The Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Blair has mocked domestic violence leave and suggested ABC staff are seeking to secure it as part of their workplace agreement because the corporation is a “bloodhouse” and employees beat each other up at night.
Blair’s post on the News Corp website, under the headline Tax-funded spousal assault community, has been widely condemned on Twitter for being insensitive about the issue of domestic violence.
“Evidently the ABC employs so many victims of domestic violence that they require their own special leave allowance category – which is interesting, given how many ABC employees are married to or shacked up with other ABC employees,” Blair wrote on his blog on Sunday.
“What kind of carnage-strewn bloodhouse are they operating over there?
“Is that why ABC staff work so few hours – because they’re always recovering from the previous night’s beatings? Why are staffers not pressing charges instead of seeking leave?”
Blair also posted a video featuring a comedy sketch in which a young man repeatedly slaps everyone at a barbecue including small children.
Family violence clauses are commonplace in modern industrial agreements, including among media companies.
The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance had family violence agreements in its log of claims for News Corp Australia employees in the last bargaining round and it has just been endorsed by News Corp members for the new bargaining round.
According to the human rights commission family violence is a workplace issue not in the least because the cost impacts on the economy.
“If no preventative action is taken, the cost [of family violence] is projected to rise to $9.9bn annually by 2021/22. $235m of this $9.9bn will be borne by employers and $609m will be borne in production-related losses,” the commission says.
“Domestic and family violence is not just a private or personal issue. When an employee is living with domestic and family violence, there are often very real costs and negative impacts that flow to the workplace.”
