Teacher Bullying in Queensland Schools - The Bad Apple Bullies Blog.

Letter to David Solomon : Page 1.

Dr David Solomon AM, Chair,

FOI Independent Review Panel,

GPO Box 5236, Brisbane,

Queensland 4001

March 6, 2008

Dear Dr Solomon,

Thank you for the opportunity to make a submission in relation to the administration of Freedom of Information in Queensland.

I hope that the Independent Review Panel will not allow themselves to be abused as puppets to destroy Queenslanders' rights to Freedom of Information.

Freedom of Information can sometimes seem to be the only Queensland government "accountability process" that is functioning.

Without the right to Freedom of Information, Queensland teachers and other Queensland public servants would have no workplace rights.

There would be no accountability in Queensland.

Queensland teachers and other public servants would be even more exposed to workplace abuse.

Freedom of Information enables Queensland teachers who are dealing with workplace abuse to -

• Find out if the official records of their complaint about workplace abuse have been falsified.

• Find falsified "official records" that have been secretly placed on their Departmental files.

• Find details of internal and external "investigations" concerning them that have been conducted without their knowledge.

• Realise that what was represented to them as an "investigation" may not have been described as an "investigation" in the official records.

• Read "Briefings for the Minister" and gain an understanding of the strategies used by public servants to avoid "knowing" about public service workplace bullying, harassment, victimisation, discrimination and victimisation or "payback".

• Identify the Department of Education officers who have made untruthful statements to them and about them.

(If you can't see the rest of this letter, please click on March 2008 archives at the right hand side of this web page.)

Letter to David Solomon Page 2:

Why I made a Freedom of Information application in September 2003.

In 2000 I was employed as a specialist teacher in a Queensland State School.

Groups of Grade 7 children at the school were missing from their classrooms, roaming unsupervised around the school.

I discussed my concerns about the situation with the acting principal of the school.

The acting principal advised me to speak about it to the staff at the next staff meeting.

She put it on the agenda for the meeting.

But, directly before I spoke, the acting principal spoke to the staff at some length about "a person" on the staff who was humiliating children.

One of the other teachers later told me that I was this "person".

The shock of the acting principal's seemingly irrational and deeply unprofessional behaviour made me ill.

I was advised by the QTU, the staff welfare officer and two specialist advisory teachers to ask the principal for a mediated meeting.

At the meeting the acting principal told me that "a lot of allegations" had been made against me and that she had "lots of pieces of paper to prove how things may have happened".

This statement was recorded by the acting deputy principal and secretly placed on my Department of Education official record.

Two days after this meeting the acting principal gave me a letter to advise me that she and the usual principal - who had not discussed the situation with me - had decided to put me into the Diminished Workplace Performance process the next year.

This letter was also placed on my official Department of Education file.

These letters remain on my Queensland Department of Education official record to this day.

Since September 2003 I have been making FOI applications for copies of the "lots of pieces of paper to prove how things may have happened".

To this date I have not found any document that answers that description.

But I have found a loose scrap of paper on which the acting principal has scribbled that she made her statements to the staff concerning me because of allegations that were made concerning me in "notes to L---- (one of the Grade 7 teachers) from D-----".

These "notes to L---- from D-----" were never discussed with me at any meeting.

I knew nothing about them till I found a copy of this loose scrap of paper in FOI documents that were released to me on 27 October 2005.

I only know two people called D-----, and they have both assured me that they know nothing about this situation.

Letter to David Solomon Page 3:

To this date I have not been allowed Freedom of Information.

But I have established that my official Queensland Department of Education "records" have been extensively falsified.

Many of the falsified documents are described in detail at - http://badapplebullies.com/thefalsifiedrecords.htm

My Freedom of Information applications are detailed at -

http://www.badapplebullies.com/freedomofinformation.htm

I anticipate that my experience will be the sort that is portrayed to you as a "problem with a vexacious applicant".

But I would suggest that it is not my applications for these missing "lot of allegations" in the "lots of pieces of paper to prove how things may have happened" that is the problem.

