Three years after a landmark review of the workplace culture in Parliament House found that it was “revolting and humiliating”, a new report suggests that the building where our laws are made might still be an unsafe environment.
A new watchdog at Parliament House, has revealed more than 300 complaints - made over a nine month period - including sexual assault, stalking and intimidation.
Today, workplace relations and federal breaking news reporter Olivia Ireland, on this new report. And what Brittany Higgins, the former parliamentary staffer whose allegations of rape led to this report, has to say about it.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Salinger Morris. It's Wednesday, November 13th. Three years after a landmark review of the workplace culture in Parliament, House found that it was revolting and humiliating. A new report suggests that the building where our laws are made might still be an unsafe environment. A new watchdog at Parliament House has revealed more than 300 complaints made over a nine month period, and they include sexual assault, stalking and intimidation. Today, workplace relations and federal breaking news reporter Olivia Ireland on this new report and what Brittany Higgins, the former parliamentary staffer whose allegations of rape led to this report, has to say about it. So, Olivia, we have just seen the first findings from the Parliament's new support service, which was established to help fix the work culture in Parliament House. So can you tell us about the allegations of wrongdoing that it's received only nine months since it was established.
The first annual report was published by the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service, and that was created and established to sort of handle any HR complaints. It's reported that it handled 339 cases in the first nine months that it's been operational. So these cases can span from everything. They can be serious sexual crime allegations to bullying, mental health issues, people who are alleging that they've experienced some form of domestic violence. So it is a really sort of broad spectrum. 9% of those cases, or 30 were in the category that takes in rape, sexual assault, assault, sexual harassment, stalking or intimidation, while 10% were bullying claims. So pretty, pretty high numbers in their first annual report.
Okay. And we will get into further detail about those newly reported cases in a little bit. But first, I was hoping you could tell me what Brittany Higgins has said about this report, because obviously it was her allegations of rape in a ministerial office in Parliament House in 2019 that eventually led to a sort of domino effect, I guess that led to this report. So can you just briefly tell me about Brittany Higgins case and then what she actually told you about this report?
Yeah. So Brittany Higgins absolutely created the domino effect to where we are now. So in 2021, she publicly alleged that her colleague Bruce Lehrmann raped her in Parliament House in 2019. In April 2024, Federal Court Justice Michael Lee ruled on the balance of probabilities that Lehrmann had raped her. Lehrmann has always maintained his innocence and is now appealing against this judgment following the Higgins scandal, an independent review of workplace culture at Parliament House, called Set the Standard, was set up and it was led by former Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins, and she found that four out of five people working in Commonwealth parliamentary offices had experienced sexual harassment, and one of her key recommendations was to create two types of bodies. So one was the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service, and that's been established since October last year. And then the other one was the Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission, and that has just recently passed into law now. And that one will be eventually the sort of more serious body you go to for serious allegations and crimes.
And so tell me what Brittany Higgins actually has said in response to this report, because you were in contact with her.
Yeah. So I spoke to Brittany over text and she told me that, like, the figure was really confronting, but she was sadly not very surprised. And from people she's spoken to in Parliament, this is still an ongoing problem. She's very supportive of the fact that the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service and the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Standards have made developments, but she still really believes that work needs to be done. She also said that, you know, from these numbers that have been revealed in this report, really valid questions remain about whether perpetrators are being held to account and if the government employees are being appropriately supported, because the report also revealed that there aren't really many conclusions to these cases, like most of them are ongoing at the moment, and it's really unclear as to what these outcomes actually are. And the process is quite cagey about sharing too much information for obvious reasons, because of confidentiality.
But really, the fact that even more sexual assaults have been reported just nine months after the establishment of this new support service. Doesn't this raise something of an unsettling irony? I guess that perhaps the very men and women who are charged with, you know, legislating to make Australian workplaces safe are still themselves working in an unsafe environment.
Yeah. And so, like this is a real problem. And our newspaper put out their sort of opinion on this that we're learning of a steady stream of allegations of sexual harassment and bullying. And it's continuing in Parliament. And the inescapable conclusion is that men and women charged with legislating this are potentially perpetuating the problems in in Parliament with workplace culture. And so on Sunday, after our story was revealed, Health Minister Mark Butler, he conceded that Parliament House was still an unsafe place to work.
For a few hundred people. It's not a safe place to work. There is a long way to go culturally to make the Parliament a fully safe place.
And then on Monday, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said the problem really exists in all workplaces. But Parliament also still needed to do better.
Okay, Olivia, I'd like to turn to the details of this annual report from the Parliamentary Work Support Services, because the term sexual assault is used in the report to describe a number of different alleged behaviours that have been reported to the watchdog. Right.
When it comes to sort of the category of the rape, the report makes a really interesting note. It has like a footnote where it says people use the expression sexual assault to describe a wide range of conduct, from feeling uncomfortable about how a person is looked at all the way to the traditional use of the word rape, and then it goes on to even say it is likely that very few of those matters would actually be allegations of rape. It's a strange type of footnote to put in, because it's insinuating that if someone says they are raped, they may not mean it for what it actually is. And so I think that's very much kind of a sign that the process is quite cautious with how it reports very serious crimes and allegations. And as well, all of these matters can predate the current and previous terms of Parliament. So the numbers are really like it's unclear as to when these allegations occurred or who potentially made the allegation because like a friend or a colleague could also report something that they're worried about, for example. So it really does span across a broad range of unknowns at this stage.
