The power of perspective in redressing sexual harassment culture

Good day everyone, I'm Chris Bombolas, your MC for today. Welcome to the third Mental Health Week's live stream for 2023. On behalf of Workplace Health and Safety Queensland, I hope you enjoy today's session. I would like to begin by respectfully acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land we are speaking to you from today and on which you are learning and working from today.

We also pay our respects to elders past and present and extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people watching today. Mental Health Week is held nationally every October to raise awareness of the importance of psychologically safe workplaces and contributes to driving behaviour and attitudinal change to reduce stigma and discrimination of mental illness. In this session, Dr. Skye Charry will delve into a powerful framework for catalysing change in sexual harassment culture by harnessing three key workplace perspectives. Her presentation also includes fresh insights, perspectives and tools to disrupt unhealthy patterns of workplace engagement. There will also be the opportunity to ask Skye questions at the end of her presentation, so be sure to submit them in the chat box. A little bit more housekeeping. If you do have any technical problems during the live stream, please make sure the sound on your computer is turned on, refresh your browser, and if that doesn't work, contact us via the live Q&A chat box. You can also change the size of your screen to full screen by selecting the four small arrows next to the volume bar at the bottom of your screen. Please note that this presentation includes content regarding sexual harassment. We encourage you to draw on the self-care supports that work for you if this topic brings anything up for you, and please reach out for support. The session will also be recorded, so if you need to take a break, you can catch up on the recording at a later date.

In an emergency, of course, please call OOO or visit your local hospital emergency department. You can also call Lifeline on 13 11 14. For more information on support services available or information on supporting someone in distress, please visit www.qmhc.qld.gov.au or visit www.qmhc.gov.au. We'll put that into the chat box too so that you can grab hold of those details. Well, it gives me great pleasure now to introduce Dr Skye Charry, an Associate Professor of Law and consultant on matters of sex discrimination.

She is passionate about the elimination of sexual harassment particularly in the dynamic rural context having written and published the book "Whispers From the Bush: Sexual Harassment of Australian Rural Women". Skye has facilitated gender equity solutions for a wide range of industries including forestry, seafood, meat and also in the legal profession. In 2017, the Victorians Women's Trust produced a short documentary about Skye's research, called Grace Under Fire and in that same year she was the recipient of the Chancellor's Young Alumni Award at the University of Canberra for her contribution to sexual harassment redress in Australia. Please welcome Skye.

Oh, Chris thank you for that very warm welcome and it is a joy to be with you all today. Thank you for listening in to the talk that I'd like to share with you. To formally begin I'd like to also acknowledge the traditional owners of the land and pay my respects to elders past present and future and I'd like to just share with you that I'm coming to you today from Ngunnawal country which is beautiful and looking uh slightly rainy at this end of the day. Please indulge me for a moment wherever you are listening. I'd like you to take a moment and perhaps even close your eyes and think of a loved one that you know who is new to the workforce. It might be that you're thinking of a son or a daughter or a niece or a nephew or you might be thinking of a grandchild or a neighbour, someone who is special to you and with whom you have a special connection and I'd like you to consider for a moment what your hopes are in the context of that precious person's experience. I'd like you to think about how you'd like them to come home feeling and what's critically important to them coming home with that special feeling of safety and security and perhaps being you know deserving of a standard of respect and care. So, I'd invite you now that you've paused and reflected on that special person to open your eyes and to just think about the fact that psychological safety it can sound like such an esoteric term in many ways, but it does affect each and every one of us in the workplace. Now going back in time Albert Einstein many years ago suggested that in considering the rules of engagement in the workplace there are three basic overarching principles that we should turn our attention to. He said out of clutter we must find simplicity from discord we must find harmony and in the middle of difficulty lies real opportunity.
Now the research does show that we have a lot of work to do to transform the discord into harmony in the context of sexual harassment culture particularly I've looked at Australian rural culture in that context, but we also know as a result of the work that we've done so far that this is perfectly possible if we roll up our sleeves together and if we're prepared to play our role together. So, what I'd like to do today is propose to you three simple approaches to I guess tackling together, crash tackling together this notion of sexual harassment in the workplace for the benefit of workers and businesses alike. Now before we address sexual harassment and its solutions what I'd like to do is name what I think is an elephant in our virtual room so to speak many of us are perhaps feeling a sense of being a bit exhausted a little bit overwhelmed perhaps particularly in the aftermath of me too hashtag me too and its movement and I feel as though for many of us around the country according to the people with whom I've recently interviewed and spoken and run focus groups there is that sense of jadedness as a result of you know constantly going to newspapers or turning on the news in the evening and you know being almost saturated oversaturated with messages about sexual harassment and sometimes even with messages about who is now being you know held up as a particularly problematic figure in the context of sexual harassment and you know these stories do take a toll they do take a toll and there is that sense of wow we've talked about this ad nauseam for some time how are we going to find it within ourselves to pull some extra energy for an important conversation today of this sort. Now what I have noticed is that whilst on the one hand the hashtag me too movement encouraged people to speak out in a very important way for others what it tended to do was to create a barrier to create a blocker to that openness and sense of willingness to become vulnerable to this conversation. Why is that so? Probably because for some of us we became worried to the point where you know we thought are the things that we're perhaps you know ashamed of that we have not said well that we have not actioned well that we have perhaps missed in terms of opportunities along the way is it is it the case that you know somewhere within us those inactions and actions alike have created a barrier a blocker as something that we're ashamed of which makes it difficult for us to fully engage in a conversation of this nature and for others of us myself included you know who supervise lots of people does this conversation about you know the duty of care piece represent something that might speak to my own past failings my own lack of timeliness my own potential you know for not having been as sensitive as I perhaps once could have been in a certain response to someone who was clearly in a painful situation. There are other barriers too you know for those of us who have experienced sexual harassment and I will speak to an experience that I had it can also represent a form of ourself that is less whole and more vulnerable self to have these conversations. There are so many different reasons why having a conversation about sexual harassment can render our own selves less than somewhere within our subconscious or conscious and so what I invite us to do at this early point in the conversation is just notice that notice what it is that might be happening within you and to just sort of realise that this is an opportunity we don't have control over the things that have happened in the past none of us ever do we don't have control over the things that happened five minutes ago or 15 minutes ago or five years ago or 15 years ago but what we do have control over is everything that we sort of I guess workshop within us today and thereafter and all of the decisions that we make accordingly all of those choices that we make from this point onwards in order to perhaps do things differently or say something differently or really step into a new way of thinking about this subject matter so this is an opportunity for us to notice the old and to welcome