It is the refusal of the acting principal to either produce these documents or to admit that there were no allegations against me, and to remove her offensive and deeply unprofessional letters to me from my official Department of Education files.

The problem is not the policies, it is the practices.

My Freedom of Information experience suggests to me that the real problem is not a problem with the official Department of Education policies, but with the abusive workplace practices of Department of Education administrators.

The bully administrator is able to establish inappropriate "mobbing bonds".

My own bully administrator managed to form inappropriate "mobbing bonds" with other administrators and even with Head Office staff, including -

• a very senior officer who was controlling the investigation into my complaint
• and also one officer who was involved in "searching" for my FOI documents.

I have found the documentary evidence of these inappropriate "mobbing bonds" in the FOI documents.

These inappropriate "mobbing bonds" have affected my FOI applications.

Letter to David Solomon Page 4:

Falsified "records" can be maliciously placed on a Queensland teacher's official files.

It is too easy for malicious and untruthful "records" concerning a teacher to be secretly placed on that teacher's Queensland Department of Education official files.

Notes on loose scraps of paper can be secretly placed on a teacher's file.

These loose scraps of paper can be introduced, changed or removed at any time by an abusive principal.

Queensland school principals have their own offices and their own computers. There is no excuse for keeping files of sticky-notes and loose scraps of paper "recording" their secret thoughts and feelings about teachers.

It is much too easy for a malicious principal to secretly place "records" of imaginary conversations with children, parents, other teachers, other principals and District Office staff concerning a teacher on that teacher's official Department of Education files.

If the teacher ever manages to find these documents under Freedom of Information, the names of the children, parents, etc. involved in these imaginary conversations will have been concealed, so the teacher has little chance to prove that their "official record" has been falsified.

The FOI policy of deleting all names from documents exposes Queensland teachers to workplace abuse. 

And then, even if the child, parent, teacher, principal of member of the District Office staff tells the teacher or an investigator that they did not have this imaginary conversation concerning the teacher, Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) officers will advise the teacher that the principal's "record" of their imaginary conversation is not a lie, it is a "different recollection".

So you can never, ever disprove a malicious principal's "different recollections".

Undated, unsigned scribbles on sticky-notes can be secretly placed on a teacher's file.

These scribbled notes may convey no clear meaning. They can be interpreted to suggest more or less anything.

These sticky-notes can be stuck on top of dated and signed "records" to create the false impression that the sticky-noted comments are related to that particular incident and that particular date.

And then the sticky-note can be moved to create a different impression.

Because the scribbles on the sticky-notes are undated and unsigned, nobody can be held responsible for the suggestions that are being created by the scribbled notes.

Similarly, unsigned and undated notes can be scribbled in pencil onto documents that have been written, dated and signed by another person.

This can create the false impression that the events described in the scribbled notes happened at the same time as the events in the original document.

Or "records" concerning the actions of another teacher may be carelessly / maliciously placed on your Department of Education file.

• All documents concerning teachers should be signed, dated and shown to teachers before they are placed on teachers' files.

• There should be space on the document for the teacher's response. A response should not be "attached" to the official record, because it could be too easily "lost".

• No document should be placed on a teacher's Department of Education file if the teacher concerned has not had the opportunity to respond to the document.

• There should be serious consequences for administrators who are in breach of this policy.

This simple strategy would have protected me from workplace abuse in 2000.

If this simple strategy had been in place in 2000, I would not have needed to make any Freedom of Information applications.

This simple strategy would improve professional conduct, protect Queensland teachers from workplace abuse, and save a lot of FOI time and money.

Letter to David Solomon Page 5:

Falsified 'records' of meetings can be secretly placed on a Queensland teacher's official file.

Records of meetings may be falsified to the disadvantage of teachers.

For example, a teacher's response to allegations may be 'edited out' of the official records.

Or the allegations may be changed.

And the names of the people making the allegations may be changed.

The teacher may not realise that the allegations have been changed for several years, till they receive copies of the "records' of the meeeting under freedom of Information.

A lot of the teacher's time and effort may have been wasted writing responses to allegations that have been changed.

