This involves NSW Work Health and Safety Legislation -- or rather the misuse of it.
I was a graduate student studying at the University of New South Wales when I lost my supervisor. The head of my school didn’t like me, and consequently told potential supervisors and others that I could not approach faculty members in the school because I was "prevented" from doing so by the University’s health and safety policy.
I was told this in an official university communication. The implication was that I was a danger and a health and safety risk to the community, and that there was consequently some sort of official pronouncement made preventing me from speaking to anybody at the school. This, of course, put a real damper on my social life, as well as my ability to find a supervisor to finish my thesis, which I subsequently had to abandon.
Of course this was absolute nonsense, but I am an international student, and at the time I knew absolutely nothing about Australian law involving health and safety. I was confused and intimidated. I thought there really might be some official restriction. It has taken me several years to figure out that this was absolute hogswill and that there was nothing preventing me from speaking to anybody. By saying that the health and safety policy prevented me from speaking to anybody was, as far as I am concerned, a case of malicious defamation.
While I imagine I can hire an attorney for defamation, I also think that I can follow this up as a misuse of official government legislation. Essentially, the administrators were saying that Australian law pertaining to Workplace Health and Safety precluded anybody from speaking to me.
Besides giving a defamation lawyer $30,000, what are my other options to pursue a complaint about it? Public Interest Disclosure?
I was a graduate student studying at the University of New South Wales when I lost my supervisor. The head of my school didn’t like me, and consequently told potential supervisors and others that I could not approach faculty members in the school because I was "prevented" from doing so by the University’s health and safety policy.
I was told this in an official university communication. The implication was that I was a danger and a health and safety risk to the community, and that there was consequently some sort of official pronouncement made preventing me from speaking to anybody at the school. This, of course, put a real damper on my social life, as well as my ability to find a supervisor to finish my thesis, which I subsequently had to abandon.
Of course this was absolute nonsense, but I am an international student, and at the time I knew absolutely nothing about Australian law involving health and safety. I was confused and intimidated. I thought there really might be some official restriction. It has taken me several years to figure out that this was absolute hogswill and that there was nothing preventing me from speaking to anybody. By saying that the health and safety policy prevented me from speaking to anybody was, as far as I am concerned, a case of malicious defamation.
While I imagine I can hire an attorney for defamation, I also think that I can follow this up as a misuse of official government legislation. Essentially, the administrators were saying that Australian law pertaining to Workplace Health and Safety precluded anybody from speaking to me.
Besides giving a defamation lawyer $30,000, what are my other options to pursue a complaint about it? Public Interest Disclosure?