Mike Welsh.
I’m guessing Noel was trying to be kind.
Katy Gallagher is a smart and capable person. And politically astute. Sufficiently astute at least to play the princess to her advantage.
Once, just before a pre-recorded interview with me for my radio program she coyly said: “Be gentle with me, Mike”.
But after I became a little less gentle, on behalf of many victims of workplace bullying in the ACT Public Service, I was informed by a flunky that “Katy has banned you”. The ban was lifted some time later, but I was not notified.
Apart from some at “The Canberra Times”, Mike Jeffreys and me on 2CC, the Canberra-based media has given Princess Katy a right royal ride. Anointed by Jon Stanhope for the top job, and wholeheartedly endorsed by her mob for the squeaky clean image she projected to the electorate, she’s had a dream run. A dream run aided by a mostly soft, ineffective and self-defeating opposition.
And that “rails run” through politics is about to continue as Gallagher swans off to the Senate leaving behind the hundreds of psychologically damaged Canberrans bullied in the ACT Public Service. And the scores bullied more for daring to speak out.
Out of sheer frustration at being unable to get past Katy’s gatekeeper, on July 29 last year I tweeted @KatieGMLA after a letter I’d received from staffers highlighting serious bullying at an ACT-run department at which the letter said “there would be suicides”.
To her credit, Katy tweeted back “serious allegation deserves better that a tweet. Pl forward any info you have”.
In reply, I sought a guarantee there would be no further bullying as this was almost always central to the issue. I’m still awaiting a reply.
Among many bullying cases of which I was made aware, there was a woman from ACT Health who had been in contact with me over a period of time. She had written to Katy about the way she was gone after by her superiors after she blew the whistle on some inappropriate practices. I contacted her one Sunday afternoon to see how her case was going and was told: “It’s too late, I’m on the roof”.
She was indeed on the roof of a very high building and was planning to jump, such was the pressure she was getting for blowing the whistle on bullying.
Either Gallagher knows of the destructive culture of bullying that exists in the ACT public service or somebody else read those reports from inquiries into bullying at Canberra Hospital that have never been published, which allows her to remain at arm’s length from the political stench attached to the issue and wash her hands of it all as she walks away.
This is an edited version of Mike Welsh’s original blog mockery of shockjockery
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