Editorial: Corrections sacking a poor option

Josie Bullock, the probation officer officially sacked last week, might take consolation from the fact that her case has at least garnered a reaction from the Corrections Department. Right now, department officials are trying to cobble together a policy that balances Maori protocol and women's rights. Unfortunately, that response smacks of the muddled thinking that has pervaded this sorry affair. The outcome, if any, will be a hybrid horror that satisfies no one and solves nothing.

Clear analysis would suggest the Corrections Department had only one reasonable conclusion to reach when assessing Josie Bullock's complaint of sexism, after she was asked to stand behind men at a poroporoaki at Panmure last December. This graduation ceremony for a group of male offenders was being held on department property. As such, the gender equity rights that govern behaviour in virtually every other aspect of society had to prevail.

It would be different if the poroporoaki had taken place on a marae. There, protocol that demands women sit at the back to protect them from the potential menace of strangers can hold sway. If Maori women feel such a policy is demeaning in this day and age, that is a battle they must fight. But there was no such complicating feature in this case, only a well-meaning but ultimately overextended Government department arm reaching out to a group that is over-represented in its sphere of concern.

The department has taken refuge from the core issue of the case. Her dismissal, it says, is for breaching Corrections' code of conduct by talking "without authorisation" to the media about her concerns. Josie Bullock, for her part, says she went public only because of an apparent lack of progress at investigating her complaint of sexism. Whatever that state of affairs, the widespread reaction to her case suggests her disclosure of department practice was very much in the public interest. Enough, perhaps, to justify her being thought of as a whistleblower who felt a duty to speak out over a serious issue.

Certainly, that defence is strengthened by the department's response to a similar complaint three years ago. Then, according to former Act MP Stephen Franks, another female probation officer complaining of similar discrimination went through the correct channels, only to see no action taken.

Given the department's response this time, it is easy to see how that could happen. In seeking to balance cultural sensitivity and women's rights, the temptation will always be to take the path of least likely resistance. To hope, in effect, that female officers will be too well-mannered and too sensitive to some sort of greater departmental good to complain. Yet given obvious instances where Maori protocol and gender rights are at loggerheads, and where women stand to feel belittled, this was always an unsustainable approach.

Josie Bullock has asked the Human Rights Review Tribunal to consider her case. It should deliver a final, and very obvious, word. And that should put an end to cultural practices that clearly breach human rights legislation on Corrections Department property. It should also halt the misguided attempt to somehow marry the two into an acceptable package.

This was not, as the department claims, a case of "serious misconduct" by an employee which caused it deep embarrassment. Any wounds have been self-inflicted, and the consequence of an unwillingness to grasp the realities and requirements of modern society.