Moira
Do you think mainstream food media actually has a conscience? Is it capable of having one? Does it even matter?

Saranya
I don’t look at mainstream media as being the paragon of ethical practice. I don’t think they can be the leaders in that space, or do much to result in cultural change, but what they can do is bring awareness to an issue, do good, solid journalism, and champion the voices of people who are doing the work.

Bridget
I think you're right to be sceptical. Everybody should be applying a pretty sceptical lens to the media in all forms, particularly when it comes to topics like this. But I also think it’s important that food media investigate these things. They're journalists covering the industry, and these are topics relevant to the industry – though it would be silly to assume that accountability starts and ends with food media.

Moira
I caught an edit on Good Food's website that changed "exclude venues identified as a part of misconduct allegations" to "serious and credible allegations" pertaining to management. Australia's defamation laws make it pretty hard to accuse anyone of anything. Even in the 1800 Lasagne instance in 2023, meme pages were getting shut down for sharing testimonies. And of course, there are structural challenges in reporting. You can't speak out against your boss without risking your job, or your reputation in the industry more broadly. What would it look like for a media organisation to actually do its due diligence, or enact a positive duty, when considering who it's going to award?

Bridget
As a bare minimum, they should be asking around, right, but that gets tricky. People from Good Food have said to us, "You think because we cover the industry we know everything that's happening, but we don't. There's a bubble, and a lot doesn't make its way through.” And I think that’s true to a point. I would say that the majority of the information that food media work with comes packaged up via marketing and PR teams, so they need to dig deeper to access this sort of information. We saw that with the reporting on Swillhouse and Merivale but that’s expensive, so I think there’s also an element of: if we start asking around, what then are we obliged to do in terms of verifying that information?

Moira
Ideally not give them the award, right? A couple years ago when Moonah won Restaurant of the Year, people who were at the ceremony told me that the owner and head chef Tobin Kent was booed when he went up, because talk about how he treated his staff was already doing the rounds. Two months later, The Age published allegations from former staff of bullying, racism and supplying alcohol to underage staff, and the title was revoked. Kent denied the racism allegations. If they’d asked around first, they could’ve saved themselves the embarrassment, and the industry’s trust.

Bridget
Refusing to include problematic venues in the guide is a really important step, and I’m wary of those in the industry who oppose it. Hospitality, especially in Sydney, is marketing driven, and food media is the most effective tool in the marketer’s arsenal. So the Guide’s stance on that is a deterrent against bad behaviour. I’m a cynic. I don’t think anyone is going to change their behaviour because the Guide convinces them it’s the right thing to do, they’ll do it because it’s the financially wise thing to do. Food media aren't doing it because it's right, they're doing it because it sells papers and gets clicks Likewise, venue operators aren't complying because it's right; they're complying because otherwise they'll get in trouble, get fined [which doesn't happen very often] or lose coverage.

Moira
So really, the fear of reputational damage becomes the incentive, and that's why it matters that the media gets involved.

Bridget
Yeah, and the power they have is largely PR and marketing for those businesses, getting customers through the doors. That's the lever they're able to pull. I'd rather them do that than do nothing.

Saranya
But I'd rather them do a lot more.

Moira
Do you have thoughts on when a perpetrator has redeemed themselves? In the case of sexual assault, is it when they've paid the fines? When they've gone through a few counselling sessions?

Saranya
I think it's important that we take a trauma-informed victim/survivor-centred approach. That's the approach we take as a members-based organisation: we're here to support the community, not the interests of employers. It's whether the victim-survivor feels they have achieved justice, to the point that's possible, when you think of the harm that's occurred.

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The reality is, food media alone can’t fix the hospitality industry. Earlier this year, the Victorian Trades Hall Council published a report finding that more than one in two hospitality workers it surveyed had experienced sexual harassment at work. The Australian Human Rights Commission’s latest national survey found only 18% of workplace sexual harassment incidents are ever reported.

Systemic issues take systemic solutions. Saranya reckons the ideal would be to sufficiently fund and resource regulators and tribunals, like the Fair Work Ombudsman, the Fair Work Commission and the Australian Human Rights Commission . But we’re not there yet. In the meantime, the law is already clear: since 2022, employers have had a positive duty to prevent sexual harassment, not just respond to it. Bridget runs Where’s Nick with a small team and no HR department, so I ask her how she does it.

