The Israel Folau saga

[fatprop]

Peter Fitzsimons, the man behind the incredible stadiums campaign, which involved the incredible electoral rout and removal of a government exit polls saying less than 10% of people cared about it

He is quite a fan of weekly taking offence by proxy

 

[Brumby Runner]

This is all starting to get a bit party political if I'm reading the comments correctly.

 

[formerflanker]

Yeah, spot on. Assuming, which is apparently self evident, that all gay people are atheistic.

Alan Jones has never been right about anything and i don't think he's in danger of starting now.

I understand your use of hyperbole to make a point, but didn't Jones' decisions to recruit Alec Evans, give Andrew Slack the captaincy, and put "skylab" Cutler and Steve Williams into the second row lead to a famous Grand Slam tour in '84?
He was right about all those rugby decisions.

 

[formerflanker]

Israel has already had a two week penalty from RA by their timing of the Code of Conduct meeting - he missed last week and the meeting is next Saturday.
Interesting that part of the delay in persecuting a man for his Christian beliefs was caused by RA observing Christian holy days.

One burning question - in the entire history of rugby, has there ever been a situation where a man was told he cannot play for his country because of his Christian beliefs?
Or where his State, the Country, the national coach and national captain openly say he won't play again - before any conciliatory/Code of Conduct meetings?

 

[The Honey Badger]

Thanks Mods for renaming the thread.

Formerflanker, it a pretty fu#ked situation. Up there with RA's axeing of the Force, and NSW Rugby refusal to play a team in GRR.

Copletely mindless.

 

[half]

Colin Kaepernick knelt during the signing of the National Anthem his contract was not renewed as he offended lets call them the right. Kaepernick crime was to protest against police when dealing with black people.

Israel Folau, stated his christian beliefs and has been sacked, lets call it from attacks from the left.

Both players lost their incoming earning capacity, even if both cases where found to be against some greater cause, I argue the penalty is way over the top and falls well outside ""natural justice"" the penalty must fit the crime. We have not even established a crime yet. But wait it was not a crime it was a players code of conduct .

Very interesting times ahead, no one wins no matter what the outcome.

 

[sidelineview]

Not because of his religious beliefs but because he aired his beliefs on social media which is the same as airing his views publically these days.

And you're right about the coach and players being allowed to publicly air their judgements and opinions about him before his hearing. Employees calling the shots? Double standards.

Sounds more like a lynch mob in action rather than adhering to an orderly and correct process to determine an outcome.

 

[Set piece magic]

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/co...u/news-story/3f966dea26aba72171c3e81c5e1ac043

I cannot recommend reading this article enough.

Every single person in this thread should be obligated to because it's really important.

It basically goes through and shows how corporations are increasingly using these code of conduct clauses to censure and control employees.

We've seen it at Universities, in our sporting codes, wherever. The clauses go far and away above protecting employers

I've worked at Big Four Accounting firms where very similar practices where in place and I personally found them sickening. Think controlling what you could bring in for lunch, banning party pies.

We should never ever take social lessons from corporate Australia

 

[Set piece magic]

"Vaguely drafted codes of conduct are a conduit for double standards. And that is why they are bogus legal instruments. Every law student is taught that contracts can be voided for uncertainty. A boss should only ever have power to adversely affect a person’s employment in the clearest and most precise circumstances. It is high time that proliferating codes of conduct are exposed as dangerously vague virtue-signalling instruments with a nasty kick to them, allowing bosses to terminate an employee at will."​

This is why I have for many years thought the "bringing the game into disrepute" clause should just be outright illegal in Australia's Industrial Relations system.

I find it amazing that people emphatically kicked out a prime minister for letting people be made redundant for a "bona fide operational reason" (workchoices), yet "bringing the game into disrepute" is allowed to stay. Remove it from all contracts asap

 

[John S]

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/co...u/news-story/3f966dea26aba72171c3e81c5e1ac043

I cannot recommend reading this article enough.

Every single person in this thread should be obligated to because it's really important.

It basically goes through and shows how corporations are increasingly using these code of conduct clauses to censure and control employees.

We've seen it at Universities, in our sporting codes, wherever. The clauses go far and away above protecting employers

I've worked at Big Four Accounting firms where very similar practices where in place and I personally found them sickening. Think controlling what you could bring in for lunch, banning party pies.

We should never ever take social lessons from corporate Australia

Paywalled?

I've worked for some mid-tier accounting firms (in Sydney and Wollongong) and had some similar conditions as what you described, very disturbing.