The teacher may even find that they have been used as a puppet to do themselves harm. Falsified official records may secretly have been made of their own 'confessions', 'demands' or 'poor professinal conduct'.

Union organisers may also have been abused as puppets to hear / not hear / not be able to remember what happened at the meeting and to do the teacher harm.

QTU organisers seem to feel helpless to prevent this abuse because of the QTU policy that 'no help will be given to any member who is in conflict with another member'.

This QTU policy exposes Queensland teachers to workplace abuse.

A teacher may be given verbal assurances at a meeting which are the direct opposite of what is in the official records.

Or the teacher may find that events that take place immediately after a meeting make nonsense of the assurances that they were given at the meeting.

For example, a bully principal may be promoted, celebrated in Parliament House or given a special award a few days after such a meeting.

• All Queensland Department of Education meetings to discuss complaints should be tape-recorded and transcribed.

• A copy should be given to each meeting participant.

• This simple strategy would raise the standard of professional conduct and eliminate many workplace problems.

• It would also reduce the need for teachers to make FOI applications for falsified "meeting notes".

 

Letter to David Solomon Page 6:

Queensland Department of Education officers seem to deal with documents, letters and emails of complaint by 'losing' them or by instructing each other not to read them.

The standard of documentation of complaints / internal reviews / investigations by the Queensland Department of Education is appalling.

And it puts Queensland teachers at great risk of harm.

The Department of Education has a responsibility to protect employees from exposure to the risk of harm because of poor workplace practices.

The horror of the incompetence / dysfunction / corruption of the Queensland Department of Education Grievance / Investigation practices is beyond the powers of belief of any ordinary person.

I would suggest that this systemic dysfunction is the cause of many repeated Freedom of Information applications.

• If Department of Education officers documented their activities to a professional standard, professional conduct would be improved and less public time and money would need to be wasted responding to / avoiding responding to FOI applications.

My own experience of this dysfunction is described in detail at http://www.badapplebullies.com/thefalsifiedrecords.htm

Letter to David Solomon Page 7:

The Queensland Department of Education 'investigation process' is dysfunctional.

Again and again, the person that you are complaining about (or a person under their close control, or a person who has a conflict of interest in the situation) is allowed to investigate your complaint about their own behaviour.

They then write a report "finding no evidence of" their own bullying.

All later decisions by other Queensland Government Departments are based on this first "finding".

Your letters of protest are disregarded.

When you make a Freedom of Infomation application for the documentation of the "investigation" of your complaint, all copies of this first "investigation" finding are "lost" by all Queensland Government Departments.

And the Premier and senior public servants agree that you have written a lot of letters and that they will not reply to your letters.

And so no Queensland public servant actually reads your letters.

Your letters are automatically filed.

When you write to protest that your official record has been extensively falsified, your letters are simply 'lost' or disregarded.

And no Queensland public servant can be held responsible for not reading your letters and not "knowing" that your official record has been falsified.

Because they were all instructed by the Premier and their senior officers not to read your letters.

Letter to David Solomon Page 8:

Strategies used by Queensland Department of Education Investigators / Reviewers.

An investigator may change the wording of your complaint to avoid investigating the real problem.

This seems to be a very common Queensland public service strategy.

Your complaint / grievance may have been falsified by being "lost".

The official record of a 120 page grievance can be reduced to three pages with this strategy.

An "internal reviewer" may simply copy from documents that he knows to be falsified.

He may have been instructed not to "consider" your responses to the falsified documents.

An "internal reviewer" may have been instructed not to ask questions and find out any facts.

He may have been instructed to "infer from the documents".

This gives the internal reviewer carte blanche to claim to have "inferred" more or less any nonsense from the documents, even if the evidence in the documents totally contradicts the "inference" drawn by the reviewer.

• The Department of Education practice of making "inferences based on the documents" is wide open to abuse. It should stop. 

Official "investigation reports" may be ambiguous and suggest several different meanings to different readers.

And what you are told at a "meeting to discuss the findings of the investigation" may be quite the opposite to the real findings of the investigation.

There may not even have been an investigation.

Letter to David Solomon Page 9:

The word "investigation" is used carelessly by senior officers of the Queensland Department of Education.