the new and I really would encourage us all to join together in that spirit. So, I grew up in Orange in the central western part of New South Wales and initially and this is a little known fact about me I left school having completed year 10. At the time there was a good reason for that my beautiful late mother was battling breast cancer and she was sent to Sydney to St Vincent's hospital in order to seek the necessary treatment that wasn't available for her in Orange where we lived and so for me it was a matter of keeping the home fires burning for the family for my father and my sister and I did feel sort of you know ready to be recognized as the adult that I felt as though I genuinely had become in that context and capacity. So, what I did was one Friday in the Christmas holidays immediately following on from year 10 I applied for a position with my family's support as a medical receptionist and I was successful and notified that I was successful on the Sunday and on the Monday morning at eight o'clock I began the new phase of my career, so it felt at that time it was my going to be my whole career my whole life as a medical receptionist. Now I discovered that that pay wasn't particularly lucrative as a trainee in particular as a trainee in those days it was not very well recognized work and so I supplemented my income with various rural roles in different spaces, so I worked in shearing sheds you know particularly doing the belly fleeces I worked in vineyards picking fruit picking cherries mainly I was a farmer hand on a farm out the back of Molong in New South Wales and in almost all of these circumstances as a young person who had just joined the workforce what I noticed was that there were things that were perplexing that were popping up and they were of a sexual nature time and time again and these things at the time I didn't have the language or the tools or the framework to understand instead I sort of thought that this was the way that things were done out here this was just the way that it was that I was joining a workforce that clearly meant that I was now subscribing to a new set of rules and a new set of standards and it never occurred to me that I was deserving of a different lawful standard of safety and dignity and respect and this was the case even when one day I was locked into a very dark cool room which was intended to house meat carcasses and this was so on the farm that I was doing some work as a shed hand on and the awful thing was in my memory I have a memory of being shut in there and I have a memory of being laughed at whilst you know being locked into that space and I also have a memory of hearing the sound of motorbikes disappear into the distance and not knowing for how long I might be in that dark cool room now when eventually it came to pass that I was let out of the cool room you would anticipate that I would perhaps you know have different response mechanisms in that circumstance but the one that I look back on now and realize was pretty significant at the time was the one that I chose which was to laugh it off to crack up to you know to join the others in this apparent hilarity which was my own humiliation in that cool room that day. I did that because I wanted to fit in I wanted to be a part of the group I wanted to demonstrate that I could fit into the culture that I wasn't different, and it didn't matter in my response that I felt vulnerable and I felt humiliated and I felt unsafe those things were secondary to the fact that I really did need and wanted to demonstrate that I was okay in that work now regardless of the very many reasons why many of us might choose not to speak up and regardless of the many reasons why many managers are reluctant to take action these fears that we carry represent risks in themselves there are conversations that must be had that are difficult perhaps that are uncomfortable perhaps around workplace safety dignity and respect and we're having one today but we need to become even more willing as a nation to be engaging in this space so as I said as a preliminary sort of invitation at the very beginning of our talk I'd like to invite us now to shake off the old shake off those worries shake off the things that we're perhaps not proud of and to embrace this opportunity to really rumble with the thoughts and findings that I'm going to share with you and then to really think practically about the recommendations that I'm going to pose to you as well for little by little shifting the culture transforming the culture where we need it to be changed now you heard Chris mention that a few years ago I published a book called Whispers from the Bush the workplace sexual harassment of Australian rural women in opening the book chapter one gives voice to a young FIFO minor she was relatively new to the workforce also she was 19 at the time that I interviewed her in the course of this book I'm going to share with you the opening two Whispers from the Bush which is her voice but first I would like to let you know that the comments that she made the quote is quite sensitive in nature and quite confronting I had to ask for access to a bathroom once a month because I had my period she said so eventually instead of access to a bathroom they got me access to a Toyota so that I could drive away to a toilet so the entire crew knew exactly when I was cycling every single month and then they started to piss in the connecting pipes for me to discover when I got back from the drive now she goes on in her account to talk about the fact that one night when she was walking back to her room from dinner at the mining camp one of the co-workers pulled her into a store room and sexually assaulted her in the store room she was too frightened to make any report at the time she was too frightened to talk to the police about what had occurred she was too frightened at that point in time to do anything and she spoke about that freeze impact that is quite a commonly experienced response to trauma now she is not the only one in writing Whispers from the Bush I listened to 107 accounts like this one I travelled to rural and remote pockets across different states and territories all of the states and territories in fact and went to places like Kalgoorlie and Kangaroo Island you know Roma, Kula, Dubbo you name it three out of four of the women who I interviewed as part of that cohort had encountered sexual harassment in the course of their employment so that was three in four participants in that study now when I talk about sexual harassment of course I mean what the law refers to I don't mean the behaviour that is welcome I mean the behaviour that is unwelcome and unwanted it's the unwelcome unwanted sexualised behaviour that's designed to intimidate humiliate or offend we're talking about the behaviour that renders a person less able less deserving of well-being and safety we're not talking ever about delicious office flirtations or workplace flirtations in the field we're not talking about mutually consensual interactions that are joyful and that bring us that sense of positivity and light and joy as a human being and you know new sense of value and dignity we're not talking about the positive ever we're talking about the opposite the sort of power that underpins sexual harassment is the power that renders another person less valuable less able less significant less deserving of the standards that the next person is deserving of and the Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act and also indeed the state and territory counterpart legislation all has carefully crafted provisions that are geared towards protecting us all from sexual harassment in Australian workplaces and beyond the problem though is that the practical translation of the legislation you know the law on the books to the workplaces on the ground is quite often problematic somewhere along the way somewhere between Parliament House and the cattle yards or the shearing sheds or the office space or the hairdressers wherever it might be somewhere the words and intent of the law are lost in translation so this is akin to having a really critical workplace policy all geared up to protect people from sexual harassment or bullying or whatever it might be and having it beautifully perfectly worded and then popping it into the bottom drawer in someone's office and you know forgetting that it exists that's you know that's ultimately what that might be analogous to what this means is that behaviour on the ground goes largely unchallenged and this puts workers safety and even sometimes workers lives at risk now sexual harassment is a really complex beast particularly in rural and regional areas as I said before there are all sorts of uniqueness’s that we need to consider in overlaying the problem and I'll just sort of speak to a couple of basic sort of introductory points you know whilst sexual harassment does sometimes also impact men and we're seeing that more and more coming through in the statistics particularly if we look at say the human rights recent national inquiry we're noticing that more men than ever