Unions upset at ruling on state service

THERE will be no further investigation or disciplinary action against the head of the Tasmanian state service and four department chiefs who broke anti-discrimination laws, Premier Jeremy Rockliff says.

Department of Premier and Cabinet secretary Jenny Gale and the heads of the departments of Education, Health, Communities and TasTAFE apologised to public sector staff on Tuesday after being found by a tribunal to have wrongly banned workers from taking time off to attend industrial action in 2018.

Unions say any other worker in the state sector would have faced disciplinary action for breaching the Anti-Discrimination Act.

“There’ll be no further sanctions,” Mr Rockliff said on Wednesday. “It’s appropriate that an apology was made.

“In my view, that apology was a reflection of the goodwill of the departments and appropriate that the policy was expressed to our public servants across Tasmania.”

Community and Public Sector Union assistant Secretary Tom Lynch said the department heads had also breached the State Service Code of Conduct and State Service Principles which they are required to “uphold, promote and comply with”.

“It’s quite clear if a head of agency has a reasonable belief that any public sector worker has breached the code or the principles, they are required to appoint an independent investigator to conduct an investigation,” he said.

He said that in such a case, it would require the Premier – or one of the agency heads themselves – to launch an investigation, even if that investigation concluded an apology was punishment enough.

“Or they may decide that breaking a law or bringing the State Service into disrepute, which quite clearly this has, or not acting without discrimination which is another principle, that it probably does warrant more than just apologising for your actions.”

The Integrity Commission dismissed a complaint about the case last week because any misconduct was government policy, not personal wrongdoing.

Union Tasmania secretary Jessica Munday said the lack of consequences was hard to understand. “Some of these people are tasked with overseeing industrial arrangements in the biggest departments in the public sector, and frankly anti-discrimination legislation should be one of the very basics that they are concerned about,” she said.