A phone call to a "mate" is not an investigation.

And it is unjust, abusive and deceptive for senior public servants to allow one of the people whose behaviour is the subject of a complaint to organise a tightly controlled "internal review" - which simply consists of -

• "drawing inferences" from falsified documents,
• refusing to allow any questions to be asked,
• refusing to allow the complainant's responses to the falsified documents to be considered

- and then for them to describe this very limited "internal review" in phone calls to other Government departments and in the official records as "an investigation".

I suspect that the careless use of the words, "we investigated it and found no evidence of ...", to describe poor professional practices is the cause of much wasted FOI search time.

I suspect that FOI officers are being asked to search for the documentation of "investigations" that were really little more than quick phone calls to a "mate". 

If Department of Education Education official reports were referenced to a professional standard - the standard expected of any university student, for example - it would improve accountability, discourage workplace abuse and greatly reduce the need to make repeated FOI applications for this documentation.

• The official records of an investigation should contain an accurate copy of the original complaint.

• Reference should be made to the specific document that supports any statement, finding, etc. made in internal review reports, investigation reports, Briefings for Ministers, etc.

• Department of Education officers who claim "I am told" or "I understand" something should be required to identify the documentary evidence that supports that claim.

This would discourage malicious gossip and mobbing, improve the quality of professional records and reduce the amount of time spent searching for FOI documents.

• A copy of all documentation that supports the findings of an investigation should be kept with the investigation report so that it cannot be "lost".

This simple strategy would -

• reduce the abuse of the Department of Education internal review / investigation / grievance / FOI processes to abuse teachers
• and reduce the time spent searching for "lost" FOI documents.

Letter to David Solomon Page 10:

There are problems with the Queensland Department of Education Freedom of Information (FOI) process.

The process takes many years.

I have been waiting since September 2003 for copies of the "lots of allegations" that the acting school principal stated on 27 November 2000 had been made against me in "lots of pieces of paper to prove how things may have happened".

When a teacher first makes an FOI application, they know very little about the FOI process and it is easy for them to be bluffed out of their rights.

I now realise that my first application - FOI 2361 - was "personal" and that I should have been given the documents free of charge in late November 2003.

To this date I have not received these FOI documents, despite applying for them over and over again, and paying many application fees.

Several documents that existed in early 2004 have mysteriously vanished during the FOI process.

I have identified some of the documents that have vanished at http://www.badapplebullies.com/thefalsifiedrecords.htm .

Several "investigation reports" also seem to have vanished.

Department of Education FOI officers have a practice of suggesting responses to officers who are being asked for documents.

They sometimes seem to suggest that respondents simply say that they can't find any documents.

Sometimes you suspect that the FOI officer did not even contact the officer concerned.

• All FOI searches should be conducted in writing, and all respondents should be allowed to respond in their own words, because this allows you to check that the FOI officer did actually search for the documents and that the documents that the FOI officers have "searched" for are the documents that you actually requested.

Sometimes Internal reviewers do not seem to search.

They just give you their opinions about the documents. Their comments may be misleading, but they know that they cannot be held responsible for their misleading response because they did not search and so they do not "know" that they are misleading you.

One Department of Education FOI officer wrote to me one day, accepting my application fee, then wrote to me the next day, refusing to search for the documents.

This is an unjust and abusive practice.

Some FOI documents are photocopied "half off the page" so that the number of the page / key words / key dates / key names are "edited out" of the photocopy that is provided to you.

So you have to re-apply for a full copy of the document.

Some FOI officers choose not to photocopy information concerning you on the original covers of folders, so that the fact that a Discipline file has been opened on you, for example, is concealed from you.

• The original covers of all folders should be photocopied and included in photocopies of FOI documents.

Department of Education FOI officers seem to be fairly low down on the head office 'pecking order'.

This may be the cause of some problems. For example, sometimes they have to ask their superior officers for FOI documents. This seems to be difficult for them.

And if the senior officer just says that he has lost all of his documents, it must be difficult for an FOI officer to tell them to "stop playing the fool and hand over the documents".