are saying that sexual harassment is something that they have also encountered in the workplace so whilst that is so the research still consistently shows us that sexual harassment does tend to be experienced quite a lot more often than sorry by women I should say and on top of this there are other factors as well such as age cultural background class gender as I said disability religion the place where working life occurs all of these factors can put people in a higher risk category to experiencing sexual harassment now unfortunately sexual harassment is more culturally entrenched in places where men have traditionally been the prevalent workers and we know that because we've seen that very clearly coming through in you know research piece after research piece globally not just in Australia it's a common thread the remnants of old stereotypes therefore such as you know ladies being the ones who are tasked with going out and making morning tea and bringing the scones and the tea in for people to enjoy it smoko or morning tea all of those old sort of attitudes and ideas about you know role play and who does what they do tend to inform the modern workplace and this can be so consciously or subconsciously sometimes we sort of subconsciously rest on the things that we've been taught over time that you know perhaps we know consciously are outdated and perhaps we know consciously aren't the way that you know society now understands you know gender roles to be but that doesn't mean that sometimes each and every one of us slip back into old ways of thinking and sometimes people call this bias or unconscious bias now we are all human and we are all prone to bias in different ways that's a fact as I said earlier we all do make different sorts of mistakes sometimes we all have different attributes we all have different experiences good and bad workplace culture is informed by all of these things but ultimately informed by more than individual missteps and individual mistakes workplace culture also depends on the way that we are prepared as people to hold up to the light and to challenge the old the old ways of assuming things and thinking about things and doing things and performing with different you know ways of being and to really challenge the attitudes and you know even preferences for different types of leadership for example different forms of preferred leadership over others you know unconscious bias is a really interesting thing it creeps into my life all the time and I’m actively aware of it and increasingly aware of it too I heard myself not very long ago for example calling out to my husband after some rain and asking him if he would mind attending to the lawn mowing because we had a break in the clouds and it was looking really bad and he said honey I’m going into town so I can't do it and I said that's fine that's fine so I called out to our son 14 year old son 15 year old son now and asked him if he would like to do the job and he then called out that he was going off to play footy that afternoon which I’d overlooked and that was okay too and later on you know the lawn wasn't done but on reflection on the lounge later I thought to myself you know what's amazing is that I never thought for a moment to call out to our 18 year old daughter nor did I ever think to do the job myself which is a terrible realization and the reason for that is because in my experience in my you know childhood my dad was always the person who mowed the lawn it was always considered a man's job and I never have repackaged you know that chore into a different sort of way of thinking over the many years since the many years since. Equally I have to say that I realised this again during recent times not very long ago probably six months ago we had children with covid and both of them were upstairs and bed ridden and I said to my husband without even thinking about it you'd stay away and I’ll do the nursing and afterwards you know i thought to myself that was interesting because I probably of the two of us I probably had the most lined up work commitments coming you know on the other side of their recovery and just you know at that particular time and it wasn't in my imagination or in my planning consciously to think about what would be best for us you know collectively as a as a team instead I just sort of whipped into that nursing role because I think I thought that as the mother that was the natural thing to do so you know you notice it and I’m sure that many of you listening right now would have equivalent observations to reflect on within your own lives and selves and  they will pop up again tomorrow no doubt but it's really, really natural and good for us at this stage to be noticing what it is that is informing the way that we operate in our cultural spaces we get so many things do contribute to a culture which normalizes sexual harassment and particularly at the lower level and now at that lower level I’m not talking about lower level in terms of seriousness because all sexual harassment as I’m going to go on and explain is serious in its own way but I’m just sort of talking about if we imagine a spectrum which sort of begins with you know unwelcome staring and leering unwanted joke telling of a sexual nature you know perhaps next on the spectrum there might be some pornographic material displayed in an unwelcome and inappropriate way in the workplace unwanted sexual touching and at the most extreme end the sort of assault that we spoke about earlier if you imagine that the little chips the little microaggressions the little moments that are designed perhaps not even to directly impact and embarrass another person in the workplace perhaps not designed to do anything other than demonstrate a sort of outdated form of larrikinism that relies on sort of the performance that is at a female's expense or at not necessarily at a female's expense always but this is the example that I’m going to choose for now you know if we think about the things that contribute to a culture those little micro moments really do matter and we really do need to be turning our attention in the course of this conversation to that stuff just as much as we do stuff at the most extreme end to make better sense of this complex problem let's look at the issue through i guess a sort of compound microscope by way of analogy and let's look at it using three key lenses the first lens is this sexual harassment can become so normalized as part of a culture that its impact even at this lower level even at the less serious sorry even at the less serious end of the scale can be underestimated by those who choose to engage in it this is often a generational issue and so what that means is that younger men may tend to model their behaviour on those old outdated stereotypes of the past that we spoke about and this can be exacerbated also through cultural representations and expectations of what you know a top Aussie male should look like they should you know in the common sort of popular art and song and poetry and representation on tick tock and movies you know they are often tough and blokey they often exhibit larrikin and sort of crocodile Dundee type traits think about on a Friday night when the football's on and we tend to see you know the beer ads that have all of the guys together on that quest for a hard-earned thirst which is a really you know beautiful and important part of our you know culture on the one hand but never ever do we notice in those ads that there is a representation of female colleagues coming along on that quest after work side by side with those with whom they work you know it's  very much a agenda this is the domain of men to kick back and to enjoy the fruits of our labour today and women presumably are out doing something different you know perhaps picking up people after you know after school sport or preparing meals or whatever it might be but it's a really interesting thing to start to tap into what it is that we represent culturally and how that might inform our subconscious choices when we see things happening or not happening in our workplaces Australian men have been celebrated as I said as sort of you know that rugged stockman the businessman the bread earner and so on and so on it's so important that we do continue and I really want to be careful to really celebrate this it's really important that we celebrate the essence of the positive in in all of that you know masculinity in its most glorious form is such a critical and precious ingredient in our cultural story as Australian people we don't want to discard the beautiful and the precious in attending to the parts of the puzzle that really do need that attention but we do need to balance the narrative with the authentic picture of life as we want to shape it so that means men in all of their diversity for example now meanwhile women have long been typified as having no place in the workforce they have a place in the home over you know even in the 50s in the 60s in the 70s starting to change in the 80s and so on so up until those recent decades the outdoors you know were not