Staff and students at Australian universities allege that they are being bullied

This page contains cleaned historical text recovered from the former Bad Apple Bullies website. Character encoding, punctuation, headings, lists and obvious extraction errors may have been repaired for readability. The underlying claims and opinions remain those of the original author and have not been independently reverified. Listen uses on-device text-to-speech — no audio files are stored.

Staff and students at Australian universities allege that they are being bullied. - Bad Apple Bullies Historical link preserved from the original page.

Australian universities: bullying of staff and students. Historical link preserved from the original page.

There have been many complaints about workplace bullying of staff and students at certain Australian universities. Historical link preserved from the original page.

I have decided to include this page on the website because the information may be useful to student teachers.

The patterns of bullying in Australian universities seem to be very similar to the patterns experienced by Australian teachers - university staff and students follow the official policies, report corruption, and are bullied into ill health and out of work.

Bullied Australian Academics are not alone - Historical link preserved from the original page.

The wonderful Bullied Academics website supports bullied academics world-wide: http://bulliedacademics.blogspot.com/ Historical link preserved from the original page.

The University of Newcastle ( OZ ) blog can be found at: http://stop-b-uon.blogspot.com/2010/12/alternative-your-voice-survey-other.html Historical link preserved from the original page.

There is another University of Newcastle blog with many readers' comments at http://stop-b-uon.blogspot.com/2010/09/stop-bullying-at-uni-of-newcastle-oz.html Historical link preserved from the original page.

Canberra Institute of Technology: why wasn't the human resources department investigated?

Julie Knight, who taught at the Canberra Institute of Technology ( CIT ) 's centre of tourism and hotel management, says a WorkSafe ACT investigation of bullying and harassment at the CIT should have included the institute's human resources department and individual complaints by staff.

Mrs Knight first took stress leave due to bullying in 2009 and is now medically retired.

Mrs Knight said it was the CIT's human resources centre's management of her case that had caused her own situation to escalate.

''I believe that the centre that has the biggest case to answer was not one of the three that was investigated, '' she said. ''And I'm not sure why the commissioner didn't look at the individual bullying and harassment complaints. ''

In addition, Mrs Knight said there should be an external investigation of the CIT's management to try to bring about a ''change of culture from the top down''.

''I was happy in my job, '' she said.

''It was the workplace that caused me to leave. ''

Work Safety Commissioner Mark McCabe said because the complaints were made before January 2012 there was no avenue to prosecute them with the public service and so they were not included in the report.

Editor's Note: This seems a pretty amazing story.

Surely there would be some mechanism for investigating workplace bullying complaints made before January 2012?

Why was an investigation set up that could not investigate the workplace bullying complaints?

''So we chose to look at the system and make sure the systems were operating properly, '' he said.

Full CIT inquiry urged, Lisa Cox, Canberra Times, 14 April 2012: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/full-cit-inquiry-urged-20120413-1wzby.html Historical link preserved from the original page.

Canberra Institute of Technology: seven serious cases of harassment reported between 2008 and April 2012.

A scathing report by WorkSafe ACT has found that The Canberra Institute of Technology ( CIT ) 's systems were so poor that they effectively protected workplace bullies and left staff afraid to speak out about their treatment.

The WorkSafe ACT report has forced Education Minister Chris Bourke to intervene, demanding action.

Seven serious harassment cases have been reported at three of the institution's work sites between 2008 and 2012.

Work Safety Commissioner Mark McCabe found there was a culture at CIT that discouraged staff from reporting and describes a workplace rife with allegations of nepotism, unfairness and uneven workloads.

Even when CIT staff made complaints, Mr McCabe found, the processes were inadequate, unfair and victims were denied natural justice.

WorkSafe ACT's inspector determined that the CIT did not have an adequate system for preventing or responding to allegations of bullying and harassment in the workplace.

An Improvement Notice has been issued.

The CIT has six months to comply with a number of specific requirements in the notice.

Former CIT hospitality teacher Patrick Reubinson, one of the complainants, said staff who complained about bullying were singled out and ''intimidated''.

''The whole system was against you, '' Mr Reubinson said.

Pursuing the problem over a number of years had tested all of the staff involved.

''It's taken a steely determination to get this far, '' he said.

''It's finished our careers. ''

CIT chief executive Adrian Marron said: ''It [the report] is sobering reading for us... "

Australian Education Union acting ACT branch secretary Glenn Fowler praised the courage and tenacity of CIT staff who had complained. Historical link preserved from the original page.

CIT on notice to stop staff bullying, Noel Towell, Lisa Cox, Canberra Times, 13 April 2012: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/cit-on-notice-to-stop-staff-bullying-20120412-1wwy0.html Historical link preserved from the original page.

Indigenous Australian university staff: 61 per cent report 'lateral bullying' - being bullied by other indigenous academics, and being given no support by their 'own mob' because of fears that 'the trouble will come to them'. Historical link preserved from the original page.

Indigenous academics at Australian universities report that 'their mob' engage in bullying each other and that indigenous academics do not support bullied people because of fears of 'payback' - Historical link preserved from the original page.

61 per cent of 172 indigenous respondents to a survey of racial discrimination reported experiencing 'lateral violence', or problems with indigenous university staff bullying each other.

Survey comments included: "It becomes very competitive with your own mob at times and they don't support you if you are getting bullied or anything because they don't want the trouble to come to them.

Indigenous people are said to feel that 'lateral violence' is a crippling problem in their community.

Indigenous staff air concerns over bullying, Jill Rowbotham, The Australian, 23 November 2011: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/indigenous-staff-air-concerns-over-bullying/story-e6frgcjx-1226202933221 Historical link preserved from the original page.

University of Queensland.