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Bridget
There's this harmful idea that HR is a positive force for employees. HR exists to protect the employer. Organisations with an HR department seem to relinquish any obligation to enact cultural change or train their individual employees on what is and isn't okay. There'll be a manual, there'll be a staff training session, but it's basically, "If you're unhappy, talk to HR. Not my section, not my problem.” I actually think it's easier from a small business perspective, because you don't have somebody to hand it off to. You have to know your legal obligations.

Moira
Facts. 

Bridget
There is such a low bar in hospitality for being a good employer. If you don't yell at and abuse your staff, you're doing a good job. And there's this idea that positive duty is a little extra, a cute little thing we could aspire to, which is fucking bullshit. In terms of running Where's Nick and making it a safe workplace, there are a lot of things we do. We have a really comprehensive staff policy. Every new employee sits down with us and we work through it together. It's a working document: once a year the team gives feedback on it. Based on what's come up with customers or staff that year, what do we need to add to stop it happening again?

Moira
I love that the staff actually inform it.

Bridget
It's detailed. It covers uniforms, scenarios with guests and staff, and how we handle pronouns: what we expect people to do or say if they get someone's pronouns wrong, and how the team supports each other so a non-binary person doesn't have to constantly advocate for themselves. And the policy is to nip bad behaviour in the bud, because people test boundaries constantly. If a guest touches a staff member to get their attention, that staff member is encouraged to say, right then, "Please don't touch me. If you need me, just let me know." If they'd rather not, they can tell a manager, "Table five grabbed my arm," and the manager will head over and say, "Hey, I noticed you grabbed your waiter by the arm there. We don't have guests touching the team." This ensures that a touch doesn’t become a stroke, a stroke doesn’t become a grope, and a grope doesn’t become another traumatised staff member wondering at what point exactly did they surrender their bodily autonomy in the pursuit of a career in service.

Moira
That's way better than my experience of managers being like, "Oh, well, maybe just don't go to that table and let one of the boys handle it."

Saranya
"Oh, they didn't really mean it," or, "Was it in a gross way, or did they just need your attention?"

Bridget
As the owner of the business, I can say I'm happy to lose a guest and lose the spend if it means protecting an employee and the workplace culture, because that's what you should do.

Saranya
In fact, it's what you must do. It's not an opt-in or opt-out situation. If you're a business owner, you are legally obliged to comply with the positive duty. It's your responsibility to figure it out, but you don't have to figure it out on your own. There are so many resources for employers of different sizes, including specific guidelines small business owners and operators can access through the Australian Human Rights Commission website, and a number of other organisations and consultancies also offer free resources. It's part of your job as a business owner to access them and learn how to do this, just like paying your taxes, or running payroll.

Moira
It's part of your job.

Bridget
In hospitality there's this idea that some legal things you have to do, like pay your staff, but other things, like RSA, are optional. At Where's Nick we run a dry bar. Staff aren't allowed to drink on shift at all. They're allowed to taste wine, check wine, have a conversation about wine, but they're not allowed to drink. I'd like to think the culture is slowly changing, the idea that after a busy service you have a shot together. It's always done under the guise of team building and morale, but what it actually does is show your employees, who are often a very young, impressionable workforce, that laws can be treated on an opt-in, opt-out basis. It's a slippery slope that will ultimately lead to somebody being hurt.

Saranya
Exactly, and it's not behaviour you'd find acceptable in an office job. If I had a hard meeting in the middle of the day, I wouldn't say to my team, "Should we all do a shot?"

Bridget
It blurs the lines between guests and employees, too. Guests are there to eat and drink, and you as a team are there to work. If you're drinking and mingling and participating in those activities, it sends a very clear signal to guests that the relationship is something else. It's a flag to potential predators that the rules are lax here and they can behave a certain way.

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Women and Revolution, by the way, is an incredible charity working to overcome the barriers to gender equity in the wine world. What started as a post-lockdown dinner with 12 women and non-binary folk has turned into a thriving national network of femmes supporting femmes.

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Moira
How do you feel about winning an award like The Cultural Change Champion from an institution like Good Food?

