AFL & RL are full of bullying & this is actually promoted to no limit. Any contact sport is a form of bullying where the participant is too stupid to realise that he is being exploited by a much smarter although very cowardly businessman who rakes in the money..

I think the real take home message is that if you give people unrealistic expectations based on over-broad definitions, you end up with a stack of frivolous complaints. Less than 0.1% of the complaints received were even deemed worthy of serious investigation or any form of action at all! If you listen to the victimologists, however, you'd swear that the Australian workplace was crawling with abusive bosses and terrified employees.

It's this expansion of definitions that is the problem.

Beats the hell out of me why adults aren't capable of dealing with bullying themselves. And yeah, I agree that a percentage are for personal gain.

Antiseptic

Your correct but remember we have ALP unions - jobs for the boys.

Somebody of course has to investigate to bogus claim- speaking of wasting $

cheers

Dear Antiseptic,

As far as bogus claims of victimisation of bullying? I guess there will always be people who will abuse the system, the same
as there are people who will be genuine cases of bullying. Bullying does go on. And should be taken seriously. As Pelican pointed out - bogus claims will be found out by people trained and experienced in this area. I'm not talking about simple conflicts between people. Bullying as I understand it - is when people repeatedly and intentionally use words or actions against someone,
to cause distress or risk to their wellbeing. When a youngster commits suicide after being bullied at school - it's something that simply can't be ignored or brushed aside as bogus. The same goes for
an office worker - who doesn't know who to turn to - and the problem is ignored at work because no one wants to be known as a trouble-maker
or to "rock the boat." There are all sorts of people in this world -
and some unfortunately - are in positions of influence over others - who enjoy making others feel helpless. Serious problems do exist.
Not everyone is a bogus victim. But we should recognise the fact
that if a report is made - it should be investigated - until the truth
is know. Otherwise, we discourage genuine cases of abuse and bullying
not to be reported. And I'm sure that's something nobody would want to see happen.

Lexi, yes, bad things do happen, but legislating for the general populace based on extreme events only leads to bad outcomes. Let's face it, out of the 6000 people who were sufficiently vexed to complain, 5940 didn't meet the criterion to even be investigated. There seems to be no data in the story on whether any action was taken against any of the 60 or so accused who were investigated.

Nizkor calls the argument that you put forward an Appeal to Emotion
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-emotion.html.

Given the efforts being made to broaden the definition of violence in the Family Law Act to include:
"4AB Definition of family violence etc.

15 (1) For the purposes of this Act, family violence means violent,
threatening or other behaviour by a person that coerces or controls
a member of the persons family (the family member), or causes
the family member to be fearful."

Apparently 99.9% of complainants to Worksafe thought they had cause to think they'd been bullied while an objective assessment showed otherwise. The FLA doesn't even bother with such fripperies as objectivity, relying entirely on the "victim's" claim to have been caused to be fearful. No guidance is provided as to what might be required to sustain this claim, although in line with State Legislation, I'm sure there will be none at all. IOW, it effectively presents reverse onus of proof to the accused and I have to say that I don't think that any such proof could be provided, since it's hard to prove you didn't say something when there are no witnesses. Certainly when I was faced with a DVO application from the ex I could not effectively refute the nebulous claims made and never tested, so after spending 7 months fighting it, I accepted without admission.

It is important to remember something that seems to have been forgotten by the victimologists and indeed the lawmakers - people tell lies for advantage sometimes, even the ones who claim to be victims.