The SafeWork NSW Report Is About More Than Stress

When Internal Culture Becomes Public Harm

In my previous article, I wrote about the SafeWork NSW report on preventing stress in first responders, and why its discussion of moral suffering, organisational betrayal and preventable harm felt so familiar to many of us who have worked inside these systems.

This article is about the next part of that conversation.

First responder wellbeing and police accountability are often treated as though they belong in different rooms. One is spoken about as an internal workforce issue. The other is spoken about as a public trust issue. I don’t think they can be separated that neatly.

A culture that harms people internally will also shape how that organisation uses power externally. It will shape how decisions are made, how pressure is handled, how misconduct is confronted or avoided, and what people learn they can safely challenge.

That doesn’t mean every officer is the problem. It doesn’t mean psychological harm causes poor policing, and it certainly doesn’t excuse misconduct, but it does mean culture matters, not only inside the organisation, but outside it too.

Where wellbeing and accountability meet

In an earlier piece, I wrote about misuse of police powers, excessive use of force, body-worn video and the need for stronger accountability when force is used against members of the public. I don’t intend to repeat that argument here.

What I want to explore now is something adjacent but deeply connected: the organisational conditions that sit beneath both first responder harm and public harm. The connection isn’t that these issues are identical, because they’re not. The connection is cultural.

A workplace that leaves its own people carrying unresolved harm is often a workplace that has learned to manage discomfort rather than confront it. It may have polished language around values, wellbeing and integrity, while still avoiding the harder work of looking directly at what’s causing harm. That avoidance has consequences.

Inside the organisation, it can leave people feeling betrayed, disillusioned and morally compromised. Outside the organisation, it can damage public trust when misconduct, excessive force or poor decision-making are met with defensiveness instead of transparency.

I don’t believe we have to choose between police wellbeing and police accountability. A healthy system should be able to hold both.

A workplace that allows misconduct to be hidden, minimised or inconsistently addressed is not a psychologically safe workplace. It may feel safer for some people in the short term, particularly those protected by silence or hierarchy, but it’s not safe for the public, or for ethical officers.

Make no mistake, real accountability isn't anti-police. It’s one of the things that makes ethical policing possible.

The gap between what’s said and what’s lived

This is also where trust becomes so difficult. When senior leaders speak publicly about how well people are supported, how carefully complaints are managed, or how safely people can speak up, those statements land very differently for people who’ve seen the opposite happen. That gap isn’t a minor communication problem. It’s part of the harm.

I’ve heard public assurances about support, fairness, and integrity that bear little resemblance to the experiences I know of personally. I know people who paid, and continue to pay, a very real price for raising concerns, challenging poor conduct, reporting corruption or refusing to quietly absorb what was happening around them.

I’m not saying there are no good people in those systems. I know there are, because I worked with many of them. I’m also not saying every complaint is handled badly, because that would be wildly unfair; however, when people who’ve experienced or witnessed bullying, retaliation, poor support or organisational betrayal hear leaders speak as though those things are rare, misunderstood or carefully managed, it doesn’t build confidence. It deepens the injury. It tells people their lived experience is still being managed, softened or explained away.

The recent independent culture review belongs in this conversation, too. Its findings don’t sit in some separate category from the SafeWork NSW report on first responder stress. They speak to the same underlying problem.

The review found that bullying, discrimination and sexual harassment were occurring at unacceptable levels within NSW Police, and that employees were too afraid to speak up. ABC reporting also noted that 30 percent of surveyed employees had directly experienced bullying at work, while other reporting described fears of being punished, targeted, isolated or denied opportunities after speaking up.

Those findings sit uneasily beside any public suggestion that bullying, retaliation or unsafe reporting pathways are not deeply embedded problems. For people who’ve lived or witnessed the consequences of speaking up, the issue is not whether the right words are being said publicly. The issue is whether the organisation is willing to start from the truth of what people have actually experienced.

Reports like this can be both important and painful. They can name something with clarity while also reminding people how long it has gone unnamed, minimised or denied. If the public response is still shaped by defensiveness, minimisation or disbelief, it becomes very hard to trust that the organisation has truly understood what the report is asking of it.

Real change cannot begin from the version of the organisation leaders wish existed. It has to begin from the one people are actually experiencing.

Poor culture doesn't stay internal

This is the link I keep coming back to between poor internal culture and poor public-facing policing - poor culture doesn’t only affect how people feel at work. It affects how people make decisions, how they use authority, how they respond to pressure, what they feel safe to challenge, and what they learn to tolerate.

A workplace that teaches people to stay silent internally can’t be relied upon to confront harm honestly externally. A workplace that manages discomfort instead of facing it will struggle when that discomfort involves misconduct, misuse of power, or excessive force. A workplace that protects reputation ahead of truth will eventually ask both its staff and the public to carry the cost.

Again, that does not mean every officer is the problem. It does mean culture matters.

It matters when someone is harmed by police action, or when an officer tries to report poor conduct. It matters when leaders decide whether to examine a pattern or explain it away. It matters when the person raising the concern has less power than the person or system being protected. This is why I struggle with any version of reform that treats wellbeing, culture and accountability as separate priorities. They're inextricably connected by the same practical questions.

What happens when people speak up?

What happens when power is misused?

What happens when harm is inconvenient?

What happens when the truth threatens reputation?

What happens when the person raising the concern has less power than the person or system being protected?

Those questions matter inside policing, and they matter outside it too.

What changes after people tell the truth?

I still believe in policing as a deeply meaningful expression of service, and I believe in the people who join to protect, to help, and to do difficult work on behalf of the community. I believe in the officers who keep trying to act with integrity inside systems that don’t always make that easy.

I also believe that purpose is too important to be left at the mercy of systems that protect themselves more readily than they protect people. That's why the conversation about poor culture can't stop at staff wellbeing. It has to be subject to public accountability too.

If an organisation wants the public to trust its integrity, the people inside the organisation need to be confident that integrity is protected there as well. When misconduct is easier to manage quietly than confront honestly, that’s not only a workforce problem; it’s a public safety problem. If people learn that raising concerns may cost them more than staying silent, that’s not only an internal cultural failure; it’s a warning sign for everyone.

A police organisation cannot build trust through statements alone. Trust grows from what people see happen when the truth is uncomfortable.

Do leaders allow the findings to change the way they lead, listen and respond? Do they ask why so many people have been injured, or do they keep asking injured people to prove their pain in ways that make the injury worse? Do they keep speaking about values, or do they build systems that make those values harder to abandon when pressure comes?

First responders deserve more than acknowledgement, and the public deserves more than reassurance. Both deserve systems that are honest enough to look at harm directly, brave enough to prevent what can be prevented, and accountable enough to repair what has already been done.

That’s where trust begins. Not in the statement, not in the strategy, but in what changes after people have finally told the truth.