Australia's parliamentary staff report numerous assaults

DER SPIEGEL Australia's parliamentary staff report numerous assaults 4 hours • 1 minute reading time Sexual harassment, stalking, intimidation: Employees of the Australian Parliament have reported 30 assaults in less than a year. These are not the first cases of this kind. Employees of the Australian Parliament have filed 30 complaints about serious workplace offenses, including sexual assault, within nine months. This is reported by the Sydney Morning Herald. The Parliamentary Workplace Support Service was set up in October 2023 as a confidential service for federal parliament employees. In the first nine months of its operation (October 2023 to June 2024), 30 of a total of 339 reports of serious misconduct were received, according to the newspaper. The service initially did not respond to a request for comment. The reports of serious misconduct included sexual assault, stalking and intimidation, according to the report. The newspaper did not say whether any of the cases were referred to police or prosecuted. Government adviser raped colleague The service was set up after a 2021 government report found that one in three people working in Australia's parliament in the capital Canberra had been sexually harassed. In 2023, an Australian senator reported being followed, aggressively approached and inappropriately touched by another senator. In April, an Australian judge found that a former government adviser had raped a colleague in a parliamentary office. Australia had seen a wave of #MeToo allegations in 2022.