Documents related to bullying and mobbing should be provided to applicants free of charge under FOI.

Bullying and mobbing are not part of the official duties of a Queensland public servant. They are personal.

Documents that you produce in order to protect yourself from mobbing and bullying, and documents that you use as evidence of bullying and mobbing, are also personal.

And allowing a bully administrator to "investigate" his own behaviour and find "no evidence of bullying" is not evidence that this was not workplace bullying because "we have investigated your complaint lots of times and we have found no evidence of bullying".

It is evidence that the mobbing problem is systemic.

Two very senior Queensland Department of Education public servants responded to my FOI application by claiming to have lost all of their emails and letters to me and from me over a period of several months.

I presume that they lost all of their other official documents as well.

You may think that this is an appallingly dysfunctional way to run a Queensland Government department.

• There is an urgent need to raise the standard of record-keeping in the Queensland Department of Education. The present level of workplace dysfunction is a waste of public funds and it creates a psychopath-friendly working environment.

When I made my first FOI application, the files containing the mass of falsified documents were numbered backwards, so that the last page of the last document was number one, etc.

Many of these 'documents' were unsigned and undated. They were scribbled by hand on loose scraps of paper and sticky-notes.

They concerned events that I knew nothing about - I eventually realised that many were 'records' of entirely imaginary conversations with me, my students, parents, other principals and other administrators.

These 'records' were not shown to me or discussed with me at the time that they purported to have been written, and when I did eventually receive FOI copies of the documents, the names had all been 'edited out'.

There was no document that actually explained what was 'going on' at the school - why all of these falsified 'records' had been secretly placed on my official files. 

At least one of the documents seemed to have been substituted for the original document. Several documents 'vanished' during the FOI process.

All of this muddle made it really, really difficult for me to comprehend the situation and to develop any kind of concept of what had been 'going on' at the school and what missing documents I should look for.

The Freedom of Information problem here is not my behaviour in making 'vexatious' FOI applications for these missing documents.

The problem is my struggle to make sense of the deliberate falsification of my Department of Education records, and the careless indifference to my welfare and to professional record-keeping that senior officers of the Queensland Department of Education have demonstrated.

They have demonstrate no leadership on this issue.

Recent UNE research suggests that as many as 99% of teachers are bullied at work.

But the senior officers of the Queensland Department of Education do not seem to care about this sort of teacher abuse, and so nobody else cares.

Letter to David Solomon Page 11:

Senior officers of the Queensland Department of Education seem to abuse Human Rights and Equal Opportunity-trained "discrimination solicitors" and Aboriginal employees "in training" to facilitate discrimination and workplace abuse.

If you make a complaint about discrimination, and a Queensland Department of Education Human Rights and Equal Opportunity-trained "discrimination solicitor" is employed to conduct an internal review of your FOI application, and then quite a lot of your documents vanish during this process, you might suspect that this Human Rights and Equal Opportunity-trained discrimination solicitor is being employed / abused by the Department of Education to facilitate discrimination by losing the evidence of discrimination.

And if the employee chosen to "review" your complaint is an Aboriginal "trainee" with no qualifications in psychology, law or education, and if he is asked to "review" a mass of falsified "records" that have secretly been placed on your Education Queensland files, and if he is instructed that he cannot ask any questions to find out the facts, and if he is not given all of your documents, and if he is instructed / persuaded to ignore your responses to the falsified "records" - you might think that this Aboriginal employee is being abused.

And if you have spent ten years of your life studying to get two good degrees from prestigious universities, and if you have been inspected for a whole day in NSW and placed on the First Primary Promotion List, and if your health and your career are then destroyed in Queensland by an inexperienced and incompetent administrator with malicious gossip and sticky-notes, and if your complaint about this utterly dysfunctional "decision-making process" is given to an Aboriginal employee "in training", who has no qualifications in law, psychology or education - you might also think that you are being abused.

Letter to David Solomon Page 12:

Some Office of the Information Commissioner, Queensland, (Infocomm) policies and practices seem to facilitate workplace abuse.

Infocomm officers demand that you prove that a document exists before they will search for it.