 

[Set piece magic]

Ever since the ruling classes of East Germany shamelessly nicknamed the Berlin Wall the Antifaschistischer Schutzwall, the anti-fascist protection wall, it pays to check how those with power use words, pretending to protect us by restricting basic freedoms.​

Those wielding power today favour deliberately innocuous labels to describe new institutional ramparts that limit basic freedoms. And nothing sounds more innocuous than a code of conduct.​

Most read like bad poetry, sweet-sounding words linking lofty aspirations about how people should treat one another in a workplace. Codes of conduct have become a neat way to virtue-signal your political correctness too. No socially progressive word or phrase is left out, usually highly contestable, offering no great guidance for the reader or the employee.​

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Drawn up by ever-expanding human resources departments, these slick instruments are found inside just about every company, organisation, government body, sporting club or other group made up of more than a dozen people. Codes of conduct are sprouting like weeds, rarely trimmed for meaning, only ever augmented by more and more prose pickled in sugary sentiments.​

But don’t be fooled by the vanilla label. Increasingly, a code of conduct is becoming an employer’s power trip, their weapon of choice in the workplace to limit the basic freedoms of employees. And these deliberately vague terms become expensive legal battles for sacked employees. Two examples in the past two weeks. Last week, Peter Ridd, the highly respected professor of physics, won his court case against James Cook University after he was sacked for offending the university’s code of conduct.​

JCU used its code of conduct to full effect. When Ridd raised doubts about the quality of science claiming the Great Barrier Reef was being damaged, he was accused of misconduct, not acting in a collegial way, disparaging fellow academics, not upholding the integrity and good reputation of JCU. It made no difference to the code’s enforcers that Ridd raised his concerns in a polite and measured manner, making clear that fellow academics were honest, though mistaken, in their work.​

​

When Ridd raised funds online to help pay for his expensive legal battle with JCU, the university accused him of breaching the code of conduct. When Ridd sent an email to a student, attaching a newspaper article headed “for your amusement”, the physics professor of 30 years’ standing was censured for acting contrary to an earlier “no satire direction” when JCU told Ridd not to trivialise, satirise or parody the university’s disciplinary action against him. When Ridd mentioned JCU’s “Orwellian” attitude to free speech in an email to another supportive student, JCU censured him for another breach of the code of conduct.​

Note that JCU discovered the offending email by trawling through Ridd’s correspondence in a distinctly Orwellian manner.​

On it went. Actions and words parsed and censured, secrecy sought under JCU’s code of conduct to protect the university, not Ridd.​

Last week, the Federal Court rejected JCU’s 17 claims against Ridd under the university’s code of conduct. Federal Court judge Salvatore Vasta made clear that JCU’s fundamental error was to assume its code of conduct “is the lens through which all behaviour must be viewed”. Rather than starting from the principle of intellectual freedom set out in clause 14 of JCU’s enterprise agreement with academics, a core value that goes to the mission of a university, JCU used its lengthy and loquacious code of conduct to restrain Ridd. Therefore, it did not occur to JCU, or to academics who complained about Ridd, that the best response was to provide evidence Ridd’s claims were wrong. The enforcers chose censure and sacking over debate.​

Rejecting JCU’s position, Vasta found the intellectual freedom clause is “the lens through which the behaviour of Professor Ridd must be viewed”. The judge said intellectual freedom allows people to express opinions without fear of reprisal. That is how Charles Darwin broke free from the constraints of creationism and how Albert Einstein challenged the constraints of Newtonian physics.​

JCU will surely appeal this decision. Other universities will also be hoping for a favourable legal determination that upholds their codes of conduct as the final word, trumping even an intellectual freedom clause in an enterprise agreement with academics.​

All things considered then, we have reached a shameful state of affairs: university leaders spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to uphold coercive powers they have given themselves under codes of conduct but expending no intellectual effort in considering the need for a truly liberating charter of intellectual freedom such as that drawn up by the University of Chicago and adopted by dozens of other American colleges.​

This augurs poorly for Wallabies star Israel Folau, sacked last week by Rugby Australia using its code of conduct. Folau’s sacking was, in many ways, inevitable. If a university cannot uphold basic freedoms for academics to express honestly held views, what hope for a sporting code?​

Folau’s contract with RA does not include a freedom of expression clause, but neither does it include a clause telling him to stop posting offensive views on social media. In another messy, expensive and protracted legal battle, the basic right to free speech will depend on whether RA’s code of conduct is the final legal word on Folau’s future.​

RA could have left it to us in civil society to exercise our powers of condemnation against Folau for his ignorant and divisive comments. We could have enlightened Folau that gay people do not deserve to be in hell for their sexuality. Instead, RA became the enforcer, turning a goose into a martyr by using the same clumsy stick JCU used against Ridd.​

