Former NRL gender advisor, Professor Catharine Lumby, has appealed to Cricket Australia (CA) and Cricket Tasmania (CT) to perform an independent review into their handling of the Tim Paine sexting scandal.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Lumby believes CA’s transparency with the public to be clouded, consequently calling for an external expert to assess how CA conducted its inquiry in 2018 to “restore full confidence”.
Paine was cleared by investigations run by both cricket bodies in 2018, however resigned on Friday on account that his actions “do not meet the standard of an Australian cricket captain or the wider community”.
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While Lumby did not criticise the previous investigation overseen by CA’s former integrity chief, Sean Carroll, she did highlight the importance of managing sexual harassments issues within the workplace. She claimed it would be beneficial for the organisation to review its procedures and processes.
“The reason I say that is there’s a persistence of narrative that women make things up to get attention or wreak havoc and revenge – I’ve had people say this to me about this matter,” she said.
“I’m not saying that it’s never happened that a woman has made this up. Women are human, too. It is interesting that it’s such a persistent narrative.
“I think, therefore, CA, if I was CA, I would be getting a good independent review of the investigation and of the code of conduct and, more generally, your policies and procedures for handling complaints.
“Because it’s an internal investigation, I’m not saying CA has done the wrong thing, but to restore full confidence now this is out in the open, I think a very sensible course of action would be to bring in someone from outside who is an expert on these matters – of gender, sexual harassment, workplace relationships – to get them to do a review.
“You wouldn’t have to release intimate details, but you could have the comfort that an independent expert has reviewed the way you’d approached this matter and could release that part of the report.”
CA declined to comment, but former CT chief executive Nick Cummins supported the 2018 inquiry, saying on Tuesday that what was uncovered was “justifiable at the time”.
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