Bullying in the Victorian
Public Service

Thank you for accessing my website on bullying in the Victorian Public Service. This website details my own experience 2017-2023 as a former Victorian public servant of over 40 years.

The website is not intended to guide public servants or others on how to manage a situation where you find yourself being bullied.

It’s really more about how NOT to proceed when you are a public servant being bullied. This is what I have learnt after navigating the public sector ‘justice’ processes for 6 years. However I welcome comments.

In a nutshell, I was a 65 year old public servant, working part-time and approaching retirement after a 40 year career with this department. I had an excellent work record when I moved into my final assigned unit, but here I wasn’t respected by the unit manager and bullied by my immediate supervisor. When the manager of another unit tried to compel me to work alongside the work experience girl, there was a confrontation and I never returned to work again. I narrowly missed a ‘kangaroo court’, a panel of 3 managers who, no doubt, would be prepared to take me to task for ‘sins’ unknown to me. But how humiliating it was for a 63 year old man to be potentially interrogated and for them to be refusing to listen to my issues with the way they were treating me. Didn’t they have something better to do with their time?

In 2015 I went on continuous sick leave caused by the bullying. My unit manager told the departmental investigator that the bullying behaviour happened because I had ‘performance issues’. The investigator didn’t ask to see my final performance review wherein I was assessed as ‘satisfactory’. The manager had lied to the investigator, a serious instance of misconduct.

Whilst I was preparing my written appeal, the department terminated my employment in September 2017 thus aborting my right of appeal. The department then lied to the Victorian Public Sector Commission (VPSC) by saying the bullying review unit did not know of my parallel incapacity process. But they did know, because I had emailed them about it prior to my termination.

The VPSC investigated my circumstances for one year and, alarmingly, altered my evidence. They ignored the two lies, including the misconduct of my managers, and merely concluded that I ‘had not been given a fair avenue of redress’.

From that point on, I spent 6 years pursuing my case through multiple public service appeals bodies. The overriding objective of all these bodies seemed to be to deny the facts and come up with the most unlikely explanations of what had occurred. The full details are given below (and in much greater detail under the ‘Detailed History (Long Form)’ tab on this website).

I explore some of the implications of my experience here.

The Victorian Public Sector Commission takes ownership of values and standards within the service. But, in reality, it does nothing other than run surveys (which they admit shows appalling levels of bullying). But confronted with their own data, and admitting there has been virtually no improvement in the incidence of bullying for years, they still do nothing.

The best they can come up with is describing individual case studies, where an organisation (not them) works to overcome the bullying situation. Yet in every case they cite, it’s a bully who terrorises a number of staff. None of their examples involve a bully terrorising just the one person (as in my case). Judging from my experience, such a victim usually ends up with zero support from fellow staff, the union or the department’s HR unit.

They are alone. It’s just them and the bully who has all the power.

When employees go to work they should not have to work in an unsafe environment. If the manager believes an employee’s work performance is below par, then it is the manager’s responsibility to indicate where the improvement can be made. Employees can be enrolled in courses to update their skills perhaps.

But no one should go to work and have to tolerate a manager who may have a personality disorder, or some other issue, they bring to the workplace. It’s these sort of managers (in my experience) who seek out vulnerable workers. They rarely target assertive people, but I have been informed that even assertive workers can end up in their sights.

I was terminated before I could appeal against the investigator’s report on my complaint. If I had had that opportunity, I possessed the evidence that proved the unit manager had lied about my performance – an act of misconduct.

Everyone has a right of appeal in areas of dispute right across the board in Australia – civil, criminal, VCAT etc. and that’s because Australia is a democracy, governed by the rule of law. Preventing anyone from responding to an investigation report is a denial of a basic human right. If you are prevented from responding to a report about you, what’s the point in having any rules at all.

In most of the case studies I have read on the VPSC website, the ‘perpetrator’ (as the VPSC describes them) ends up being sacked because their behaviours have affected multiple staff. And guess what? The environment is now very good and management have learnt a lot and have messages to pass on to other organisations (so their stories go).

So what is the sum total of the VPSC efforts to tackle public service bullying? They run a regular survey which shows that the incidence of bullying has not changed for a decade. And they interview managers in organisations where a bully has been sacked and they write up the story. Do they do anything when a classic case of sole victim bullying happens? From my experience, no they don’t.