We'll be right back.
And so while we don't have many details, I guess about the people who are reporting these complaints, some of the allegations of bullying and harassment have actually become quite public. So can you tell us about some of the more public allegations over recent months and years?
One of the most recent public allegations to be made was defence minister Richard Marles, chief of staff Joe Tarnowski. She alleged that she was ousted from her job after seeking help over alleged bullying. It's important to note that she's not alleging Marles bullied her. Joe Tarnowski's lawyer Michael Bradley from Marque Lawyers. He's claimed that when she sought counselling from PWCs, it sort of threatened to cut her off before it got to the ten sessions mark, which isn't right. And so then Tarnowski engaged lawyers for herself to kind of make sure that she would get these counselling sessions. And then after she did that, her team is alleging that P.w.s. Then got their lawyers involved, and they felt from that that the lawyers were really kind of working for her employer, Richard Marles, and weren't really working for her. So that's a very combative kind of experience to have, if it's what she's claiming. And, um, again, can create a problem for the U.S. if you have these allegations where this independent body is apparently not independent, which Bradley is alleging that it's toothless and that it's got really no power to sort of again, a risk of whether or not this is going to be a successful system in the future. Another big one is Victorian Senator Lidia Thorpe. In May 2023, she accused fellow senator David Vann of sexually assaulting her. She made this under parliamentary privilege in the Senate chamber And then the next day she withdrew that remark and then said that she understands people's versions of sexual assault can be different. So she, um, she issued a statement saying that she was cornered and was made uncomfortable. So she has also put in a claim with the U.S.. I kind of speak with Thorpe regularly about this, and it has been more than a year now since she has made this claim, and they still haven't really done anything as of yet when it comes to actually making a decision on her case. And so there's a lot of frustration there.
And so this new watchdog, though, it's only temporary. Right? I want you to walk me through that and whatever limitations it has, I guess as a result, in terms of what power it has or doesn't have to sort of, I guess, really investigate these claims and even hold people to account.
Yeah. So this is kind of a thing that I think confuses a lot of people because when the Jenkins review came out, it recommended the U.S., which is parliamentary workplace support service, and then it recommended the Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission, which is a separate body but kind of linked to the U.S.. So when the U.S. was created, its real job is basically to be kind of an advisory human resources body. So that's where you'd go if you needed sort of like you're having a dispute, but you don't want to make a complaint, like, what do I do? How do I resolve this? It also offers training to employers and employees on how to, you know, conduct themselves appropriately in the workplace. At the same time, because the U.S. was first created and they were still legislating the IPSC, the U.S. was given interim powers, which is why it's now being riddled with all of these high profile cases that have had no outcomes. And then you've got most of the cases of the 339 not having outcomes. There's an argument to say it's because it kind of wasn't really designed to do this. So when it comes to the IPSC, that's going to be a sort of watch this space.
So to wrap up, Olivia, I mean, this is a major test for labour, isn't it, to see if it can deliver on its promises to create a more respectful workplace culture in Parliament. And this, of course, only months before the next federal election. So I guess I've got two questions. When will the Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission properly be up and running, and what sort of feeling do you have from inside Parliament House, from staffers about whether they actually have hope and are feeling positive that this environment will become safer?
Yeah. So I think when it comes to, firstly, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission, it's a bit of a mystery with that. I mean, it passed into legislation in August, and then it technically sort of started October 1st, but there's been no announcement as far as I've seen. And the way I discovered that it kind of was operating was I googled it, and it has a website now where people can make complaints. So I'm not sure if staff have yet been told that they can go to it or if there's been any briefing. And so I think with that, like it's got a major test before it, because the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service, which has had this interim power over big allegations such as assaults and bullying, has really quite struggled with processing these claims, like most of the 339 cases, haven't been processed yet and haven't actually had an outcome. And then you've got the high profile cases where, you know, Tarnowski, Thorpe are all kind of making their own kinds of complaints about why the process hasn't been so helpful. So when it comes to the IPSC, I think you're going to watch this space and see if it's going to be a trustworthy body, because trust is really important for these types of organizations and for staff to actually feel like they can go to independent organizations that are able to listen to very serious allegations where it can change people's entire careers, it can ruin careers. And so it'll be really interesting to see, I think, whether or not it will be successful and whether or not staff actually will feel like they can use it. And again, like we'll wait and see for whether or not the statistics that it reveals in like a year's time, probably whether or not that's going to be a high number or whether or not they're going to have successful outcomes with cases.
Well, we're so lucky that you're reporting on this. So thank you so much, Olivia, for your time.
Thanks very much, Sam.
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Kai Wong. Our head of audio is Tom McKendrick. The Morning Edition is a production of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. If you enjoy the show and want more of our journalism, subscribe to our newspapers today. It's the best way to support what we do. Search The age or Smh.com.au forward slash. Subscribe and sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter to receive a comprehensive summary of the day's most important news, analysis and insights in your inbox every day. Links are in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Salinger Morris. This is the morning edition. Thanks for listening.