In July 2021 the Community Development and Justice Standing Committee commenced an inquiry into sexual harassment against women in the FIFO mining industry. The deadline for public submissions was 13 August 2021 and the tabling date is currently scheduled for 28 April 2022.
The Centre for Women’s Safety and Wellbeing (CWSW) made a joint submission with Stopping Family Violence (SFV) and the WA Network of Alcohol and other Drug Agencies (WANADA).
Executive Summary
Everyone deserves to feel safe and respected at work and to live free from gendered violence and harassment. Gendered violence and harassment, including sexual harassment, causes harm to individual workers, to workplaces and to the Western Australian community.
The Centre for Women’s Safety and Wellbeing (CWSW), Stopping Family Violence (SFV) and the WA Network of Alcohol and other Drug Agencies (WANADA) welcome the Community Development and Justice Standing Committee’s inquiry into sexual harassment against women in the FIFO mining industry. Through our work, we see a culture, system and regulatory framework that fail to prevent gendered violence at work, and to adequately address it when it does occur.
Urgent reforms are needed to prevent sexual harassment and gendered violence in the FIFO mining industry and Western Australian workplaces more broadly, hold perpetrators accountable, and support victim survivors to recover and receive redress. We believe that a system-wide focus is necessary to lift the burden of achieving these goals from the individual and has the potential to drive cultural and behavioural change.
Sexual harassment and gendered violence are a serious cultural, systemic, work health and safety issue that requires evidence-based primary prevention interventions; the law reform required to prevent sexual harassment, including to Western Australia’s equal opportunity and discrimination laws, work health and safety laws and the enforcement of these laws; the powers that the Western Australian Equal Opportunity Commission requires to ensure compliance with anti-discrimination laws; and the need to increase the availability of accessible, targeted support and legal services.
Gendered violence in the FIFO mining industry, including sexual harassment, must be addressed as part of an integrated and holistic strategy to prevent gendered violence and promote gender equality.
- The FIFO mining industry must take proactive steps to prevent gendered violence including sexual harassment at work.
- Victim-survivors of sexual harassment and other forms of gendered violence working in the FIFO mining industry must be supported to recover and respond, and have easy access to specialist support services, including counselling and legal services, that are appropriately resourced and have well-trained staff.
- People who report gendered violence and harassment in the FIFO mining industry must have confidence in their employer’s investigation process.
- All forms of harmful sex-based discrimination and harassment in the FIFO mining industry and beyond must be prohibited.
- Victim-survivors must be able to access fair redress for the harm they experience because of sex-based harassment and discrimination.
- The Equal Opportunity Act must reflect ‘best practice’ in equal opportunity law. Change the definitions in the WA legislation to bring it into line with other jurisdictions where they do not have the same requirement for the alleged victim to establish disadvantage. The revised law must ensure more rigorous and robust duties related to gender equality and sexual harassment; and enable a high level of compliance.
- Sexual harassment and gendered violence in the FIFO mining industry must be addressed as a serious work health and safety issue.
- Further research, evidence and data must be collected to assist us to better understand the prevalence and nature of sexual harassment and gendered violence in the FIFO mining industry and to aid us to design effective interventions.
- The FIFO mining industry must commit to creating a culture of respect, equality and inclusion and proactively prevent sexual harassment and gendered violence and respond in a victim-centred way when it occurs.
