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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

Kate Jenkins has finished up as Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner.

In her seven years in the job, we’ve seen the global #MeToo movement, along with the reckoning in Canberra, sparked by allegations made by former staffer Brittany Higgins.

So how have these cultural moments impacted the push for gender equality in this country?
And what still needs to change?

Today, Kate Jenkins on how far we’ve come – and the work that’s still not done.

It’s Tuesday, April 18.

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RUBY:

Kate – when you first came into the role of Sex Discrimination Commissioner, so seven years ago now, what did you plan to focus on?

KATE:

When I came in, what I did in 2016 was really look at the data on what we were doing well in Australia and what we weren't doing well.

So the three areas that I identified that we actually weren't doing well on, on global measures and national measures were violence against women in all its different forms domestic and family violence, sexual violence, online violence, sexual harassment at work. We weren't doing well on women's economic security. Women were retiring with, you know, just about half the retirement savings of men and older women over the time I've been in this role are the fastest growing group of homeless people, and also diversity in leadership, not just women, but more diversity there.

So when I started in 2016, I basically said my priorities will be those three things. And then I also picked particularly looking at workplaces, sport and in the education sector as the places that I would put my energy with the idea that those locations would have the biggest ripple effect for change.

RUBY:

So when you began, one of the things you did was speak to a whole lot of people about their experiences of sexual harassment to really gather a data set that would lay out the problem – what stories did you hear? What did people say to you about harassment and its impact on them?

KATE:

Yes, that was probably the thing that hit me hardest. I'd been a lawyer practising in this area and I would help employers handle issues, and I always had a lot of empathy for people who had experienced sexual harassment.

One of the things that really stood out for me was just the long term impact of sexual harassment. I think that lots of people think, you know, obviously a sexual assault is a very serious incident and that can have long term impacts. But actually regular and daily sexism and sexual harassment and barriers to your career can both have a mental health impact, but it also stops you being promoted. I heard of the experiences of women say, Look, I no longer felt confident to work in this industry.

So that really stood out. We were underestimating the long term impact of sexual harassment on the individuals and on the business and actually on our economy.

RUBY:

I want I ask a bit more about the decision that the people make to report or not report sexual harassment. There's obviously a legitimate reason that people don't report it, and that's because they fear that it will harm their career. But I know that you also have personal experience of that happening to you as a young lawyer. And I was hoping you could tell me about what happened and what you took from that.

KATE:

Yes, so many women have experienced sexual harassment. I don't regard myself as unique or unusual in saying that it was just a part of my early professional career that you dealt with, you know, sexual comments and propositions from clients, from barristers. I'm saying that in a really normalised way, but it really was part of the climate that you came into. What I felt with my experience was there was one occasion where I raised a complaint and I just felt like it was a big burden on me. And somehow the attention turned to me and whether I was overly sensitive and it did affect my relationship with my peers. So I remember thinking, You know what? I think unless it was really serious, I wouldn't do this. That wasn't because I didn't have a good workplace or a nice employer. I just thought, I'm not you know, this was hard for me, and I'm not sure that I really would want to do that.

What we know is only 18% of people report the sexual harassment they experienced. So first of all, we know that there's only less than one in five will even report it, of those who report, at least half of them say they suffer negative consequences as a result.

For those who don't report, they say they don't report because because they're not sure anything will change. They don't think they'll be believed. They don't want to affect their relationship with their peers. They think that they'll suffer, you know, actually impacts on their career. So there's a lot of reasons why people don't want to report.

The reason I reported in the particular scenario that I did was I was practising in this area. I knew what the laws said, but I also knew what a good workplace should do. And so I did to some degree, think, actually, if I'm helping other organisations deal with this issue, then I should do what I'm advising them, I should raise this.

RUBY:

And of course part of what made #MeToo such a global movement was the sheer number of disclosures from people and I’m sure you couldn't have predicted the movement would take off it happened a year or so after your appointment. But how fundamentally did it change things for you and the way that you saw your role did it redraw the parameters of your work or offer opportunities?