even you know depicted as a popular space for women to be in in magazines in the Australian Women's Weekly for example those magazines were typically filled with images of you know women as whipping up a fluffy sponge cake or here are some ideas about what we can do with children in the school holidays or here's the you know special advertisement to give you 20% off the latest Estee Lauder lipsticks. Again, all of these representations are on the one hand they have precious elements, but they can also be a double-edged sword where they're not balanced according to the accurate picture of the way that women have emerged over recent generations gone by and it's a danger that we should rest on the old outdated stereotypes a little bit lazily in our thinking without actually consciously challenging the way that we deepen our souls no equity to be. You know we know every day incredible women incredible females perform brilliantly to new societal standards. I don't know if you remember a couple of years back when then AFL hero Taylor Harris performed that extraordinary kick that was captured in a photograph and circulated widely because it was so powerful a moment she was you know performing at such an elite level by any gendered standard but what then happened was that Taylor was deeply mortified embarrassed humiliated as a result of the sexualised commentary that was you know degrading and derogatory and posted by way of just flippant commentary underneath the tweets underneath the Facebook feeds underneath the Instagram posts and so on all in response to performing at that high level in just the same way that that men do on a daily basis but perhaps don't experience the sexualized nature of the work. So, there are parallels in our workplaces to that sexual harassment can be used as a tool sometimes and this is fact can be used as a tool to put high performing females in their own professional environment in their place to bring them down a peg or two to remind them that they are coming in as an outsider into perhaps what was once the, you know, the domain of primarily men. Sometimes there was a language that was used when women described this to me they would say Skye at the end of the day we just learnt that you have to fit in or f off if you want to succeed in this space. So that's the first lens that it can be underestimated. Now the second lens for is to see the sexual harassment problem or conundrum sort of through so let's look at it through a fresh lens now is that people can become so used to sexual harassment that can go underreported for situational reasons. So, the first lens was that it can be underestimated the second lens is that it can be underreported for situational reasons. So only a third of Australians in various studies on average say that they would feel confident making a report about sexual harassment that did make them feel humiliated, offended or intimidated in their workplace. So, like a frog in a boiling pot what does tend to happen instead is that people can develop a tolerance for sexual harassment. They survive by default and little by little just like the frog in the boiling pot you know the temperature rises in terms of the significance and the severity of the behaviour around them but because everyone has sort of I guess subscribed to norms that effectively do allow sexual harassment to pepper the working environment. No one knows at what point they ought to say something and so people are left scratching their heads and wondering if they are the problem. If the problem is that I just don't fit in here that I don't belong here that perhaps I need to develop a tougher skin that you know this is me. One senior manager said to me this, and she was a female she said, "oh Skye I know it's inappropriate to say this perhaps but if I spoke up every single time they would not take me seriously. It would be like crying wolf all the time. In a way I reserve that process now so as not to waste my ammunition." So, you can hear just there that this person is applying an analogy and it's the analogy of the battlefield. I don't want to waste my ammunition by calling out the things that have a toll that take a toll on me, the bullets that actually do impact me that make me feel unsafe, that make me feel disrespected, that make my dignity feel as though it's somehow you know at risk. It's better for me not to talk about each and every time that happens lest I be deemed to be the problem, lest I be deemed to be you know disbelieved or lest I be deemed to be the troublemaker making a storm you know about nothing, a storm in a teacup, a mountain out of a mongrel, all of those things. So, the third lens, so we've got underestimated, underreported, now here's the third lens that we can think about this issue through, is that sexual harassment can become so normalised in workplace cultures that it frequently goes unchallenged by those people who are in charge and who have a duty of care. So for example more than four out of the five of senior managers and employers with whom I spoke, so 80% when I looked at a cohort of people who do have a duty of care, prioritised sexual harassment as a very low level issue to deal with in their daily working life and they said look Sky these things happen, I know that they happen, I've heard the stories, I've seen things happen but I have honestly a list as long as my right arm of things that we need to achieve between this time and this time each day when the sun goes down. Dealing with people's hurt feelings in vertical commerce is not one of those high priority things. We'll get to it when we can, I accept that it's important but it's not a particularly high priority for this workplace. So, let's reflect on that for a moment. Someone could be humiliating or intimidating the very precious person that we imagined early in this talk, the person who is dear to your heart and it's possible that their superior, the person in charge of them, may not be seeing this as a particularly high priority issue and so your loved one might therefore be feeling experiences, driving home after work at the end of the day or standing in the shower at night-time, feelings of bewilderment, baffled responses. Is this me? Am I the problem? Am I deserving? Why is it that this keeps happening? How can I stop this from happening? I don't have the tools to stop this from happening. Why is my boss not stopping this from happening and so on and so on? So, these are the sorts of things that people think about when there is a culture that's allowed to continue and when people with the duty of care don't necessarily prioritise the problem. Now sexual harassment, as I said, exists on a spectrum. So, we might well be thinking at this point, look, it's okay. Some people might say it's okay. The stuff that happens in my workplace tends to be fairly benign, tends to be fairly low level. We don't have any of that unwelcome touching that Sky spoke about before. I certainly know that people aren't feeling as though they're threatened in a serious criminal way in our workplace. We might have the odd bit of banter that gets out of control, but we'll deal with that if it becomes a big problem down the track. Now for this reason, this is why researchers came up with something called the sexual violence pyramid, called the sexual violence pyramid, which some of you may have heard about before. But basically, at the bottom of the pyramid, leave those misogynistic sort of thoughts, attitudes, and feelings. The stuff that becomes stuck in the way that we imagine the world to be, because it tends to be taught to us over time and we don't really challenge the things that we don't think of to challenge. So, it's the stuck stuff, the misogynistic sort of attitudes, and you know, women will deal with the tea making and so on. If these exist in the workplace, the sexual violence pyramid shows us that it supports, it acts as a bolster for the next layer, which gives rise to racist, sexist, or homophobic jokes or insults. Okay, so little by little, we see that that foundation can create, you know, a sort of safe landing place for some unwelcome jokes of a sexual nature in the course of banter, let's say. In turn, this can allow people the freedom to feel like, you know, a little bit of a grope or a little bit of a pinch or a little bit of a grab or a little bit of a physicality exchange of some sort isn't necessarily too serious, because we normalise this other stuff. We've got sort of some tolerance for, you know, unwelcome sexualised banter, talking about, you know, sex on the weekend, whatever it might be. So little by little, we're turning up the permission, I suppose, on the actions, the actions start to set in. And then sitting at the apex of this terrible sexual violence pyramid, and supported by all of the below, we start to see people giving themselves permission to really go in with all of the gore that seems to enable people this sense of power, such that they start to do things like thrust rulers under people's clothing and when they're standing on ladders or, you know, in the context of cattle stations, I've