Victoria Legal Aid gags employees from discussing 'ongoing war in Israel, Palestine'

Staff push back against what they say is a 'toxic' work environment

More than 250 staff at Victoria Legal Aid have accused the organisation’s leadership of “imposing a culture of silence and fear” through a ban on employees discussing the war in Gaza at work.

The ban on pro-Palestinian “campaigning” has seen VLA delete staff posts in the agency’s internal staff networking service and reprimand employees for wearing clothing and accessories, like earrings and tote bags, that carry visual representations of Palestine.

In response to questions, a VLA representative said the agency “asked staff not to discuss or campaign about the war in open workplace settings or on work systems to ensure they don’t cause unintentional harm or distress to colleagues”.

“Victoria Legal Aid has a legal obligation to protect the health and wellbeing of its staff, which means we must respond when harms or potential harms are identified,” the representative said.

“Like all Victorian public sector employees, our staff are free to engage in public discussions and advocacy in their private lives.”

The gag has prompted a backlash among the agency’s staff. In an open letter sent to the VLA executive management team in August, the employees claim to be “deeply impacted and distressed by VLA’s approach to silencing discussion of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and expressions of Palestinian solidarity”.

“The culture created by [the policy] is one of fear, not safety,” the letter states.

“Silencing discussion of, and engagement with, the immense human suffering in Gaza is causing harm and shame. It is contradictory to VLA’s commitment to being a rights-respecting and upholding organisation.”

CPSU Victorian branch secretary Jiselle Hanna said the union supported VLA staff’s demand that the gag be lifted.

“In recent years the requirement to ‘remain apolitical’ has been applied inconsistently. Staff were encouraged to speak up on issues like the Voice referendum, marriage equality, and working-from-home rights, yet silenced or sanctioned for speaking up about the genocide and war in Gaza,” Hanna told Deepcut.

“Public servants need clear, consistent rules so they can confidently exercise their legally protected right to participate in public life without fear of arbitrary and inconsistent enforcement or sanction in the workplace.”

Staff felt ‘shamed’

A former VLA employee who wishes to remain anonymous has provided Deepcut with screenshots of posts that were removed from a work VIVA Engage community dedicated to issues of human rights. The posts included a news item about journalist Antoinette Lattouf’s victory in her unlawful dismissal lawsuit against the ABC, a text post about the history of genocide denial, and an invitation to an event organised by Readers and Writers Against the Genocide.

“Those posts were deleted by VLA leadership on the grounds that they were contraventions of the policy,” the former employee said.

Posts deleted from the Victoria Legal Aid staff groupchat

On July 21, incoming VLA CEO Toby Hemming sent an organisation-wide email reminding staff of the policy and explaining why the posts were removed.

“The continued sharing of content about the conflict, both in the workplace and on digital workplace platforms, is causing distress and harm to some staff and compromising our ability to ensure a safe and respectful workplace for all,” Hemming wrote. “It is not just the tone of the posts and comments that is the issue. It is also the cumulative effect of them, which at this stage of the conflict is substantial.”

The former employee claims Hemming’s email prompted a furious response from many staff, partly leading to the publication of the open letter a month later.

“A lot of staff were extremely distressed by that. The people who’d had their posts removed felt like they’d been shamed in front of about 1,000 of their colleagues, as though they’d done something to hurt the wellbeing of other staff,” they said.

The open letter claims that the agency-wide communique “created broad speculation about whether serious misconduct, including posting of offensive or discriminatory material, had occurred, and as such, placed the people whose posts were removed under unfair and disproportionate scrutiny”.

Gag created a ‘toxic’ environment

While Hemming’s all-staff email has rekindled the issue at VLA, the former employee claims the agency’s working environment “has felt really toxic” for almost two years.

“This has been going on for a long time,” they said. “They’ve been removing posts off Engage, pulling staff into meetings for things like having a tote bag with Palestinian imagery on it. There’s been an increase in staff working remotely and disengaging. Morale has really dipped. Several staff members have resigned as a result of this issue.”

In February 2024, around 180 VLA staff spoke out against a directive issued by VLA leadership in December 2023 instructing employees to “avoid discussions of the ongoing conflict in shared spaces”.

While that directive was briefly retracted following staff pushback, in May of that year the agency’s leadership issued a ‘guidance note’ on “communicating about the ongoing war in Israel, Palestine and the region” which banned staff from “communications and actions at work that go beyond the scope of our role and cause harm, or have the potential to cause harm, to other staff”.

The guidance note flagged that VLA would remove “content shared on work platforms like Viva Engage or displayed in shared spaces... to ensure that staff are not exposed, unnecessarily, to content that might be distressing or cause them to feel unsafe”.

“This will include excessive posts (i.e. frequent and repetitive posts in a short duration) of freely available information about the war where the cumulative effect may be harmful, or content that is inflammatory towards any community or culture affected by the war,” the guidance note states.

Crackdown has been ‘emotionally devastating’

In September, Hemming announced that VLA would conduct a cultural and psychological review into “the extent to which our workplace policies and practices support cultural and psychological safety at VLA, in particular for staff impacted by current events in Israel, Palestine and the region”.

Staff say they weren’t consulted on the review’s makeup or terms of reference

“It happened very quickly – there was no discussion or invitation for staff or health and safety representatives to consult. They just went and did it.”

“We take the concerns raised in the open letter seriously, which is why the review has been commissioned,” the VLA representative said in response.

While the review is underway, the former employee says VLA leadership are “still cracking down”, leaving a “profound” effect on staff morale in its wake.

“The kind of people who are attracted to work at VLA are motivated by issue of human rights and speaking up for marginalised communities. The effect in that sense has been emotionally devastating for a lot of people,” they said.

“People feel like they’re battling unfair systems in the courts every day, and battling their executive leadership when they go back to the office. The silencing of our right to speak out against a UN-recognised genocide has really shaken our faith in this organisation and the core values it says it’s there to represent.”