But under FOI I have found -

• huge numbers of falsified 'records' that have been secretly placed on my Queensland Department of Education files to my disadvantage.
• many references to 'lost' investigation reports.
• and my own documents have been extensively falsified.

In an environment of this nature - where my documents have been so very extensively falsified over such a long period of time - asking me to 'prove' the existence of documents is ridiculous.

Infocomm officers need to appreciate that teachers who have been abused at work - and recent UNE research suggests that as many as 99% of teachers are bullied at work - are not dealing with reality, logic or facts.

They are dealing with extensively falsified 'official records'.

Anything is possible.

You may not discover a reference to a lost / missing / falsified document for several years.

Then an FOI is released which makes reference to the earlier document.

When you apply to the Office of the Information Commissioner for a copy of this lost / missing / falsified document, Infocomm officers refuse to search for it because they have already closed down their external review for the period of time during which the lost / missing / falsified document seems to have been created.

• You should be able to ask for a document, the existence of which has been concealed from you, even if you do not find evidence of the existence of the document till after the external review for that period of time has been declared closed.

Infocomm officers "authorise" Queensland Department of Education FOI officers to release documents to you.

They refuse to send the documents to you themselves.

These are documents that the Department of Education FOI officers have refused to release to you at least twice previously.

Infocomm officers advise you to contact the Department of Education FOI officers and apply to them for the documents again. But the documents that the Department of Education FOI officers eventually send to you may not be the same as the documents that the Infocomm officers have 'authorised' them to release to you.

This seems to be an organised 'cop-out' strategy by Infocomm Officers. They do not seem to want to be responsible for 'knowing' that the right documents are not being released to you.

When you point out that the documents released to you have been falsified, Infocomm and the Department of Education officers then enter into long and improbable explanations to each other and to you of how these changes came about.

This all seems to be an absolute waste of time.

And it facilitates the endless falsification of your FOI documents.

• The Office of the Information Commissioner Queensland should release documents directly to applicants.

Letter to David Solomon: Page 13

Queensland Department of Education FOI officers and Office of the Information Commissioner, Queensland officers seem to employ abusive strategies to avoid searching for documents.

The "No Fishing Allowed" strategy.

There can be a very significant difference between the search response reported to you by an internal reviewer and the actual words written by the person whose documents are being "searched". An FOI applicant needs to make a second FOI application for the documents that record the "search" conducted by the internal reviewer to find out whether the internal reviewer has searched for the correct documents and reported his findings accurately.

The "Can We Deal With Your Second FOI Application First?" strategy.

In this disgracefully abusive strategy the FOI / Infocomm officer asks you if you will wait for your first FOI documents till a second, "broader" FOI application is finalised. They advise you that the first FOI documents may "turn up" in response to the second application.

You agree to wait.

Big, big mistake.

You wait for years.

No work is done on the second FOI application for months. The first FOI documents that you asked for do not "turn up" in response to the second application.

Five years later the FOI / Infocomm officers are still refusing to search for the first documents that you asked for.

And, in the meantime, public servants promote each other, change jobs or retire and the likelihood of the first documents ever being found is hugely reduced.

The "Two-Stage-Release" strategy.

In this strategy the FOI officer "allows" you to have a copy of an email from the bully administrator in which certain statements are made.

Then, months later, a second email is found. It appears to have been sent later on the same day as the first email - but who would really know? - In this second email significant changes are introduced into the Departmental "story".

Or

Version 2 of The "Two-Stage-Release" Strategy.

In version 2 of this strategy, a file of falsified documents is released. The target responds to these falsified documents. Months later a second file containing many of the same documents is released. But this file has been significantly re-organised and undated, unsigned, handwritten notes have been made on the original documents, introducing significant changes to the official "story".

The "Am I Understanding You Correctly?" strategy.

This Infocomm strategy is really draining and it can be used to delay your external review application for as long as a year. It consists of re-writing the applicant's external review application so that it is unrecognisable, then asking the applicant to confirm within the next eight days that this is the application that they are making or they will lose all of their FOI rights.

The external review applicant then has to "drop everything" and struggle for hours to find any relationship between their own original application and this strange document.