heard time and time again that breasts are great when people are getting off horses, for example, or that, as you've heard, sexual assaults take place somewhere between, you know, the mess camp and someone's accommodation in the course of the working environment. So how do we get rid of all of this that sits at the top, this permission to rape, this permission for the very worst sort of human engagement that is toxic and dangerous and unsafe and gives rise to so much pain and humiliation and brokenness? How do we stop that that lives at the top of the apex? We erode the base of that pyramid. We erode and we take very seriously all of the foundational stuff that allows that other terrible action and inaction to continue. Underestimated, underreported and unchallenged. How do we transform these three cultural contributors whilst we're eroding the base of the pyramid? How do we do it? Well, it's about appealing to the intrinsic part that all of us have like a little fire burning within that actively wants our experience of the workplace and the experience of our day-to-day, you know, engagement with our colleagues and our co-workers and our workmates to constructively align with our values. Ultimately, you know, we want to go to work feeling as though we are safe. We want to go to work feeling as though our dignity and our joy can shine through. We want to go to work feeling these things because this is our one precious life. There is no room for not taking steps to eradicate and unleash the fury on that pyramid that I was speaking about before because it impacts the value. It impacts what it is to go to work and for that to actually be an important and powerful thread of our own existence, of our own life, you know, on this planet. We want it and we need it to be a fulfilling, mentally uplifting and physically safe experience. So, my framework operates on these principles of empathy by highlighting the power of human perspective in influencing the cultural tone. So, let's first look at the underestimation of the impact of sexual harassment. Now, as we said, this, you know, can be regarded as just the way that things are done out here or just a little bit of harmless banter. But when we justify sexual harassment in this way, we are underestimating the human impact. We are underestimating the safety impact and the impact on psychological well-being. We are underestimating also the impact on business sustainability, profitability, productivity, on absenteeism, you know, on all of these things. And beyond that, we're also underestimating vicarious liability, employer liability for the bad behaviour that happens without taking active steps to prevent it and without taking active steps to stop it in its tracks. There is no doubt that the solution must be forward looking here, and it must be targeted at the level of the head and the heart in every single workplace environment around the country. So, we all, we need, sorry, to ensure that all employees understand what sexual harassment is, what sexual harassment is not at law. That's a really critical starting point because particularly given what I've said earlier about this sense of cultural overwhelm in the context of being a little bit exhausted and not really wanting to engage in the first place with this stuff, there may be so many attitudes and generationally entrenched assumptions and ways of doing and talking to each other and to, you know, permissions being given to one another that go unquestioned because people haven't yet had the opportunity in many cases, and this is the sad truth, in many workplaces around the country, no one yet has sat down with workplace teams and has had the conversation about, right, this is an important moment for us to pause and to recognise that this workplace doesn't tolerate sexual harassment, this workplace has a zero tolerance, you know, position on sexual harassment. Let's talk about and let's unpack what that really means. When we say that, what is it that we are saying? Why are we saying it? And how will that change the experience of working in this space for all of us together for the better? So, you know, that's a multifaceted conversation. So that message is not just one of the level of the head, it's not just right, here is our law, here is our policy, this is what sexual harassment is and isn't, but it's the piece at the heart, it's the message at the level of the heart. So, we've got to take those natural opportunities then to really dig deep within us and to start to talk about the way that sexual harassment feels and to help people have opportunities for awareness in the context of, you know, the unwelcome, the unwanted, why is it unwelcome? Breaking it down into that power dynamic that I spoke about before, helping people to see that in our working relationships, as with any other relationship, all of it sometimes have positive, beautiful, enjoyable interactions that make us feel calmer, make us feel like we have just had something that's brightened our day in some way, shape or form. Somehow the interaction was uplifting, more valued or more whatever it might be. But equally, there is a propensity where sexual harassment kicks in for the opposite to be true. And we need to break that down for people, because this is the very hard truth is that the mere possibility that people feel offended, intimidated or humiliated by sexual harassment is what poses the safety risk. That is where the risk lies. And people must understand that that is what places them at liability, at law. The possibility that another person feels impacted in those negative ways by the rude joke that I'm about to tell, or by the unwelcome slap on the bottom that I'm about to engage in. The safety risk is in the possibility of the feeling on the other side of that for another person. That's a really important part of unpacking this for people. Once sexual harassment is understood at the level of the heads and the hearts, we've also got to make sure that we reposition sexual harassment as part of the Australian narrative more broadly. So sexual harassment should never be underestimated as the mere manifestation of cheeky larrikinism. Instead, it does sit fairly and squarely outside of the Aussie code of honour and mateship. It's something very different to the healthy banter. It's very different to healthy, joyful, jovial banter that underpins necessarily so many of our workplaces around the country. That's because it goes back to power at its core again. Where healthy banter is happening, people enjoy it. People are alive. People are all feeling together like it is enriching the team spirit. It's actually bringing people together. It's not demoralising people. It's actually building that sense of wellbeing and delight. But on the other hand, where banter starts to slide into other parts of that spectrum that we spoke about before into the unwelcome, unwanted sexualised joke zone, that's where the safety risk lives. So, we've got to be very good as people overseeing workplaces and people operating in workplaces, giving people opportunities to develop tools, develop languages from within around stopping and bringing that conversation back into a safe territory again, where everyone is feeling like their dignity is important. In the seafood industry, for example, that can be as simple as people coming up with the language around, "Come on guys, reel it in, reel it in." And once people speak that language, once people understand that that's the signal, that's the special code that things are actually sliding into the unsafe territory, it becomes an easy language to speak. It becomes an easy one. Anyone on the ground or at sea can start to use that as a way of bringing things back for the team, for all. Mates can and should take responsibility as mates where sexual harassment is concerned. So, in the same way that mates hang on to car keys for mates if they've had too many beers, so too should we be encouraging mates to have a word on the side where unacceptable behaviour might be happening. So it might be, for example, as simple as, I heard what happened a moment ago when we were standing there in the tea room and you made the joke about, let's say, what one of us got up to on the weekend of a sexual nature, you commented on that and I saw the look on Sarah's face as she was stirring her cup of coffee. And I have to say she looked really uncomfortable and I'm feeling unsettled about it, and I think you perhaps might do well to go and have a conversation with Sarah to check that she's okay and perhaps even to say that it wasn't your intention to humiliate her or embarrass her and to really preserve the preciousness of that interpersonal relationship in the workplace. Now, the next part was around transforming the tendency for underreporting. For a long time, by necessity, the common narrative that we've told ourselves if we experience or witness sexual harassment has been that, you know, I know it sounds bad, but you get used to it. Quote, this is what one person said to me, Sky, I know it sounds bad, but you get used to it. It's just boys