Des Houghton: Complaints over Qld Rail ‘f*** list’ brushed off
Sleazy male staffers at a Queensland Rail hub rated their female colleagues’ sexual desirability out of 10, but complaints went nowhere.
Opinion
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Women at a major Queensland Rail hub were awarded points out of 10 for their sexual desirability by sleazy male colleagues.
A QR executive who raised the alarm and wrote a damning report on the sexism believed complaints from women at the Rail Management Centre at Brisbane’s Bowen Hills were not properly investigated.
“The women were rated on their sexual desirability,” he told me.
“Pardon my language, but it was called a f*** list.
“It rated women from one to 10.”
Those who got the most points were deemed the winners, he said.
“I reported that through to HR and I believe they sent a couple of people down there (to Bowen Hills) to speak to people,” the executive said.
The whistleblower, who has since left QR, said his aim was to change a sexist culture at the hub.
He has raised several other allegations against Queensland Rail, including the neglect of disabled staff and passengers, political interference, safety issues and tactics to hide bad news from Parliament and the media.
He also has concerns over treatment of war veteran Marcus Saltmarsh, who was repeatedly rebuffed in his efforts to develop a block of units for the disabled near a railway crossing at Alderley on Brisbane’s northside.
Saltmarsh, a career soldier who served in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan, said he was “messed around” by QR for six years.
The sexist game officially came to light after two staff surveys known as QR Engage uncovered discontent with workers accusing some of their superiors of being bullies.
The first survey in October 2020 was followed by another in March 2022 in which staff reported there had been little improvement.
The Bowen Hills sex appeal controversy was raised by staff at a QR Engage debriefing.
“I put it in writing to make sure something happened,” the whistleblower said.
He said the allegations were detailed and “very clear”.
He said the management centre at Bowen Hills was a male-dominated workplace with roughly 20 women – about 10 per cent of the workplace.
It is a train-holding yard and a major communications centre
where the progress of trains on 800km of lines are tracked on computer screens.
A QR spokeswoman said complaints had been made anonymously and an investigation found no evidence to substantiate the allegation.
The whistleblower said one of his superiors just shrugged it off.
Later, he was told his report had “caused a stir” in senior management ranks.
“I was told a couple of people went out there (to Bowen Hills) and did a couple of interviews,” he said.
“But nothing was ever reported back, and I’ve been told subsequently nothing has changed.
“I downloaded all my emails before I left.”
The complaints came from female public servants who had been transferred to head office in the CBD from Bowen Hills.
One of the survey respondents said working at QR was like being in Game of Thrones.
The surveys containing the names of executives accused of bullying were sent to the board.
“It was very clear as to what was reported,” the source said.
He said an outside firm was commissioned to study wider bullying allegations raised by an executive who was no stranger to conflict.
She raised concerns about what she believed was improper conduct.
“An independent investigator came in and interviewed a whole lot of us. Once again it went nowhere … it was swept under the carpet,’’ the man said.
He said staff were taught how to conceal improper behaviour and bad news.
“What we used to do in QR was to mark everything ‘HR in confidence’ or ‘commercial in confidence’ so that if a FOI (Freedom of Information search) was put in we wouldn’t have to provide it,” he said.
“It was always a standard thing. We were always into that way of thinking to put everything under ‘commercial in confidence’.”
That made it exempt from Freedom of Information searches, known in Queensland as Right to Information.
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Originally published as Des Houghton: Complaints over Qld Rail ‘f*** list’ brushed off
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