In my situation, I gave the VPSC all the documents demonstrating attempts to cover up a heavily botched bullying enquiry. They didn’t swing into action. Instead they refashioned the actual facts of what happened to fit into the outcome they desired.

In the case of a lone victim you would think that the VPSC is the ideal body through which the sole bullying victim could find support. You would think that the sole victim could rely on the VPSC to examine the evidence and the facts and that they would then adjudicate fairly, and bring justice to the sole victim.

At least I thought that. But what I found was that the VPSC was not on my side. After examining the facts, and perusing my documents for one year, they felt compelled to put together an account which falsified what had actually happened. And years later the politicians informed me that the VPSC does not have a role to involve itself in the details of each case. Strange that, because they certainly did just that in my case.

My final episode of bullying was actually my third experience of it within this organisation, having experienced it in the 1980’s and 1990’s (and by the same group of managers in both decades). But back in those days, there was no recourse to any appeal or protection.

Neither was there any subtlety in the bullies’ behaviour towards me. My immediate manager at that time told me that the Director wanted me gone. She was happy to use any technique available – harassment, belittling. She even publicly humiliated me in a staff meeting.

In both of those earlier instances, I somehow survived and moved on. Or rather, the bullies moved on.

I was now free of all bullies. There followed 24 ‘normal’ years where I was left alone. I was allocated an important job of putting together Victoria’s national public hospital data for submission to Canberra. All my subsequent managers treated me with respect because, I imagine, I had now attained the status of ‘the guru’.

Only I knew how it all worked. The managers were just happy to be presented with the final product. When a requirement for my work was integrated into Victoria’s Federal health funding, it became even more important. I met all the timelines and accuracy standards. The Minister of Health even thanked me personally for my contribution in meeting targets. Bliss!

By 2015 I was contemplating retirement. I had not taken up the Baillieu Government’s generous retrenchment packages as I believed the mantra that continuing to work, when a senior person, was good for one’s mental health. How wrong I was!

My earlier two episodes of bullying, when I was younger, should have educated me as to the warning signs. But the truth is that no worker can prepare and be proactive for an onset of bullying. And that’s because being bullied is outside the normal bounds of expected work behaviour. Who do you go to, or how do you complain when your manager is timing your toileting or sneers or makes some offhand hurtful comment? And that behaviour keeps on aggregating, and your manager’s manager smiles on benevolently? And then your co-workers offer no support. And the HR unit doesn’t want to listen to you? ‘It’s you, not them’.

My final public service unit manager had no interest in having any respect for my breadth of experience. In fact, because I was now in my mid 60’s I was viewed as an oddity. My work was downgraded and my immediate supervisor engaged in acts of bullying towards me. But I still needed to complete my final Victorian data submission to Canberra. I finished that despite being harassed. I then became ill and went on sick leave. But, as described above, in the middle of writing up my appeal, I was terminated.

I had possessed all the documentation I needed to prove that my immediate supervisor and the unit manager had lied to the departmental investigator, when they told her that the behaviour I was complaining about was because of my ‘performance issues’. The evidence couldn’t have been more serious. Two senior managers had conspired to lie about my performance in an official investigation. I possessed my very last performance review, signed off by one of these managers, and which stated my performance met the necessary criteria of ‘satisfactory’.

The department argued, in retrospect, that I was summarily terminated because the bullying investigators did not know of my concurrent incapacity investigation. It was all a ‘terrible mistake’ and the department apologised for not letting me appeal their bullying report.

To give a summary of the unique situation I found myself in: I was over 60 years of age, I was now working part-time 3 days a week. I was very close to making a decision to retire. Yet the two managers in this unit somehow told the investigator that my performance was ‘poor’. This is despite one of them signing off that my work was in fact ‘satisfactory’.

Then I was terminated half way through the bullying investigation, without being given a right of reply. Then, over the next 6 years, not one of the appeals bodies found anything at all unusual in all this. On the other hand, I see it as an example of extensive gaslighting. ‘Nothing to see here!’ No, only misconduct, lies, manipulating evidence, making false claims.

But again I had all the documentation to prove I had told all departmental officers of my incapacity and bullying investigations. So I fronted up to the Victorian Public Sector Commission (VPSC) confident that I could expose: a) the lies of my managers about my performance b) the departmental lies of officers ‘not knowing of my incapacity process’.

