Office affairs: is it anyone’s business?

Amber Harrison. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

Why? That is the question that has boggled the minds of people watching the seven-month-long Seven West Media sex saga. Why did billionaire philanthropist Kerry Stokes stand by his man? Why — when news of an extramarital affair between Seven chief executive Tim Worner and one of the company’s executive assistants, Amber Harrison, first broke — did Stokes not cut Worner loose?

Why stick with him through the long and expensive lawsuit? Through the oceans of bad publicity? Through the gags at the ­Logies, the cartoons drawn at Seven’s expense; and through the sinking of his beloved company’s share price?

We’ve all heard Harrison’s side of the story: she says Seven’s decision to gag her after she went public with the affair is a textbook example of “how many ways you can screw a girl”. For sure, she chose those words carefully.

Harrison believes business in Australia is a “boys’ club” with men at the top and women beneath them, getting royally screwed on pay and promotion, and punted when they speak up. And she has many supporters.

Kerry Stokes.

But Stokes, who owns Seven, sees things differently. This wasn’t about bullying Harrison. This was about his responsibility, as the boss, and Seven’s legal responsibility as an employer, to protect all of those other employees — and they were all women, too — who had been named as adulterers in documents that Harrison was sending out to journalists.

“We took this action because Ms Harrison was making wildly false and disgusting allegations in the press against innocent people,” Stokes tells The Weekend Australian. “We only took action to protect innocent people and the company from those baseless accusations.

“This has been a very difficult situation for the company. We have women in 50 per cent of our senior executive positions and we are regarded as one of the top employers in Australia. Ms Harrison maliciously named innocent ­people. That caused the board the most difficulty. We then had to focus on protecting other people within the company who had no involvement with her.”

Stokes says all of this is “exposed by two judgments in the NSW Supreme Court” — the last of which was handed down by Justice John Sackar on Monday. And he is right: that judgment emphatically finds for Seven.

It also lays out the timeline: in December 2012, Harrison, then in her mid-30s, but now 40, was working for Pacific Magazines, in a different building, in a different suburb, from Worner, who was the chief executive of Seven West Media. They met and started a consensual ­affair. Some months later, they started working in the same office, and that created problems for Harrison, who thought Worner was ignoring her.

Tim Worner.

The relationship began to falter. In mid-2014, Seven ran an internal investigation into Har­rison’s credit card spending. Seven has always said this action was not aimed directly at her but that everyone’s cards were being audited; she says it was an ­attempt to get her out and so, when she was called into human resources to explain some dodgy-looking transactions, she disclosed that she was having an affair with Worner.

Suddenly, this was no longer a human resources matter. Stokes would have to be told. He called Worner into his office, and told him he wanted to know everything. Worner confessed to the ­affair but said the allegations of stealing and drug use made by Harrison were not true. Stokes told Worner he was an idiot and docked his pay by $100,000.

But that was not the end of the matter. The credit card audit was ongoing and by September 2014 accounting firm Deloitte had found what Sackar’s judgment described as “$180,000 worth of unauthorised personal expenses” on credit cards used by Harrison. She engaged workplace lawyers. By November, Seven had drawn up a deed under which Harrison would agree “not to communicate with the media about her relationship with Mr Worner … whether this be by giving interviews, off-the-record comments, background or social media”.

She also had to return “all company property” and “keep confidential all confidential informa­tion” and return “all company papers and documents in her possession, including text messages, in paper, computers and ­mobile phones”.

In return, she would receive a settlement, totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars, some of which would go to her lawyers.

But the deal fell apart. Harrison says Seven stopped paying her the money in instalments as agreed, apparently because it believed she still had company property in her possession that she could leak at any point, and it was right because that December Harrison began emailing her dossier of allegations about the sex lives of some of Seven’s biggest stars to pretty much every media journalist in Australia. Some of those allegations, all of which have been denied by the women in question, subsequently found their way on to the internet.

