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Speaker 1: Members of the academic community are celebrating the employment courts

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Speaker 1: ruling in favor of Susie Wilds last night. The court

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Speaker 1: found that the University of Auckland failed to do enough

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Speaker 1: to make sure that Susie Wylde's safety was protected while

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Speaker 1: she was acting as a health commentator during the COVID pandemic.

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Speaker 1: Number of other familiar figures from the pandemic, like Michael Plank,

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Speaker 1: Michael Baker Shorn Hendy, have all said this decision is

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Speaker 1: an important acknowledgment that Susie's public statements on COVID were

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Speaker 1: part of her job, which is something that the university disputed.

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Speaker 1: Doctor Dawn Duncan is from the university's University of Otago's

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Speaker 1: Faculty of Law and is with us. Now, hey, Dawn,

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Speaker 1: you're there. What should the university have done that they

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Speaker 1: didn't do?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, this area is one that a lot of

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Speaker 2: New Zealand employers really struggle with because the risks of

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Speaker 2: harassments and threats and violence are coming from people that

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Speaker 2: they don't control. Right, They're not your workers that are

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Speaker 2: making these threats, and you don't always have the ability

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Speaker 2: to identify them or even take any action. So often

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Speaker 2: employers struggle, they don't do enough, or they push it

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Speaker 2: back onto the employee. And what this case is highlighting

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Speaker 2: is the need for employers and universities to be proactive,

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Speaker 2: to do proper risk assessments, for individual employees to find

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Speaker 2: out what's going on in their job, their specific situations,

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Speaker 2: acknowledge the reality of the job, and then take action.

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Speaker 2: So what the case was highlighting here is they needed

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Speaker 2: to get better advice and they needed to implement it

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Speaker 2: before the emergency situations happened. They needed to listen to

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Speaker 2: the staff and to really take action to take the

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Speaker 2: threats seriously.

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Speaker 1: So would I mean we could do the risk assessments

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Speaker 1: and stuff, But then what kind of action would you

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Speaker 1: take if, for example, Susie Wilds was getting death threats?

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Speaker 1: Would that be to the extent that they would be

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Speaker 1: paying for and installing security cameras at her house? Maybe

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Speaker 1: can considering putting in a safe room, getting some security

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Speaker 1: guards like would go that far?

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Speaker 2: Well, the How's Infected workout says you have to take

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Speaker 2: all reasonable steps, but what amounts to reasonable depends on

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Speaker 2: the extent of the risk. So there's a range of

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Speaker 2: things that they could be doing here, from changing the

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Speaker 2: way she's working so that she's not being exposed to

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Speaker 2: those threats, changing the way that perhaps the online technology

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Speaker 2: is being managed, who's managing that technology. It could include

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Speaker 2: physical security security at the university. It could include help

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Speaker 2: in contacting police or other agencies or setting up a

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Speaker 2: security system at home. It could include just additional support,

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Speaker 2: extra workload support. It could include counseling. There's a whole

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Speaker 2: range of things that employers can do, and the people

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Speaker 2: who think of that advice.

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Speaker 1: Where do you draw the line between somebody who's commenting

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Speaker 1: on social media, like on Twitter or Facebook and their

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Speaker 1: capacity as an academic and then somebody who is also

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Speaker 1: just like having some banter because you know, in the

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Speaker 1: private capacity, because the line is often quite blurry on

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Speaker 1: social media, the line.

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Speaker 2: Is incredibly blurry, and academic jobs are often incredibly blurry

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Speaker 2: to start with. There's a lot of things that we

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Speaker 2: do that are in that weird, slushy service category that

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Speaker 2: are kind of our jobs and kind of outside of

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Speaker 2: the strict parameters of our job as well. And media commentary,

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Speaker 2: public talks. They all sit in that box. So it's

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Speaker 2: really hard to define an advance.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I really appreciate your time. Thank you for talking

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Speaker 1: us through as Dawn Duncan the University of Otago's Faculty of.

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Speaker 2: Law for more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive. Listen live

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