KATE:

It definitely opened the opportunities for the changes that we actually have seen come to life.

I think that what has happened since that Weinstein conversation is that community awareness has increased.

Archival tape -- Reporter 1:

“Thousands of women around the world spoke out against sexual harassment using just two words. Me, Too.”

Archival tape -- Reporter 2:

“The Weinstein case has brought to light something that we really should have been talking about for a long time.”

Archival tape -- Oprah Winfrey:

“It's triggering a lot of unreleased pain, repressed anger, guilt and suffering that a lot of women have had.”

KATE:

So that global conversation created the conditions and also that just much greater community awareness of the problem of sexual harassment. And from my point of view, as a sex discrimination commissioner, it created the opportunity for me to talk to government and encourage them to support us, to do a national inquiry, to really look deeply at our sexual harassment laws.

Archival tape -- Reporter 3:

“Good morning the prime minister has unveiled major changes to stamp out sexual harassment in the workplace, he’s responded to the “respect at work report” agreeing to adopt all recommendations.”

KATE:

So respect at work. One of the core underneath that was that our system is relying too much on people reporting complaints, including workplaces, our recommendations. The laws have been changed to put an obligation on employers to prevent sexual harassment, not just to respond well when it happens and to be more supportive. I think up until now, the focus has been on what's your investigation? Can you prove you've got the evidence, a whole range of sort of really legalistic steps that really don't help the individual who might have been harassed, but then says actually the worst part was the complaint process.

So our recommendations were more focused from employers on prevention and also a more sensitive to the individual in how you handle the complaints. And that's a super simplification of a very big report. But that is probably the big shift that we've really driven.

RUBY:

We’ll be back in a moment.

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RUBY:

So Kate, I wanted to ask you about what happened in Canberra recently. It strikes me, there have been sort of several landmark or watershed moments during that time. And the first that we've spoken about was the global MeToo movement. And then we had the Canberra Reckoning more recently, which began with allegations that Brittany Higgins made. We’re now two years on from that moment. So how do you reflect on the impact of all of that? The allegations made the protest and subsequent report into the culture at Parliament House?

KATE:

Yes firstly, I pay credit not just to Brittany, but to so many people who have got the courage to speak up and speak out.

Archival tape -- Brittany Higgins:

“I speak to you today out of necessity. We are all here today not because we want to be here, but because we have to be here.”

KATE:

I know that there's a real personal toll in doing that.

Archival tape -- Brittany Higgins:

“We fundamentally recognise the system is broken, the glass ceiling is still in place and there are significant failings in the power structures within our institutions. We are here because it’s unfathomable that we are still having to fight this same stale tired fight.”

KATE:

I think that the Canberra reckoning happened in the middle of this building momentum and frustration and realisation of the problem. And so for it to come out, in the High Court, it came out in the universities, it came out in the corporate world for it to then come out in Canberra and schools. It was part of a broader context of sort of a community awareness that these problems existed. It's two years on, and what I can say with really positive enthusiasm is that the Parliament actually opened itself to the scrutiny of the Human Rights Commission. We were trusted with hearing the experiences and also understanding really how Parliament operates. As you would know, it's a really unique workplace. There’s 227, as I say, small businesses, parliamentarians that come into Canberra, out of Canberra, that represent the country, they have very small teams and they have to do really complex and often new work. So we got to see that we made 28 recommendations which all intersected and were really not just about stopping harassment, bullying and sexual assault. They were also about creating a more productive, positive workplace.

And so since we delivered the report at the end of 2021, the government accepted all the recommendations. When I say the government, all of Parliament accepted it and now led by Katy Gallagher as the lead of the Parliamentary Leadership Task Force, they have well and truly implemented many of those recommendations. And when I'm in Parliament, people there pull me to the side and say the Parliament is a much better place. They feel more able to speak up, but also people are behaving better and it's actually just a more pleasant place to work.