being boys or men being men. It's just the way that things are done out here. Now, two out of three times that people experience sexual harassment on the ground, they tend to choose not to report it or even not to speak about it to the person who is perpetrating it. One person whom I interviewed said it all comes down to picking your battles. So, if Joe Bloggs touched me on the chest or something like that, then I might complain. But if you're going to complain every single time someone stared at your chest, you know, your credibility is going to be damaged. It happens so frequently. If they fired every bloke who stared at my chest, then they'd have no staff left. It's as simple as that. So that's what one 28-year-old woman said to me just not long ago. And again, that battlefield analogy is intrinsic in what she's said. So instead, people survive by default. But no longer can that be so because it's time to flip that switch on the narrative, conversation by conversation. And this is important as part of the erosion of that pyramid that we spoke about before. We must do something to move out of the space where we sort of categorise these conversations as uncomfortable or a bit too hard. We must do something to equip our people with the right skills to be able to say. You know, it doesn't have to be confronting to be able to say, you know, Tony, do you have a moment? And Tony says yes. And perhaps you can say, look, Tony, I know that perhaps it wasn't your intention to embarrass me a moment ago when you made the remark about my backside. But I wanted to share with you that I do feel embarrassed. And I don't want to sit with this quietly because I value our relationship at work. And I want it to continue in the positive spirit that we've always known it. So, can we have a chat about that now? Or would you like to talk about it later? Perhaps, Tony, we could meet for a coffee, you know, at three o'clock, perhaps, if that suits you better. And just to take that informal opportunity not to formalise the at first instance, at least, you know, what's happened, but to allow the other person the opportunity to do something that's golden, and that is to apologise in a meaningful way, and to take responsibility, and to also take the opportunity to learn, you know, to really tap into their own ethical fabric. And so, what we need to be doing is setting up these systems in our workplaces, such that these things are not unusual. These things aren't the exception to the norm. These things aren't the things that we read about as being good news stories because they become so common. We need this to become part of our common way of doing and seeing and categorising sexual harassment. Very, very briefly, I'm aware of time and I'll speak about that final perspective, which comes into play. So, it's the part that must be played by the senior leaders in the workplace, managers, directors, supervisors. This is the part that is about shifting from the unchallenged to active leadership on sexual harassment culture. There must be a serious focus on embracing the duty. And as of the 13th of December, this year, it becomes a positive duty, which is a whole other talk in itself, which I could really happily share with you. But the positive duty piece requires each and every leader in Australia now to be taking steps with their teams and their people to ensure that these dangerous safety risks that are posed around the psychological impact of sexual harassment are prevented and reduced. And there are lots of different things that can be done to ensure that. But in practical terms, the law talks about these reasonable steps, proactive, reasonable steps that can be taken to prevent sexual harassment from happening. Policies, having really clear, very, what's the word I'm going to give all, tailored policy to the workplace is very important. Making sure that it's fit for purpose, making sure that it reflects the work that he's actually practically done, that it's not just a one size fits all that's been plucked from another workplace, but that some care has been taken to describing what sexual harassment might look like and be in the context of this work. And very practically, how people can take steps to respond to it formally or informally in the policy. And then going another step as employers and senior managers and making sure that people are trained to understand how to use that set of skills, how to use tools to informally have the conversations on the ground such that things don't need to be formalized necessarily, but also how to take a step and take a courageous leap and talk to more senior supervisors if necessary, because people are deserving of that standard. They are deserving of the opportunity to have a confidential conversation if they so choose with someone more senior. In so doing, making sure that the policy also has a clear complaints process that gives due consideration to sensitivity, natural justice for all parties, timeliness. These factors as leaders must be considered in order to discharge the new positive duty that applies to all workplaces equally around the country. Very, very quickly, I'll just ask you now in closing to pause again and to think perhaps about that precious person who you had in your mind and had on your hearts at the very beginning of this conversation. And I want you to think about what a strong and powerful leader might look like for that person. Someone who sees and someone who hears and someone who acts and someone who responds with care and conviction. And I wonder how many of us in opening our eyes and perhaps thinking about who it was that we had in our mind as a representation of leadership, I wonder how many of us subconsciously or consciously thought of our own selves in thinking about that person and the steps that that person can take to actively ensure that respect and dignity and the safety of not only our precious person, but in fact all of us together is looked after in our workplaces moving forward, starting from this point onwards. And without being, I guess, unnecessarily burdened by the very human mistakes of the past, but instead transforming old, outdated approaches into something that is more empowering for all of us. So, thank you. I am going to close there, Chris, and invite you to invite questions if you'd like to. Certainly will. Thank you. Your presentation, Skye, has certainly struck a chord. There's been lots of feedback, lots of discussion and lots of questions. If you haven't already submitted your question and you are keen to get a question on board, type it up in the Q&A chat box on the right of your screen and we will get to your question as soon as we can. Skye, the good news for you is you'll be doing a bit of overtime because there's lots and lots of questions. So, let's kick them off. This one's from Anne and Anne would like to know what your advice is for someone, say a young female work health and safety officer, who often gets told what would you know about driving a truck? You sit in an office with coffee and cake. Well, what I would say, Anne, is thank you for the question. And the interesting thing is that I've heard this in different contexts over time. I think what we've got to be conscious of is that there can be double-edged swords, right? Sometimes, and I'm thinking, Anne, of I just want to gather my thoughts. I heard recently a similar account having interviewed two groups of people. I interviewed a group of people working in a particular workforce in forestry. I heard I heard people say to me, Skye, this is a really community-oriented workplace. This is a place where over the years, we have developed important relationships and we have different ways of doing work that we all subscribe to. And we do that for a reason. We know that these systems work. We know that these systems are the best way forward. Tradition's important in all of that. And Skye, it means sometimes that others might have ways of doing things that are new and unique, but we prefer to keep things as they are. So, tradition and community are upheld as being sort of precious commodities that underpin the work that is done. So that was one school of thought. And then I interviewed a whole other cohort over here. And many of these people over here happened to be young women who had just come into the same space in forestry. And they said to me, Skye, it is so frustrating because we know that the workforce that we've joined is one that's underpinned by a lot of tradition and way of doing things and a lot of systems and preferences. But what's hard is that when we pick up our chainsaw each day, often what we'll hear is, no, be careful with that chainsaw. It might be sharp. And we have been trained in exactly the same way that the others have undergone their workplace health and safety training on these, utilizing these tools. And we also know that there is a noble intention in terms of safety that's underpinning some of the concern. But how do we align, realign in our hearts and minds when we feel like outsiders in our very own workplace, because we're seen as different. We're