Bridget
I’m pragmatic about it. Women and Revolution is a charity that's entirely volunteer-run, so reaching people matters. Being featured and getting that award gives us a platform, and potential to access sponsorship and partnership opportunities. It's a pretty big help.

Moira
It's the catch-22 of it all. You're trying to change the industry, but you need the industry to validate you before anyone sees you as credible: as a space for representation, for advocacy, for anything really.

Bridget
Visibility matters. People in the industry and beyond need to know we exist, and the award helps with that. It brings in new members, and it puts potential offenders on notice: this community exists, and we're talking about you.

Moira
I’d love to hear more about that. 

Bridget
We have this WhatsApp community. It's national. Anybody can reach out at any point and say, "I'm looking to speak to somebody about X topic, can anybody give me some time?" It's not necessarily about career advancement or technical info, but obviously those things come up. Winemakers can sing out, "I'm struggling with this supplier," or "I can't find this." It's a place you can go with your questions, your queries, your problems, and access support.

It’s given people permission to talk about the things that matter that might previously have been taboo – like sexual harassment, and has offered a safe place to do that. It’s also a place to rally the troops. Someone will say, "I saw so-and-so held an event and there were no women in the room," and someone else goes, "I know them, I'll raise it." That doesn’t have to be a hostile process. It might just be a query, "Hey, did you notice your flyer is eight white dudes?"

Moira
A classic, really.

Bridget
For the most part, people have responded really positively to that call out, a bit sheepish yes, with a "Oh, I didn't think," or, "Yeah, bad optics, but it wasn't deliberate." Great, maybe it wasn't. We'd love for you to deliberately do better, and we are noticing these things. Because it's not one woman rolling her eyes anymore. It's a community noticing and asking: do we want to buy wine from these people? Do they represent us? Could we spend our money somewhere else? And we're seeing real change. Partly because people don't want to be caught doing the wrong thing, and partly because they just weren't thinking about it before.

Moira
So often it feels like we're experiencing uncomfortable things alone, when really, someone has gone before. So what can readers, or punters, do?

Bridget
It's so simple: redirect your spend. I'm constantly surprised and disappointed by the number of people I know who still go to Merivale venues. I'm mind-blown that people who are aware of the issues somehow don't apply their values to where they spend their money. They offer the excuse, "Well, I still want to support the people who work in those venues." It doesn't work like that. If you support an exploitative employer, you're not helping the employees. Redirect your spend to venues that aren't engaging in those behaviours. Those venues will be busier and can employ more people.

Moira
That’s a very good point. 

Bridget
What I'd really like to see, and we have a reasonable right to demand it, is organisations evaluating their spend. Universities, for example, should build things like positive duty and an ethical framework into their codes of conduct, so their functions, Christmas parties and end of financial year parties aren't hosted at these venues.

Saranya
Events are a massive way of redirecting spend. So readers pressuring their employers to redirect their spend is really impactful as well.

Moira
Facts. I had a moment where I was like, "God, is there anywhere I can eat in this city?" The number of complicit businesses is so high.

Saranya
Yeah, and it's demoralising, because you see it all play out on socials, you see where people are dining, and I just think, fuck.

Moira
I do wish people would call in their mates a bit more when they hear about these things, so it doesn't all fall on victims.

Saranya
Absolutely. You see it play out in all sorts of scenarios, particularly on the back of the Cornell 7, right? How many people let bad behaviour go unchecked, or don't see it as their place to speak up, or to do the bare minimum and say, "That thing you said was fucked"?

Moira
For real. Or even tell their friends, if you don't feel comfortable talking to them directly. Make it really embarrassing for them to be friends with this person.

Bridget
And that's coupled with this really toxic idea that gossiping is bad. People sharing information within a network to protect the people in it has been reframed, in a concerted effort by the patriarchy, as gossip: meaningless and not to be trusted. To the point where people say, "Oh, I didn't want to gossip," or, "I didn't want to admit I'd been listening to gossip." That's not gossip. Like, what is gossip? Be a gossip.

Moira
100%. Gossip has protected women across all of history. 

Bridget
Exactly. To circle back, the function and the achievement of Women and Revolution has been to support and provide a network, and to reframe gossip as protection.