What grates, more generally, is the selective approach to who gets hung, drawn and quartered these days. The Australian is aware that senior ABC staff have raised concerns with ABC management about divisive statements made by some of their so-called “talent”. Fairfax writer, ABC host and gay rights activist Benjamin Law happily tweeted during the same-sex marriage debate that he was “wondering if I’d hate-f..k all the anti-gay MPs in parliament if it meant they got the homophobia out of their system”. A few years ago, Josh Szeps, now an ABC host, expressed his view during a YouTube chat with Joe Rogan that it should be legal for a woman to kill her unborn baby right up to nine months’ gestation, and sometimes after birth. Are these statements any less abhorrent than Folau’s views?​

Vaguely drafted codes of conduct are a conduit for double standards. And that is why they are bogus legal instruments. Every law student is taught that contracts can be voided for uncertainty. A boss should only ever have power to adversely affect a person’s employment in the clearest and most precise circumstances. It is high time that proliferating codes of conduct are exposed as dangerously vague virtue-signalling instruments with a nasty kick to them, allowing bosses to terminate an employee at will.​

 

[Slim 293]

Israel has already had a two week penalty from RA by their timing of the Code of Conduct meeting - he missed last week and the meeting is next Saturday.
Interesting that part of the delay in persecuting a man for his Christian beliefs was caused by RA observing Christian holy days.

One burning question - in the entire history of rugby, has there ever been a situation where a man was told he cannot play for his country because of his Christian beliefs?
Or where his State, the Country, the national coach and national captain openly say he won't play again - before any conciliatory/Code of Conduct meetings?

But he's not being persecuted or punished for his Christian beliefs......... can we just stop propagating this downright falsehood?

 

[fatprop]

Yeah, the question "what value does a HR department provide?" is always an interesting one. When they started bracket creeping into nebulous shit "culture policies" ..............

 

[fatprop]

But he's not being persecuted or punished for his Christian beliefs... can we just stop propagating this downright falsehood?

Well, he is really, it may be polished up and deemed all about the "code of conduct" but in the end it is all about his religious freedom vs a sexuality he believes is wrong and will send them to hell. (A pretty stupid premise, but so are most religious ideas)

 

[Slim 293]

Well, he is really, it may be polished up and deemed all about the "code of conduct" but in the end it is all about his religious freedom vs a sexuality he believes is wrong and will send them to hell. (A pretty stupid premise, but so are most religious ideas)

But he's not - he's being punished for repeatedly expressing homophobic comments in a public forum............. and while those views might make up part of his religious beliefs, it is the only factor that's seen him breach the code of conduct.

 

[Ignoto]

Those same Codes of Conduct's help protect your wives, girlfriends, sisters, mothers from some pretty ordinary dickheads in the workplace too.

Anyway, that article jumps around a bit but for this particular case of Folau I don't accept this following part at all.

Every law student is taught that contracts can be voided for uncertainty. A boss should only ever have power to adversely affect a person’s employment in the clearest and most precise circumstances.

The story we're getting from the RA paints a pretty damning picture then.

"It's very disappointing from my perspective because I had a very direct and specific conversation with him about the expectations that I had," Castle said.

"He accepted that conversation, he said that he understood that conversation, he shook my hand at the end of that conversation, said that he was very clear of it, and yet he has gone off and done what he's done."

"It was made clear to Israel in writing and verbally when I met with him last year that any social media posts or commentary that in any way were disrespectful to people because of their sexuality would result in disciplinary action," Castle said.

 

[Set piece magic]

Code of conduct doesn't stop that -- the fair work act with its provisions for bullying, workplace harassment, unfair dismissal and otherwise does

 

[KOB1987]

Those same Codes of Conduct's help protect your wives, girlfriends, sisters, mothers from some pretty ordinary dickheads in the workplace too.

Anyway, that article jumps around a bit but for this particular case of Folau I don't accept this following part at all.



The story we're getting from the RA paints a pretty damning picture then.

You're assuming that the story RA told the media is true. Just saying..

 

[fatprop]

But he's not - he's being punished for repeatedly expressing homophobic comments in a public forum..... and while those views might make up part of his religious beliefs, it is the only factor that's seen him breach the code of conduct.

And we will see if it was a legal instruction

 

[Ignoto]

Code of conduct doesn't stop that -- the fair work act with its provisions for bullying, workplace harassment, unfair dismissal and otherwise does

I didn't say stop, they're additional tools and if you read through them, they encompass the legislative requirements and help an organisation demonstrate that they told an employee about their requirements. That then stops them from turning around and saying "I didn't know that was wrong, I had no idea what the legislation was/is".

You're assuming that the story RA told the media is true. Just saying..

While true, RA have so far, 'controlled' the narrative so it's difficult to know what Folau's side of the story is.