seen as deserving of these calls for being more careful than the next person. How do we reconcile that as competent people? And it goes back to the things that we spoke about before. We are operating quite frequently on these old, outdated ideas around who is competent and who has the skills. And it is a danger. It's a dangerous place to be when we are assuming based on our own unconscious bias that some women may not be well equipped to carry out some roles because they have only recently joined the space. It really goes back and to this being systemic, this is not a unique question. And there is a lot of strength that comes from that too, because we're something systemic. We're little by little, we start to actively take the sorts of steps that I was talking about today together, and to have these active conversations to help people to realise that thank you for caring for me, but I am equipped with these skills, and I can actually operate this chainsaw. But I do know that it's lovely that, you know, that sort of conversation is empathetic, but it's also direct and it's also careful. And it also looks after the psychological wellbeing of everyone, which is an important ingredient because we don't want to be angry for the sake of anger. We don't want to be ostracising anyone for the sake of ostracising them. We don't want people to feel as though this conversation is all about one group and not another. It's about all of us together, you know, resetting the way that we think about these things. So, thank you, Anne. I think it's not just a one-off. This is all of us together. Thank you for that. Feedback from Alicia, Josie and Anne in the chat. They raise the sex oil harassment is such a big issue in certain sectors, particularly like mining and transportation, industries where women are the minority and join the boys’ clubs, so to speak. What advice do you have for women or even men in some industries where they are the minority gender and perhaps even more subject to harassment or just accept that this is part of the job? You know, it just boils back to what I said before. This is about hearts and minds, right? The issue itself starts with that underestimation piece; I think. People are underestimating the impact and they're also underestimating the liability that they are posing for their workplaces. They're underestimating lots of things. They're underestimating the fact that every time someone operates outside of the Sex Discrimination Act and what it's prescribed, they're actually placing their workplace at risk of six, seven figure sums in terms of liability. That's the first thing. So, there's a real stick element here, just as there is that altruistic component. We've got to get people speaking the language of the mind. You know, this means helping people to really rumble, as I said before, with the legislation and why it is crafted in this way. What that safety risk is, it's the mere possibility that someone would feel like they don't belong in what is a boys’ club and that they feel as though that the behaviour around them is rendering them a less important person in that space. Where that happens, people are falling short of the standard that the law prescribes. So, the heart part is helping people to understand how that is and why that is, and then changing behaviour accordingly. Why? Because people do care. Tapping into that part of people, male or female, that cares for the next person and that wants our values to constructively align with what's good for the entire workforce. No one wants necessarily to go in and out of work knowing that they are operating in an unlawful way. So that's a clear, even if people don't want to be open to the idea that they're having an impact if they choose to engage that is damaging to other people, hear this then, if you choose to engage in that, you are operating in an unlawful and unsafe way in this workforce and there is zero tolerance for that. If this doesn't suit you, perhaps this will and if that doesn't suit you, perhaps it's time to reconsider. I think that's where, in its harshest form, that's what it all boils down to in terms of now reconsidering what was once the domain of the boys’ club as many of our listeners have rightly identified it. It's now the domain of people. It's now the domain of all of us. It's now the domain and legally prescribed as something that we're all deserving of in terms of safety standards and respect. So, it's just changing heads and hearts really and it's as simple and as complicated as that. Thanks, Guy from Natalie. Are you aware of or do you know about any innovative practices that businesses have employed successfully to counter sexual harassment in the workplace? Yeah, I think one of the best tools is something that I've seen working really beautifully lately. Sometimes it's really helpful to listen to people first. So, to conduct a review and to understand almost like a little audit of the landscape, give people the opportunity together, everyone, to opt into a listening group and listening by the facilitator, for example, to listen and to understand all of the different unique perspectives that are out there. Sometimes underpinned by a misguided noble intention, sometimes underpinned by rotten old-fashioned outdated attitudes and norms, sometimes underpinned by experiences that have impacted us in different ways. So, when you've listened, you're then able to collate and understand the starting snapshot, the grassroots snapshot of what the Workplace Foundation actually looks like and feels like for people out there on the ground. This is particularly helpful in contexts like mining or where we've got a scattering of establishments, meat establishments all around the country, for example, or whatever it might be. So, listening and understanding is the starting point because then what you can do is gently hold up the mirror for the people and reflect back to them that it was really interesting. Thank you for generously sharing your insights and thoughts and ideas about these important issues with us because what we've heard is this and we've heard that on the one hand, banter is something that's really important and precious and something that we want to preserve and need to preserve. But on the other hand, we've heard that for some people, banter has a tendency to feel like it's an attack in itself when it slides into territory that becomes sexualized or territory that's personalised or territory that relies on someone being bullied in order for the crux of the joke to be funny. Where we can start to say, okay, we're great. So, we've understood that we all agree that banter can be a precious commodity in the workplace. Let's talk about how we can therefore equip our people with the tools to reel it back, to bring it back, to notice the moment when someone's feeling unsafe or disrespected. And that's a really useful thing because all of a sudden it's come from not from above, but it's come from grassroots level instead. I think Chris is giving me a signal about something. Sorry, Chris. You're all right. I'm just working with our people behind to get more and more questions. So, are you right to move to the next one? Yes. And I'll just sort of say, once we've held up that mirror and once we've actually given people an opportunity to create their own solutions to the things that have actually been heard, then we have this chance to actually do the heart work and the head work, hearts and mind shifting. And people feel like from the very beginning they were a part of that conversation. People feel like from the very beginning this was not something that's sort of being landed on me, but instead it's something that I've contributed to at the outset. And so, I think that there's something really important and profoundly moving about that deep listening piece at the beginning and not judging. We're not there to sort of to listen and to sort of say, "Whoa, I don't like to imagine the sorts of things that happen in your head." This is not what that looks like. This is about giving people the opportunity to feed in and to understand the drivers of disrespect and the drivers of the behaviour. Sometimes the drivers are subconscious, as I said. Sometimes people are operating within a realm that seems normal because it's the way that grandfathers or great-grandfathers or uncles have sort of shown them over time as being typical and being part of that performance of masculinity. But it doesn't necessarily align with our new social standards and norms and what it is that we're all deserving of. So, there is something about that that I think is really powerful. We're just trying to condense as many questions as we can into your session here. And what you've just finished and ended up saying probably rolls into our next question, but I'll just give you a bit of feedback from Sharon. She says, "Thanks for acknowledging the importance of men and the critical role they play in challenging the balance. Natalie also is curious as to whether you think the younger generation," moving on from what you've just answered, "will be better