Review into the treatment of women at the Australian Defence Force ...

Chapter 9: Accommodation and Supervision – Recommendations 19-21Audit findingsRecommendation 19 sought an examination of the ‘residential accommodation, including bathrooms,to identify the existence and level of risk to cadets arising from mixed gender living arrangements’. Whatwas provided by the AFP was a broad crime risk assessment of the entire ADFA grounds, namely theexternal environment. The assessment completed is not without merit, but it does not address the intentof Recommendation 19.The CPTED provides for a broad community and crime assessment, rather than the more localisedOHS/WHS assessment of the residential accommodation the Review envisaged and the particularrisks of a mixed gender environment for a cohort of this age. The report contains some interestingobservations about aspects of community at ADFA (e.g. noting that people who feel connected to andresponsible for an area or place will be effective guardians of it), but contained only one brief mentionof ‘shared amenities’ and did not provide any further examination of risks or recommendations in thisarea. The focus of the assessment is on external threats, not threats from within. The report does notacknowledge possible gender differences in experiences of living inside the accommodation blocks(i.e. the lines).The items listed in the pro-forma suggest that this exercise would be a better fit for a larger suburb orneighbourhood, rather than a study of a residential accommodation. Further, the AFP confirmed that theCPTED is generally applied to ‘business areas where we look at crime activities that occur and how wecan eradicate those’ rather than something like the ADFA accommodation. 9The Audit found little awareness among staff and undergraduates of the fact that the AFP hadconducted a situational assessment of ADFA, and there was some degree of hostility when OH&S/WH&S was mentioned. One staff member felt that staff were ‘so busy complying with all the ludicrousgovernance and OH&S crap’ that important tasks became secondary. 10 An undergraduate noted that:OH&S wise, our Divisions are fairly regularly inspected by the staff so if you don’t have it up tothe standard expected, you get into trouble for that – especially cleanliness and hygiene. 11The opinion of many undergraduates is that the living accommodation is generally a safe place, butothers expressed concern when specific incidents or personal experiences were discussed. Forexample, one undergraduate told the Audit that they feel a need to ‘escape’ from their living spaceswhenever possible, as they do not feel comfortable there. 12 Another told the Audit that ‘if I had lived inthe Div or in that section [where a particular incident had occurred] I would have been a bit more jumpyafter that [incident],’ 13 while others mentioned the ongoing existence of practices like ‘dully hunting’as an issue for young female undergraduates. 14 In addition, the 2012 Unacceptable Behaviour Surveyconfirmed that more undergraduates experienced unacceptable behaviour in the residential domain thananywhere else, and this included half of all women, and one-in-five men. 15 These responses indicate thatthere is still the need to conduct the sort of safety assessment envisaged by the Review.82