Page 932 - Week 03 - Thursday, 21 March 2019
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mythical at worst. In contrast to the claims of zero tolerance another ACT employee told the inquiry:
There is ZERO consequence for the bully … There is no such thing as mediation … But the biggest psychological insult is that they are invalidated.
Zero consequences for the bullying and a pathway that results only in a psychological insult and invalidation of the victim: the minister needs to dwell on that and think about it. There are zero consequences for the bullying and the so-called respectful pathways only result in insult and victim invalidation.
The Reid report talks a lot about HR services in ACT Health, about backlogs, inconsistent advice, lack of trust and nepotism in recruitment. Indeed, recommendation 15 of the report states:
The recruitment processes in the ACT Public Health System should follow principles outlined in the Enterprise Agreements, Public Sector Management Act 1994 and relevant standards and procedures.
The mere fact that an inquiry like this had to make a recommendation to follow the law is an indictment of this minister. This is in stark contrast to the answer the minister gave to a question on notice in this place in November 2018 about the recruitment that was subject to public interest disclosure. The answer was:
The selection process and appointment of the Director of Medical Imaging was completed in accordance with the provisions of the Public Sector Management Act 1994 and the Public Sector Management Standards 2016.
I think Mr Reid might have disagreed. Perhaps the Minister for Health and Wellbeing also missed some of the results of the week-long survey the review team undertook. The team received nearly 2,000 responses—a whopping 20 per cent of all staff employed in the ACT health system. Mr Reid and his reviewers expressed to me astonishment that they would get such a high hit rate on a review, and it is testament to the reviewers and it is testament to the respectful way that at last people in ACT Health were being treated.
Just over half of those respondents either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement, “I have confidence in the ways my organisation resolves grievances.” Fifty-three per cent said they witnessed misconduct or wrongdoing at work in the past 12 months and 61 per cent said they had reported it. But these ministers say they never hear anything about that. They set themselves up not to be briefed so they could be the ministers for plausible deniability.
More than one-third of respondents said that they had been subjected to bullying at work in the past 12 months and 55 per cent of the most serious bullying was from a senior manager or an immediate manager or supervisor. The bullying methods employed were most alarming. In one of the answers nearly 60 per cent of respondents said that the bully had given them unjustified criticism or complaints three or more times.
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