Australian parliament staff report workplace abuse as it tries to tackle sexual harassment, World News

SYDNEY. Staff in Australia’s parliament have lodged 30 complaints over a nine-month period of serious workplace offences, such as sexual assault, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on Sunday (November 10th), as the legislature struggles to deal with a spate of scandals.

The Parliamentary Workplace Support Service was launched in October 2023 as a confidential service for employees of the Federal Parliament. It received 30 reports of serious wrongdoing out of 339 total cases in its first nine months of operation, from October 2023 to June 2024, the newspaper reported.

Allegations of serious offenses included sexual assault, stalking and intimidation, the paper said. It did not say whether any cases had been referred to the police or were being pursued.

The service was launched after a 2021 government report found that one in three people working in Australia’s parliament, located in the country’s capital Canberra, had experienced sexual harassment.

In 2023, one Australian senator said another senator had been stalking her, making advances and touching her inappropriately.

The service did not immediately respond to a request for comment after hours.

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In April, an Australian judge found that a former government adviser raped a colleague in a parliamentary office, dismissing a defamation claim in a case that has gripped a nation reeling from a wave of #MeToo allegations in 2022.