Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I want to put on the record the experience of a heroic young Australian, a young woman who deserves a medal for bravery and resilience. AMP tried to silence her. Tonight I use my platform as a female Labor senator to give her words a public voice: 'I am a former employee of AMP and I'm a sexual harassment survivor. Through the last eight weeks I have relived my experience and it is with utter dismay that I see the AMP system remains as it ever was. As a junior female employee, I endured consistent and systematic harassment at AMP from men at the peer level to executive level. After speaking up, I was bullied, victimised and ultimately silenced.

My time at AMP has destroyed my life and it's taken everything that I have to rebuild parts of it, yet my life will never be the same again. The perpetrators, including those who swept me under the rug, have gone on to thrive. During my tenure, I raised formal complaints with the company, including via external legal representatives, but none of these were resolved safely let alone satisfactorily. Two of these cases were escalated. But in one instance the perpetrator was given a warning and allowed to remain. He also harassed another colleague, who left the industry as a result of this and sustained sexual harassment by two managers. The other, my manager, was repeatedly promoted.

The harassment I suffered ranged from receiving sexually explicit photos and emails expressing a desire to have sex with me, constant and public propositioning, including in front of some of the company's largest clients, physical harassment, including being touched repeatedly by a leadership team member at the office, a senior colleague groping me off site and another forcing himself on me by rubbing his genitals against me at a work function. Finally and, in my experience, most egregiously, my direct manager threatened to end my career if I did not follow his sexual wishes while alone with him on a work trip. In this last experience, I felt in fear of my physical safety. I knew, as a woman does by a certain age, that I was at his physical mercy. My saving grace was that he was blind drunk and, as he went to pour himself another drink, I ran. I immediately called a friend. Distraught and terrified, I could not stop shaking.

I had been down the path previously of raising a harassment complaint, so I knew I needed help to be taken seriously. I engaged legal representatives, who helped me draft a letter. They told me these cases were very difficult as they required me to lodge in court in order for organisations to take them seriously, which would mean public disclosure of my name and likely difficulty in future career endeavours. They told me that organisations often take their chances, knowing that women will be unwilling to risk ruining their lives and unable to afford hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees. I therefore felt I had no choice but to seek internal resolution, cautiously. I requested an apology and removal from his area, coverage of my legal and medical costs and sexual harassment training for the organisation. I did not ask for more, as I was petrified, inexperienced and in a financially perilous position as a young employee. Like Julia Szlakowski, my experience warranted an independent investigation, except that in my case an internal lawyer undertook this so-called independent work.

Over the next several months I was placed on medical leave and was directly discouraged from lodging a worker's compensation request by a member of the executive leadership team. I was ultimately bewildered and suffered from trauma induced anxiety, depression and insomnia. I did not understand what was happening. I was explicitly and repeatedly told that I was not allowed to speak to anyone about the matter. The friend and colleague that I asked to accompany me to the first meeting was told they would be terminated if they spoke a word about the matter and that they were not allowed to accompany me again. The man on the leadership team who was well known for his uninvited caressing of younger female employees suddenly stepped in to manage the investigation and subsequent communication with me. I was treated like a criminal. I was called in for cross-examination, where I was asked accusing questions as though I was making it up or taking it too seriously. I was asked whether I truly believed the act actually entailed sexual harassment. Throughout this process I was systematically broken down, isolated and bullied.

After two months of dragged-out proceedings I was a shadow of my former self. I was given an unsigned report that declared my manager had made a serious transgression against me. Despite the report finding that I was the victim and not the guilty party that I had been made to feel like, I was then told I would be given a role in the same division as my manager—reporting to that same handsy leader who had run the investigation—and that no other reparations would be made. I was given five days to sign an NDA or lose my job. I am almost certain that this was illegal. I had run out of funds to pay my lawyers and I was physically and psychologically destroyed, so I signed.

It's difficult to explain how vulnerable I felt during this period. I have never felt more powerless and worthless. I was actively put under extreme pressure to make a decision while completely alone. I felt desperate and cornered. Prior to this I was forthright, outgoing and well spoken, but now I was at the mercy of higher-ups and I knew I was just one small person who would be crushed by the force of one of Australia's largest companies. Nonetheless, I thought it was obvious that they would do the right thing because my harassment was unequivocal. I hoped that by agreeing I would salvage my career, retain my unblemished reputation and keep my livelihood. I was wrong.

My new job was a clear demotion: I was photocopying documents after having had a significant and technical client-facing role. I was also told by my new manager that he wasn't interested in what happened to me and that I was required to attend meetings with my harasser. I discovered that my harasser had told others I was dismissed from his area due to performance issues, which was untrue. My mental health deteriorated further. Instead of having a new beginning, I paid penance for speaking up. In the meetings with my former manager I would physically cower. I stopped speaking almost altogether to anyone at or outside work. This became untenable, but I could not afford to leave. I did not have the capacity to find another job; I was too broken.

On my final day at AMP, my former manager entered the elevator in which I was standing alone. He came up to me, stood inches away and then growled at me, bursting into laughter as he did. By the time the lift doors opened on the ground floor I was on the floor, sobbing. My time at AMP changed me from an optimistic, ambitious professional to a shadow. It ended my career in finance and resulted in irrevocable long-term damage to me that I carry every day. I was a promising and highly-skilled individual with tenacity and self assuredness. I had been earmarked by the firm as high potential and was on a peer level with men who were a decade ahead of me in their careers. I worked my heart out to get where I was and I carried the men I worked for. My experience of being harassed and the subsequent victimisation I suffered has deeply wounded me and has resulted in several false starts in finding a new career. In pure financial terms it has reduced my earnings so far by many hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more.

I have also invested tens of thousands of dollars to re-skill and continue receiving psychological support. This is a hidden cost. When this happens to women in the period of prime potential in their careers it snatches away a lifetime. I was driven out of my career, in which I'd invested over a decade of study and experience. I was thrown out of the industry and hung out to dry while the perpetrators not only remained but thrived. The cost was immeasurable to me and yet they were rewarded. The message was clear to victims: you will lose everything if you speak up.

There are many good people at AMP, including some of my closest friends. Some are wonderful leaders who are focused on a strong and inclusive culture. This was certainly the case in one part of the business, where such behaviour had been systematically eradicated over recent years. However, it only takes a handful of rotten apples to spoil the barrel and, in this case, it's obvious who those rotten apples are. Not only are they the direct perpetrators but they are the people who enable them. They are equally, if not more, culpable. They are the ones who hold the power to change but they do not. They only see what matters to themselves, and that is too often their power, their money and their public reputations—for which they are willing to risk everything but themselves. They are inherently self-serving and, in being so, are unable to govern an organisation with the responsibility that leadership brings. Leadership, in its truest form, requires doing that which is difficult. Leadership is not self-service and cronyism, nor the perpetuation of a corrupt system that crushes the vulnerable. At AMP, the gatekeepers have until now continued to enable a system where women and the most vulnerable, as I once was, are abused. This sends a clear message not only to the good people at AMP but to our broader communities about what is acceptable. For past, present and future victims, what hope do we have?'

This particular story is like so many stories. That is the end of her testimony, but this particular story is like so many stories shared with me by men and women who are in the financial services sector. It has to stop. Boe Pahari was fined half a million dollars for doing something a lot like what I have just recorded—for Australians to understand what's happening in the biggest companies in this country. Mr Pahari still got promoted. Well, yes, he then got demoted, but he still has a job with AMP. The woman subjected to his harassment lost her job and her career. This cannot continue. Australia is better than this. Come on, corporate Australia, surely you can destroy this cultural stain on our nation. (Time expired)