Speaking up is no cause for sack

Melbourne street sweeper Shaun Turner’s questioning why an acknowledgement of country was made for the first time at the start of a weekly toolbox meeting of a street cleaning team will strike a chord of approval with many of his fellow citizens. It will upset many others. Either way, voicing a controversial opinion was no justification for Mr Turner’s sacking by the left-wing Darebin City Council in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, as the Fair Work Commission has correctly decided. Commission deputy president Richard Clancy upheld Mr Turner’s unfair dismissal claim and is considering whether he should be reinstated or awarded compensation.

Mr Turner, 60, told the toolbox meeting “if you need to be thanking anyone, it’s the people who have worn the uniform and fought for our country to keep us free”, Ewin Hannan reported last week. During a subsequent meeting with council managers, Mr Turner, ­accompanied by a support person who was Indigenous, said he believed ­acknowledgement of country should only be for sizeable, special occasions, including when international visitors were present. “It’s getting out of hand and people are losing it, it is now being done at the opening of a postage stamp,” he told ­council officers investigating his alleged “serious misconduct”. “I don’t need to be welcomed into my own country.” The council’s chief people ­officer, Yvette Fuller, told Mr ­Turner “we have very strong expectations that an acknowledgement of country is done ­before all formal meetings”.

Mr Clancy found Mr Turner’s dismissal was harsh and disproportionate in the context in which his comments were made. In Monday’s paper, Mr Turner, who voted for the Coalition under Peter Dutton at the May election, told Hannan he was “pale, stale and male” but claimed to “speak for the silent majority”. Regardless of whether he does or does not, his opinion is not illegal; nor is it hate speech. Indigenous leaders such as Noel Pearson and Warren Mundine have cautioned that the use of welcome to country can be overdone or executed wrongly. In a democratic society, free speech matters. Had the Darebin council’s original decision to sack Mr Turner been upheld, it would have set a bad precedent.