One in three Australian parliament staff sexually harassed: report

OMG. Every adult male and female, on the planet has done one or more of these things to someone or other during their lifetime.

I have never grabbed a women, lifted her up and kissed her unless I was already in a serious relationship with her, and even then not in a working environment. The other things mentioned are only done behind closed doors with someone who knows and trusts you, not some staffer in your workplace you otherwise do not know intimately. Everything described is very much sexual assault and a felony in my country. Justifiably so too.

Sad. Women should feel safe from harassment in the workplace.

It may be a place of employment, but we are humans not robots. Trying to make us sterile robots helps nobody. You need to be able to enjoy your job and that means everyone.

Relationships develop everywhere and anywhere. If uncomfortable then by all means report it and ensure it is taken care of.

As a male I was "pursued" by an eager older lady and when I reported it to my male boss he laughed. I said to him, if I was a woman reporting this would you laugh at her too? That was enough and the issue was sorted and the woman stopped her amorous advances.

We still had normal workplace contact and although she was a little embarrassed initially it did not stop either of us from doing our jobs.

Women and men need to be taken seriously when made uncomfortable. It is harder if it happens to be coming from your boss. But good outcomes are possible if you dont just ignore it.

Aussie blokes should put their misdirected pent up sexual energy into fighting the tyranny that has taken over their country.

Democratically elected government enacting the will of the overwhelming majority of the people who democratically elected them is tyranny?

You people are just taking the p@!# now.

Women should feel safe from harassment in the workplace.

Yes, and so should men who according to the report are being sexually harassed and bullied in big numbers.

Many couples first met one another in the workplace- it’s unavoidable when males and females are put together some percentage will become attracted to one another. The rules are that you must pretend that you are a strictly professional person that is not at all interested in others romantically. There are some clear cut and egregious cases of abuse. Most situations are likely mixed signals and a natural Darwinian pass becoming misconstrued for something inappropriate. As long as men and women work together the laws of nature say the problem will never go away.

"Good morning, how are you today?"

"I fell threatened! I want to talk to HR!"

Peter Neil wrote:

"Good morning, how are you today?"

"I fell threatened! I want to talk to HR!"

Thank you for succinctly demonstrating the problem. Your callousness is beyond disappointing.

"Good morning, how are you today?"

"I fell threatened! I want to talk to HR!"

thingsthatneverhappened.txt

Aussie blokes should put their misdirected pent up sexual energy into fighting the tyranny that has taken over their country.

You really need to chill a bit. Don’t believe they hype and certainly don’t add to it.!

Aspiring male politicians who thought nothing of, in one case, picking you up, kissing you on the lips, lifting you up, touching you, pats on the bottom, comments about appearance, you know, the usual...

OMG. Every adult male and female, on the planet has done one or more of these things to someone or other during their lifetime.

This makes a mockery of women who are seriously aggressed, say by groping above or below. The JT has plenty enough of these cases to report on, sadly enough.

Whenever and wherever women and men work together, there will always be a certain level of sexual tension, and of flirtatious behavior. Deciding when this behavior rises to the level of being unacceptable is a minefield. How to deal with it without reducing workplaces to sterile and boring production centres is another.

I am not sure why some of the commenters immediately started to blame men, but the article gives zero information about the distribution of gender of harassers and especially their quantity. Currently, Australian parliament has about 38% of women. If we roughly assume that harassment event usually includes participants from the opposite genders, then each man harassed on average about 0.39 women and each woman harassed approximately 0.24 men. However, realistically, it can be just one or two men and women who are doing all the harassment for the entire parliament.

I'm so glad I'm already married and out of the dating scene, these days you can't compliment anyone in anyway without it being considered sexual harrasment, because of this I'm always overly cautious when hiring western women at my company, one misunderstanding or blatant defamation and you're life's over.

I'm so glad I'm already married and out of the dating scene, these days you can't compliment anyone in anyway without it being considered sexual harrasmen

Sure you can. If you're not a creeper.

Interesting that "Japan Today" and the news mentioned Brittany Higgins name and posted her picture for the world to see. In japan they would never DO THIS!! I 

If you haven't already notices JT doesn't produce anything. They take articles from other on-line sources. In this instance the exact same article with the same photo is in Yahoo! News

https://news.yahoo.com/one-three-australian-parliament-staff-051542311.html

And International Business Times

https://www.ibtimes.com/one-three-australian-parliament-staff-sexually-harassed-3347927

Interesting that "Japan Today" and the news mentioned Brittany Higgins name and posted her picture for the world to see. In japan they would never DO THIS!! I guess when its one of their own they protect when its a foreigner its easy to say LOOK here's the person. Why not protect her by not showing her face or printing her name? It was launched amid widespread outrage at the alleged rape of parliamentary staffer Brittany Higgins inside a minister's office, after a night out with conservative Liberal Party colleagues.

PETER SCULLY's home country

Sexual harassment and bullying are widespread in Australia's parliament, affecting both lawmakers and staff, a high-profile inquiry into the institution's "sexist culture" has found.

Wasn't that country locked down for almost two years?

I've never known a workplace that isn't "sterile and boring". That's why it's called work. If some fella thinks he can make it fun by being the office slime it's not really a "minefield".

Aussie blokes should put their misdirected pent up sexual energy into fighting the tyranny that has taken over their country.