at addressing sexual harassment in the workplace than the dinosaurs of previous eras." You know what? I actually do. And I say that because having just interviewed a whole number of young women and also having observed my daughter who is 18, she has a part-time job, and she had an experience with a customer recently. And her sort of response to that aligned beautifully with what I've heard a number of other young women saying to me recently, which is it was appalling. And I therefore took it, you know, in Summer's case, she said, "I took it straight to Sonia who she trusts in the workplace, and I workshopped with her how it made me feel. I said to her that Sonia, I felt like I was out of my depth with that customer. I felt unsafe. I didn't know whether I should walk away or not. I didn't walk away. That felt a bit funny." Summer said to her, you know, boss. And then she said that she and her boss talked about strategies for what to do next time, if that should ever happen again. And she had the opportunity to create almost like a safety plan, so to speak. So many times over, I've heard young women also saying to me, "I'd really love to know more about what you were saying there where you started to talk about some informal mechanisms for having on the ground conversations with people." I liked that quote because, you know, it makes me feel like it doesn't have to be me putting myself out there and perhaps making myself feel like I'm being, you know, a troublemaker or whatever, you know, but instead that I can develop the tools to have conversations with people. I want to be that person. You know, there's this real hunger, this real genuine, I think, earnestness in so many young women today to play a role in resetting, you know, those standards of what normal looks like in our workforces. And that's wonderful. Equally, I would say that I've also met with so many incredible people of older generations recently. And I do know this, there is so often a sense of wanting to do the right thing and this as I've called it many a times, this talk, there is often a noble intention where there is almost like this gentlemanly language that's spoken and that's a self-labelled language. They'll often say, "Look, it's the gentlemanly thing to do, not to want to see a younger female worker using a chainsaw, for example, when I could be doing that for them. It's just my instinct. I'm, you know, nearing retirement age and I don't want to see people doing that if I could take over for them." So that doesn't come from a place of, you know, disrespect. It actually comes from a place of having operated according to a set of values for so very long and then sort of you know, trying to align that with the new sort of standards that we all see and understand and feel in today's context. So, there is just that gentle sense of reflecting back to people how the different perspectives might land and then thinking about how it is that we can make adjustments, particularly adjustments that help us to appreciate the value of our, you know, particularly young women and women coming into what was primarily the domain of men many a times over. Sky, there's been much discussion and it's been robust in the chat room from Susan Cassie and many others, and we'll just mould this into the last question for you. They're looking for advice about how to handle those situations where you are unsure if you have or are experiencing sexual harassment, and can you describe the difference between unwelcome attention versus sexual harassment? Well, the law says that what sexual harassment means is unwelcome and unwanted sexualised behaviour that has the propensity or the possibility of making someone feel offended, intimidated or humiliated. So, there are three elements there. The first bit is subjective. The first part of that test is, you know, is it making me feel like I'm driving home after work and I'm reflecting on what happened earlier in the day and I'm feeling troubled somewhere in my psyche, somewhere in my system. I'm feeling like that shouldn't be happening. I'm feeling like there's a discomfort in me. You know what that's a sign of? It's a sign of that negative power in play. So, where there's a negative power and it's making someone feel less valuable or less important or less safe in the workplace, it's going to give them those signs within themselves. That first part of the test lives within each and every one of us. We can tell you, sorry, we can tell someone if something is unwelcome or unwanted for us subjectively. It may not be that it's unwelcome or unwanted for the next person, but in a workplace environment, if it's unwelcome or unwanted for us, we're deserving of not feeling that. So that's the first part of the test. The next part of the test is that it's sexual in nature. We've talked a little bit about that in a different context. I'd go into lots of detail about what judges have said about what is sexualised and what's not sexualised, but really anything that represents, you know, if it's unwelcome, staring or leering, for example, the sexualised part of that would come if there was a lavacious licking of lips, if there was moaning or groaning sounds that accompanied that staring or leering. It's likely based on other precedent under, sorry, likely based on precedent or case law, that that would be upheld as being sexual in nature. Sometimes it's really obvious. Sometimes it's, you know, touching someone on, even, even stroking someone on the arm is sexualised behaviour in the workplace. Some touching someone on the neck, coming up behind someone and touching their neck has been held, upheld by judges as satisfying that part of the test. Then the next part of the test is that there must be for a reasonable person, like you or I, the possibility. So, the actual wording is that a reasonable person would foresee the possibility that that behaviour would intimidate, offend or sorry, intimidate, offend or humiliate another person. Now, that's a subjective test, the unwelcome unwanted, that's an objective test. There's a two-part component here at law. So, it's easy to unpack, though. It's if the reasonable person, if I looked at a circumstance and said, you know what, that banter that slipped into conversation about, you know, perhaps, you know, sky would be pretty active on the weekend or whatever it might be. If a reasonable person looked at that and saw me standing there trying to do my job, perhaps fruit picking or whatnot, and a reasonable person saw my face, sort of, you know, they would undoubtedly say that there was the possibility there that should have been foreseen, that I was going to be embarrassed, offended or, sorry, intimidated by that. Where there is power at play, it's pretty easy to see the possibility that someone might be intimidated. Where there is unwanted sexual touching, always going to be pretty obvious to see that it's a reasonable person would be intimidated, embarrassed. It's not a hard test to actually apply for each and every one of us. And that's why it's framed as the reasonable person component. So, first component is, does it feel like it's impacting you in your heart? That's the first part of the test. Second component is, is it sexual in nature? Most likely, if it's, you know, any of the things that we've talked about today, it is. Third component is, would any of my mates standing around looking at this have foreseen the possibility that I would have been offended, intimidated or humiliated by this? Probably, yes. Thereby the test for sexual harassment is satisfied. And we're then operating in a space where the law kicks in. And the law then says that that represents something that must be remedied by the workforce because sexual harassment is not something that any of us are required to put up with in any circumstance in the context of our work on a daily basis. Dr. Skye Charry, thank you very much. Really appreciate your presentation and your advice and the information you've shared with us this afternoon. Thank you so much, Chris.
And thank you so much, everyone, for your questions. Yes, as Skye has said, thanks for joining us. We hope you've learned some valuable information to help protect the psychological health of workers in your workplace. As we wrap up the event today, can I ask you to scan the QR code that'll be on your screen to complete our short and anonymous survey about this event? Your feedback is really important to help us evaluate the program and inform planning for future events. Check out the website, worksafe.qld.gov.au, for other events, including one more live stream session this Mental Health Week. For more information on support services available, please visit the sites up on your screen. These are invaluable resources and can be contacted on the numbers and, of course, their websites are up there as well. On behalf of Workplace Health and Safety Queensland, thanks for joining us today for another of our Mental Health Week live streams. As we say farewell, a reminder that it is Safe Work Month, as always, in October. And our parting message is WorkSafe, HomeSafe.