news
campusreview.com.au
Ridd sacking
ruled unlawful
Dr Peter Ridd. Photo: Cameron Laird
Judge says JCU had no grounds
to dismiss marine scientist.
By Dallas Bastian
A
judge has ruled that James Cook
University’s termination of Dr Peter
Ridd’s employment was unlawful.
The marine scientist was dismissed by
JCU in May last year. In his view, it was
because he “dared to fight the university
and speak the truth about science and the
Great Barrier Reef”.
According to a statement from Professor
Iain Gordon, JCU’s deputy vice-chancellor
in the division of tropical environments and
societies, the university said he was sacked
“by reason of his repeated refusal to comply
with the university code of conduct and
the repeated disrespect he showed for the
university as a senior employee”.
Following Judge Salvatore Vasta’s ruling
in the Federal Circuit Court of Australia,
Ridd took to his GoFundMe page – through
which he raised over $260,000 to fund
his legal action – to say he had a “spring in
his step”.
“We seem to have won on all counts,”
he said. “The next chapter of this saga
must now be written by the JCU council.”
In a lengthy statement released after
the verdict, JCU provost Professor
Chris Cocklin doubled down on the
university’s decisions.
“We disagree with the judgement and
we maintain we have not taken issue with
Dr Ridd’s nor any other employee’s rights to
academic freedom,” Cocklin said.
He added the media has not accurately
presented the facts in the case, creating
a narrative that Ridd had been disciplined
for his views on climate change and
quality assurance.
While his academic freedom was not
at issue, how he communicated about
others, “denigrated others” and breached
confidentiality was, he added.
“Dr Ridd was disciplined for repeated
breaches of the same directions given to
him over a course of almost two years.
Dr Ridd was invited to remove confidential
information he placed publicly online
and he refused to do so. In court he
admitted that he knew it was wrong but
did it anyway.
“This included information which
identified his work colleagues and publicly
promoted the very matters again for which
he had been censured.
"To protect the individuals, the university
asked Dr Ridd to de-identify the references
publicly; he again did not do so.
“In fact, during the court trial, for the
first time under oath, Dr Ridd admitted
to giving The Australian newspaper
confidential material, something he
sought to conceal from the university
until the hearing.”
Among the inappropriate ways Cocklin
said Ridd communicated with university
employees was calling a supervisor “poison
fruit” and suggesting that the university
could eat them but if they did “it would
hurt” and that he would make sure it hurt.
Cocklin said JCU is “troubled” by the
fact that the judge “fails to refer to any
legal precedent or case law in Australia to
support his interpretation of our enterprise
agreement, or academic freedom in
Australian employment law”.
While Ridd traced his dismissal back
to a conversation with a journalist
from The Courier-Mail during which he
suggested questions for the director of
the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral
Reef Studies, Professor Terry Hughes,
“to tease out what quality assurance
mechanisms” were being used, and a later
stint on Sky News where he targeted the
peer-review system used by the Australian
Institute of Marine Science, he ultimately
felt that he was too much trouble for
the university.
In an interview with Campus Review last
year, Ridd handed down some advice to
academics should his case be successful.
“If I win my case, are other academics
going to look at that and say, ‘Oh, Peter
Ridd won his case, isn’t that wonderful?
I can now say whatever I like without any
fear of being persecuted by the university’?
“It’s much better to not even go close to
what I call ‘the cliff edge’ and just stay safe
and make sure you don’t say anything that’s
possibly going to be controversial and upset
the powers that be.” ■
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