing what they are doing. That
is one of the cultural issues we have to deal with in
terms of bullying in workplaces. We need to have a
much higher recognition on the part of employers about
what is appropriate behaviour on their part and what is
not.
Mr Pakula mentioned the support of the ACTU and the
Victorian Employers Chamber of Commerce and
Industry (VECCI) for this bill and its proposed changes
to the Crimes Act 1958. It is true the ACTU supports
the bill, but ACTU president Ged Kearney also
emphasised that while the ACTU supported the new
laws it strongly believed employers must continue to be
held responsible for the provision of a safe and
harassment-free environment for all their workers. On
12 April VECCI issued a statement saying that the state
Parliament’s antibullying legislation should be used to
create a federal model to ensure national consistency. It
also wanted more details about the laws.
In the first few years after the 2000 ACTU campaign,
the ACTU was pressuring the National Occupational
Health and Safety Commission to implement a national
code of practice and national standards on what
bullying in the workplace is and what is required of
employers and employees. The state trades and labour
councils were also pressuring their various occupational