A draft code of conduct for the Australian parliament has been criticised by the Senate Joint Select Committee on Parliamentary Standards for lacking detail.
The submission, co-authorerd by Julia Gillard’s Global Institute for Women’s Leadership (GIWL) and the Australian Political Studies Association (APSA), outlines a simple, principles-based code designed to create consensus around the kinds of behaviours that are acceptable in workplaces.
The draft code of conduct was developed through a series of workshops run last year that landed on a seven-point draft document approaching the issues of integrity, together with parliamentary standards.
Giving evidence to a hearing of the select committee on Monday morning, GIWL chief operating officer Natalie Barr and ANU emeritus professor Marian Sawer faced questions from committee chair and Labor MP Sharon Claydon and Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi around the draft code’s lack of detail.
Senator Faruqi expressed concerns about the clarity of what amounts to bullying behaviour and insufficient specificity around disadvantaged groups.
“There are very few people who work in parliament [who have] a different racial background or people with disability, and other marginalised areas [sic],” Faruqi said.
“The effects of harassment and bullying are obviously compounded when racism and disability discrimination are added on.”
“Why wouldn’t we include things [that show that] bullying and harassment, including sexual harassment and racism are unacceptable?”
However, Barr and Sawer were steadfast about the simplicity of the GIWL model, pointing to the considered best practice in other bicameral jurisdictions.
“I think having that overarching behavioural code that covers everyone being really clear, really simple, short, and easy to put on a single page is really helpful. It’s just — be respectful, be professional, don’t harass and bully people,” Barr said.
“In the United Kingdom and New Zealand, they each fit on a single page.“
Senator Faruqi later pointed to the Australian Human Rights Commission’s definitions of discrimination as a model that has better clarity for identifying discrimination in practice without adding complication to an already fraught area.
“They put together very concisely what those kinds of discrimination mean,” the senator said of the AHRC’s definitions.
“It would just take one sentence to highlight the sorts of discrimination that they talk about based on race, disability, age, and a couple of other things.”
Following evidence on Tuesday about the complex nature of modern bullying that is aided by digital platforms, Claydon asked what GIWL and the APSA would recommend in terms of preventing workplace bullying from extending onto digital platforms.
While the online space was not explicitly covered in the submission, Sawer acknowledged it was “a huge and intractable problem,” that “no jurisdiction had addressed adequately”.
Claydon also took a subtle dig at the pair’s assertion that a “healthy competition over best practice” between the house and senate — as is the case in the UK — was an acceptable model.
“[I am] wondering if staff might have a different point of view on that, particularly people who might move between houses,” Claydon said.
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