Dawn Duncan: Otago University law lecturer on Siouxsie Wiles being awarded $20,000 in damages after lengthy dispute

A legal expert says many employers struggle to deal with external threats and harassment risks.

Auckland University microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles has been awarded $20,000 in damages over an employment dispute.

She provided technical expertise as a commentator during the pandemic, and claims the university didn't protect her from resultant threats.

Otago University Law Lecturer Dawn Duncan says the threats weren't coming from her employer, which hinders its ability to identify them and take action.

"They needed to get better advice and they needed to implement it before the emergency situation happened."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Members of the academic community are celebrating the employment courts
ruling in favor of Susie Wilds last night. The court
found that the University of Auckland failed to do enough
to make sure that Susie Wylde's safety was protected while
she was acting as a health commentator during the COVID pandemic.
Number of other familiar figures from the pandemic, like Michael Plank,
Michael Baker Shorn Hendy, have all said this decision is
an important acknowledgment that Susie's public statements on COVID were

(00:24):
part of her job, which is something that the university disputed.
Doctor Dawn Duncan is from the university's University of Otago's
Faculty of Law and is with us. Now, hey, Dawn,
you're there. What should the university have done that they
didn't do?

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah, Well, this area is one that a lot of
New Zealand employers really struggle with because the risks of
harassments and threats and violence are coming from people that
they don't control. Right, They're not your workers that are
making these threats, and you don't always have the ability
to identify them or even take any action. So often

(00:59):
employers struggle, they don't do enough, or they push it
back onto the employee. And what this case is highlighting
is the need for employers and universities to be proactive,
to do proper risk assessments, for individual employees to find
out what's going on in their job, their specific situations,

(01:21):
acknowledge the reality of the job, and then take action.
So what the case was highlighting here is they needed
to get better advice and they needed to implement it
before the emergency situations happened. They needed to listen to
the staff and to really take action to take the

(01:44):
threats seriously.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
So would I mean we could do the risk assessments
and stuff, But then what kind of action would you
take if, for example, Susie Wilds was getting death threats?
Would that be to the extent that they would be
paying for and installing security cameras at her house? Maybe
can considering putting in a safe room, getting some security
guards like would go that far?

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Well, the How's Infected workout says you have to take
all reasonable steps, but what amounts to reasonable depends on
the extent of the risk. So there's a range of
things that they could be doing here, from changing the
way she's working so that she's not being exposed to
those threats, changing the way that perhaps the online technology

(02:28):
is being managed, who's managing that technology. It could include
physical security security at the university. It could include help
in contacting police or other agencies or setting up a
security system at home. It could include just additional support,
extra workload support. It could include counseling. There's a whole

(02:51):
range of things that employers can do, and the people
who think of that advice.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Where do you draw the line between somebody who's commenting
on social media, like on Twitter or Facebook and their
capacity as an academic and then somebody who is also
just like having some banter because you know, in the
private capacity, because the line is often quite blurry on
social media, the line.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Is incredibly blurry, and academic jobs are often incredibly blurry
to start with. There's a lot of things that we
do that are in that weird, slushy service category that
are kind of our jobs and kind of outside of
the strict parameters of our job as well. And media commentary,
public talks. They all sit in that box. So it's

(03:33):
really hard to define an advance.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Yeah, I really appreciate your time. Thank you for talking
us through as Dawn Duncan the University of Otago's Faculty of.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Law for more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive. Listen live
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Speaker 1 (03:45):
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