Federal cabinet minister Kelly O’Dwyer has called on business leaders to provide waivers to enable witnesses to give evidence to a national sexual harassment inquiry without fearing legal repercussions.
The Morrison government’s Minister for Jobs, Industrial Relations and Women spoke out after the deadline for submissions to the inquiry had to be extended last month, because witnesses revealed they feared being punished if they breached non-disclosure clauses.
“I would encourage all businesses to provide information to the Sexual Discrimination Commissioner that can actually help us to better address this issue in the workplace,” Ms O’Dwyer told The Sunday Age and The Sun-Herald.
This meant giving current and former employees the ability to speak freely, she said.Advertisement
Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins has written to more than 120 chief executives asking them to commit to providing a limited waiver to allow witnesses to give evidence to the inquiry, which was established last year in the wake of the global #MeToo movement.
But only 18 of the leaders, all of whom are signed up to the Male Champions of Change program, have agreed to do so.
Ms Jenkins said there was frustration among victims at the way non-disclosure agreements, which are often a condition of settlement of legal claims, “can render workplace sexual harassment invisible and silence its victims”.
“They generally prohibit all parties to the agreement from talking about the claim to anyone,” she said.
The waivers, similar to those issued ahead of the Banking Royal Commission, will allow people who have signed NDAs to give evidence without fear of reprisal.
Ms O’Dwyer implored corporate leaders to take steps to ensure their employees were supported to speak freely, saying it was in their interests to do so.
The inquiry aimed to help businesses find practical solutions to address workplace sexual harassment, she said, with the first step being to gather data on its prevalence and economic impact.
Ms O’Dwyer said addressing the issue was one of her top priorities as Minister for Women, and that the inquiry would be a “world first” in its focus on the economics of the problem.
“A lot of the time, sexual harassment has been seen as a ‘be nice to women’ issue – and it’s also been, in some quarters, seen as women overreacting to certain behaviours,” Ms O’Dwyer said.
“We obviously don’t see it that way. I see that not only does it have a profound impact on the individual, who can lose their job or not be able to get a new one, but also the broader economic impact – because it takes businesses away from the job that they need to be doing.”
The inquiry would consider the impact of harassment on “staff turnover, morale, the whole lot”.
A number of businesses have declined to issue waivers, while most have simply not responded. Some have requested the right to screen all submissions before deciding whether to issue a waiver, an approach the inquiry has resisted as potentially compromising the confidence of witnesses.
Ms Jenkins said she was “hopeful” that more business leaders would agree to issue waivers in time for their employees to make submissions before the February 28 deadline.
“With the addition of the five organisations who came on board at the end of 2018, we now have an impressive group that together employs hundreds of thousands of workers,” she said.
“Thanks to them, current or past employees can now feel safe in coming forward to tell their story to the national inquiry. This is the input we need to find better ways to prevent, and respond to, workplace sexual harassment.”
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