Finally the external review applicant comes up with Hybrid Version 2 of their own application. They mail it off and hear nothing for months. They receive no documents.

Suddenly yet another unrecognisable version of their external review application arrives. And again they are asked to confirm in the next eight days this is the application that they want to make or they will lose all of their FOI rights.

Again the external review applicant has to "drop everything" and work for hours, comparing their own original application with this unrecognisable document.

Finally they come up with Hybrid Version 3 of their external review application. They mail it off and again hear nothing for months.

Finally one or two documents arrive.

• This continual re-writing of applications must consume a lot of the time of the FOI and Infocomm officers. I would respectfully suggest that Infocomm officers consider simplifying the external review process for the applicant, be more accepting of layman's concepts and original language, and thereby reduce their own workload.

Actually, I think that the Infocomm officers are so highly qualified that they genuinely do not appreciate the demands that the FOI process makes on the skills of an ordinary person. They can become a little 'snappy' and impatient with the bumbling efforts of applicants at times.

I have a good Master's degree in linguistics and I have found making FOI applications demanding.

It must be very, very difficult for anybody who is less literate or who has less time.

Letter to David Solomon Page 14:

The Queensland public service promotion system seems to be psychopath-friendly.

The Department of Education promotion system, for example, favours glib talkers who 'interview well'.

Psychopaths are glib talkers.

Glib talkers may not really comprehend the words that they are babbling. They may not apply their words to their own behaviour. They may not comprehend what other people say to them. They may not be willing readers or writers.

When faced with a problem, gib talkers may not bother to read the official Department of Education policies related to their problem.

They may just ring somebody at the District Office and ask for their advice.

This 'verbal advice seeking' is a waste of the time of the District Office staff.

It also functions as a grooming strategy.

The advice given by District Officers is based on the glib talker's version of the situation. if a Grievance is later made about the consequences of the advice, the District Office staff will be compromised and may feel obliged to protect the glib talker who followed their advice.

• There is a need for teachers who are seeking promotion to demonstrate an understanding of the Department of Education official policies before they are appointed to 'acting' positions.

By this I mean some sort of written test that teachers seeking promotion have read the official Department of Education policies, understand the policies, and can apply the policies.

If a teacher is not willing to read the Department of Education policies and to demonstrate a basic understanding of the policies, they should not be considered for promotion.

• Then, when appointed to a promotion position, they should be expected to follow the policies and to be accountable for their own actions.

• District office staff should not become involved in giving 'advice' on policies over the phone. This is a waste of time and public funds. It also facilitates workplace abuse.

At the very most District officers should refer principals to the relevant policy documents.

Letter to David Solomon: Page 15 : Last page.

Problems with the Queensland public service promotion system are impacting on Freedom of Information.

My experience suggests to me that the Labor Party is vulnerable to people who join the Party because it is a quick and easy way to gain rapid public service promotion.

Joining the Labor Party seems to be a quicker and easier way for Queensland public servants to gain promotion than studying for a Master's degree in Education, Administration or Law. And much quicker than making the effort to read the official policies of their department.

Some public servants who are members of the Labor Party seem to be very rapidly promoted.

And their inexperience and incompetence may render the Queensland public service dysfunctional and put other Queensland public servants at risk of workplace harm or abuse.

Members of Parliament who are on the Committee that selects a new Information Commissioner should carefully consider whether they have a conflict of interest in the situation.

If their husband, their husband's boss and their campaign manager are all the subject of current external review by the Office of the Infomation Commissioner, Queensland, and if one of the people being considered for the position is the wife of their husband's boss, then that Member of Parliament may consider that they have a conflict of interest.

And if you are the person searching for these documents, and if you find that your documents are not searched for and not found, you might also consider that there was a conflict of interest in this appointment.

Yours Sincerely,

(Name and contact details given in original letter.)

Webmaster, Bad Apple Bullies

At the bottom of this letter to David Solomon I attached a list of documents that should have been released to me free of charge in late November 2003.

The list can be found at -

http://www.badapplebullies.com/freedomofinformation.htm