That is what Stokes means when he says he took action to protect “innocent people and the company”. The allegations were, he says, “baseless”. The company had no choice other than to gag her. And Sackar agreed. His judgment makes plain that Harrison engaged in “numerous breaches”, not only of the deed but also of her employment contract. Moreover, the breaches were “persistent and flagrant”.

Maddi Blomberg, who had an affair with Simon Lethlean.

Richard Simkiss.

Harrison released emails, and notes on company letterhead, and much else, which is why Stokes says “this has always been about trying to get confidential information back to the company, which has so far paid her more than $420,000”.

It has been a saga, to be sure, and Stokes is no doubt hoping it’s now behind them, but what impact will the Seven story have on the rest of corporate Australia?

Its impact is already being felt. Midway through the coverage of Seven’s woes, insurance giant QBE was forced to announce it had docked the pay of its chief executive, John Neal, from $2.76 million to $2.21m — effectively a $550,000 haircut — for what were described in the annual report as “personal decisions … ­inconsistent with the board’s ­expectations”.

What QBE was trying to say was that Neal had separated from his wife and was in a new relationship with his former personal ­assistant.

Never in the history of corporate Australia could anyone remember anyone’s pay being docked in such a public way for something like that. Then, at a press conference in Melbourne last week, AFL boss Gillon McLachlan announced that two AFL senior executives, Simon Lethlean and Richard Simkiss, would be leaving the business because they’d engaged in extramarital affairs with younger, female staff.

McLachlan didn’t say as much, but around the traps people are saying that the AFL, which depends heavily on female supporters, and especially on mums to get their kids into Auskick and barracking for life, didn’t want to “do a Channel Seven” and get rid of the women. So it got rid of the men, who resigned, despite the fact neither of the women involved in the ­affairs had complained about poor treatment.

If the AFL expected a hearty round of applause, it was not forthcoming. Feminist commentator Catharine Lumby told 3AW radio in Melbourne: “For goodness sake, that’s no one’s business — it’s a matter between the man and the woman. It’s a fact of life, a lot of people meet their life partners at work. The only thing I’m concerned about is if it’s safe and consensual.’’

Herald Sun commentator ­Andrew Bolt agreed, telling readers he met his own wife at work back when he was a cadet journalist, adding: “By what right do bosses sack executives who’ve had sex with consenting colleagues?”

And this would seem to be the general view: you can’t stop people having sex with their colleagues, nor should you try. The workplace is a reasonable place to meet a life partner. Michelle and Barack Obama met at work, when he became an intern at a Chicago law office (she was assigned to mentor him). Bill and Melinda Gates met at Microsoft. Closer to home, Gerry Harvey met his wife, Katie Page, at work, and today they are one of Australia’s most dynamic couples. Former Macquarie banker Bill Moss met his wife, Lata, at Macquarie’s glass headquarters, and he says it’s stupid to try to police the human heart.

“It is the most logical place to meet someone because you spend most of your time there,” Moss tells The Weekend Australian. “My father met my mother at work. That meeting resulted in a long happy marriage — and, of course, me. I suppose if that law was in place then, I wouldn’t be here.”

Ali Gronow, who had an affair with Richard Simkiss. Simon Lethlean.

Ali Gronow, who had an affair with Richard Simkiss. Simon Lethlean.

Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins is reviewing the AFL’s Respect and Responsibility policy, and the commission suggested that it therefore wasn’t appropriate for her to comment on the matter.

But it has done a report on Dating in the Workplace that says it is “common for relationships and ­attractions to develop in the workplace”.

The key for employers is to “ensure that these circumstances do not lead to incidents of sexual harassment”, which is very clearly defined as “unwanted or unwelcome sexual behaviour”.

“It has nothing to do with ­mutual attraction or consensual behaviour,” the report says. Meaning: sex can happen between people who meet through the business. That doesn’t necessarily make it any of ours.