What could go wrong? The VPSC espoused values and standards. Their website overflowed with words committing themselves to stamping out bullying. I placed all my documents before them. My performance review, my emails to all the departmental officers involved. Everything. Here was their opportunity for them to act, to expose bullying, cover ups, lies. It was just made for them to act, and to act decisively.

Instead of that, the Victorian Public Sector Commission went in and actually tampered with the facts and my evidence in order, apparently, to not upset my departmental employer. They came up with the nonsense that, even though I had told every departmental officer involved in my case about my incapacity and bullying processes, that I ‘hadn’t really done that’. And that was despite my production of emails that outlined me doing just that.

They examined my last performance review and noted the assessment of ‘satisfactory’ on all criteria. They then matched that up to the investigator’s report where it was claimed I had ‘performance issues’. Surely now they would be outraged? Actually no, they just noted it. None of their values, standards, etc, seemed to be activated.

So, in summary, the authority whose stated aim is to stamp out bullying, to promote respectful values and standards, looked the other way when confronted with bullying and lies. From that time on, I went down the ‘rabbit hole’ of ‘look away’ bureaucrats over 6 years, with ever more ridiculous claims by the successive levels of appeal.

I list the most convoluted excuses below:

– the bureaucrats: ‘We believe that you didn’t tell every departmental officer of your two processes’ (fact check: I did, and I had the emails to prove it)

– the bureaucrats: ‘Well yes, but there may have been a miscommunication between the two bullying review officers’ (fact check: departmental incompetence has nothing to do with me)

– the bureaucrats: ‘You could have gone to Fair Work about the bullying’ (fact check: you cannot do that if terminated from your job)

– the bureaucrats: ‘When we say you could have gone to Fair Work, we are just stating a general piece of information’ (fact check: which is thus irrelevant in my case)

– the bureaucrats: ‘The department has apologised, what more do you want?’ (fact check: the apology contains a lie)

– the politicians: ‘We are outraged that you use the word ‘lie’ (fact check: when the evidence proves a lie, it is a lie)

– the bureaucrats: ‘You say the department lied to you and the VPSC, but we can’t ‘see the lie’ (fact check: you can’t ‘see’ the lie because you don’t seem to have the intellectual capacity to work through the details)

– the bureaucrats: ‘Our legislation says we can control our enquiry anyway we want to, and when we rule that certain situations apply, then they apply’ (fact check: that means you are, in effect, a useless adjudicator, enabled to apply your own biases whenever you feel so disposed)

– the politicians: ‘IBAC threw out your complaint’ (fact check: IBAC decided not to investigate my complaint)

– the bureaucrats: ‘Why do you bring up a failed requirement to meet Victoria’s obligation under the National Health Information Agreement, which you say was compromised by the bullying you received? It was so long ago!’ (fact check: I bring it up, because, unlike you, I think something I committed to for 24 years is important, not just for my own satisfaction, but because I believe in Victoria meeting it’s obligations, even if you don’t)

– the bureaucrats: ‘Your former department doesn’t have any systemic issues’ (fact check: two managers lied to an investigator; the department wouldn’t cooperate with my psychologist; the investigator of the bullying didn’t ask to see any evidence…I could go on)

– the bureaucrats: ‘We can’t find any record that there even was a VPSC enquiry’ (fact check: it went on for over one year and produced correspondence and reports; so your response leaves me speechless).

I am grateful for the supportive comments I have received. Most of the feedback received related to other people’s bullying experiences within the Victorian Public Service. One respondent told me that these behaviours are endemic throughout the service. Another very experienced respondent who has worked right across the public service, especially in health and education, detailed their own instances of being bullied or witnessing other employees being bullied. Some of the feedback detailed horrific physical violence, victimisation and threatening behaviour.

There was not one instance of people responding to my website who were not deeply affected by the bullying that they had endured. And many respondents experienced health and mental health repercussions long after the bullying had ceased.

In my 6 years of appeals and enquiries, I’d say that there was not one honest attempt to approach the facts and evidence in an unbiased and rational way. The only objective they seemed to have was to shut my case down, to silence me, to bully me, to make me go away.

So I would conclude that, to me, the real function of all these authorities is to give the impression of doing something. To find a formula that appears to be an attempt to do something, but with the intention of doing very little or nothing at all. And, in that, they succeeded perfectly.

Please take bullying in the Victorian public service seriously. Please overhaul the role of the Victorian Public Service Commission and turn it into a proper advocate and enforcer against workplace bullying.