RUBY:

And I want to know a bit more about what it was actually like for you in the lead up to the Respect at Work report recommendations actually being taken up because it did take a while. Those 55 recommendations, they weren't adopted until the Labor government took power last year so there must have been times at which you wondered if they would be if sexual harassment would be taken seriously.

KATE:

Yes. There were times and I guess over 30 years there have been times where I've wondered why, you know, this issue isn’t seen as the serious issue that I think it is. The report was tabled in Parliament on the 5th of March 2020. And you might recall that 5th of March was the last sitting day before all of the calendar was scrapped and COVID became the number one priority. So when that happened, I was aware that the government was not going to be focusing on my report. I was disappointed, but I was realistic. The next really serious response that was given was when the Attorney-General Michaelia Cash issued the Government response in April 2021. The previous government actually accepted in whole, in part or in principle or noted all the recommendations. It didn't mean that everything was legislated straight off, but a significant amount of work was started at that point. May 2022 was when the new government came to power and they said, We accept all of them in full. And since then, those are the key pieces that I have not let up about have been implemented.

RUBY:

Does it suggest to you that real change only ever happens as a result of a scandal, that it takes survivors speaking publicly significant social pressure, media pressure for change to happen at all?

KATE:

I don't think it only happens, but it's sad to report that a lot of the work I've done, it has been because of a scandal, basically. If I think about the review of gymnastics in Australia that came off the back of the Larry Nassar allegations in the US, if I think about the Parliament work, we had an issue. But actually internationally other countries have also had a similar issue in their parliaments. So we're not alone. So what I hope is for Australia is to really continue to look globally and then rather than waiting for our own scandal, understand what are the issues and make them move forward. I have been known to say I think change happens because of scandal or leadership, and too often it has been because of the scandal. But over my time, for example, working with defence, I've seen that shift from a really difficult incident in 2011 to really an organisation that, you know, particularly at the leadership level, take the issue of safety, cultural reform really seriously. So I think scandal, yes, but leadership and good expertise listening to people is actually should be the future of making sure we've got the country that we want to have.

RUBY:

So if you took stock of the position that you found yourself in as a young woman and you compared that to attitudes now in 2023, after your time as Sex Discrimination Commissioner, how much and how quickly do you think Australia is changing? What is the pace of progress if you do think that progress is being made?

KATE:

I think the pace of progress is really promising. I don't think that means that we will have no sexual harassment. But I've also got optimism for a particular reason. I've seen within workplaces, including our parliament, real changes made.

I've seen leaders who perhaps might not have seen this as standing up to talk about what's acceptable.

And then as of the end of this year, the Australian Human Rights Commission will get its powers to enforce what's called the positive duty to prevent sexual harassment. So the laws passed last year.

So I'm really confident and I'm confident also because I'm not the only one who understands this or is doing this work. And I think that's a really wonderful thing that we can look forward to in workplaces.

RUBY:

Kate, Thank you so much for your time.

KATE:

Thank you very much, Ruby.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

The relationship between police and prosecutors in Bruce Lehrmann’s case was ‘beset by tension’ from the outset, an ACT Board of Inquiry has heard.

The inquiry was called following claims by chief prosecutor Shane Drumgold that police had pressured him not to charge Mr Lehrmann.

No finding has been made against Lehrmann, who was accused - and has denied - raping former Liberal Party staffer Brittany Higgins in 2019.

The Board of Inquiry will determine whether criminal justice agencies fulfilled their responsibilities in the case. It's expected to resume in two weeks.

And,

India’s Supreme Court will this week hear final arguments on the legalisation of same sex marriage.

A number of petitions are before the court calling for the change, and the proceedings will be live-streamed.

A constitutional bench of five judges is hearing the case, which would make India the world’s 35th country to legalise same sex marriage.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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