41 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ACT public servants do not feel culturally safe in their workplace according to the latest ACT Public Service (ACTPS) Employee Survey results, while documents released under a freedom of information (FOI) request reveal the former head of the Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs had sounded the alarm about poor cultural safety internally for years.
Independent Member for Kurrajong Thomas Emerson MLA said the survey results were an affront to the Territory’s claim to be the most progressive jurisdiction in Australia.
“We celebrate being the most progressive state or territory while Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people working within the ACT Public Service are experiencing discrimination at almost 2.5 times the rate of their non-Indigenous colleagues,” Mr Emerson said.
“More than two in five Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander public servants do not feel culturally safe at work, and believe their team does not have the cultural capability to enable a culturally safe workplace.”
“These alarming figures show the ACT Government has a huge amount of work to do on cultural capability, cultural safety and addressing systemic discrimination – all of which it committed to doing more than five years ago when it signed the National Agreement on Closing the Gap.”
Mr Emerson’s Public Sector (Closing the Gap) Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 was passed by the Assembly in December 2025, making the ACT the first state or territory to legislate its Closing the Gap commitments. The legislation comes into effect on 1 July 2026, and requires all senior executives within the ACTPS to play their part in implementing the provisions of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, including by developing and demonstrating their own Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural capability, developing the cultural capability of their administrative unit, and promoting cultural safety and working to eliminate institutional racism for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
During the Assembly’s committee inquiry into the bill, the former head of the ACT Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Brendan Moyle, disclosed that he did not feel culturally safe in his workplace, describing the ACTPS as the least culturally safe place he had ever worked.
Mr Moyle resigned shortly thereafter, and documents recently released through a freedom of information request reveal that he had sounded the alarm internally about cultural safety and the ACT Government’s failure to follow through on its Closing the Gap commitments for more than two years prior to voicing his concerns publicly.
Mr Emerson said it was disappointing to see the extent to which Mr Moyle’s attempts to mobilise the ACTPS had been ignored.
“These documents show a senior Aboriginal public servant imploring his superiors to deliver on the ACT Government’s commitments to First Nations people,” Mr Emerson said.
“Where are the consequences for their failure to deliver? Where’s the accountability?
“It seems the only people who’ve actually paid a price for this are the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Canberrans who continue to suffer from entrenched disadvantage and culturally unsafe workplaces.
“Imagine the immense pressure felt by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander public servants who want better outcomes for their people but don’t have the institutional support or resourcing needed to drive that change.
“The correspondence released through this FOI shows the ACT Government has been treating their Closing the Gap commitments as optional extras.
“Closing the Gap needs to be core government business – and will be, by law, when my Closing the Gap Bill comes into effect in July.”
During Question Time last week, Mr Emerson asked the Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Suzanne Orr MLA, when she was first made aware of Mr Moyle’s concerns and what she had done to address them. In her response, the Minister took the detail of the question on notice and said “it is primarily a responsibility of the public service”.
The revelations follow the recent release of the Productivity Commission’s latest Report on Government Services, which shows that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the ACT are now 25.4 times more likely to be incarcerated than non-Indigenous people – the largest gap in the country, and an increase from 22.7 times the year prior.
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Background
During a public hearing for the inquiry into Mr Emerson’s Closing the Gap Bill on 9 October 2025, the former head of the ACT Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Brendan Moyle, indicated his workplace was the least culturally safe he had ever encountered.
Officials confirmed during annual reports hearings on 12 November 2025 that Mr Moyle had since resigned.
Mr Emerson submitted a Freedom of Information request in late 2025 seeking access to “Any briefs, correspondence, disclosures and complaints about discrimination, insufficient cultural safety and/or cultural load experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander public servants in the Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs since January 2024, including any correspondence and documentation related to the resignation of Mr Brendan Moyle.”
Multiple documents have been withheld from release, including what appears to be Mr Moyle’s resignation letter from 4 November 2025 which is fully redacted except for the anti-racism education toolkit that was included as an attachment. An email from 7 August 2025 has been withheld from release because it “consists of information in the possession of the Integrity Commission or Inspector of the Integrity Commission.”
Among the released documents is a 12-page brief from 11 September 2025, in which Mr Moyle detailed “continually increasing pressures and risks” and sought agreement “to urgently implement measures to address cultural safety and cultural load as per previous requests from staff and in line with ACT Government commitments.” The brief lays out “issues and serious concerns” that have been raised and “continued to get worse” for more than two years, including a “lack of cultural capability and cultural safety”, a “lack of internal commitment to deliver on ACT Government commitments”, and the Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs’s “lack of appropriate authority to deliver on those commitments”, including commitments made under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap and the ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Agreement.
Mr Moyle lists among the issues experienced by his team “facing challenges and pushback, and at times flat refusal to provide data and information required to report on government commitments under the National Agreement and the ACT Agreement”, a “lack of input from other directorates”, “cultural knowledge and technical advice” being “diminished and ignored”, “structural barriers and behaviours” that “at times intentionally block key bodies of work”, and having “insufficient resources to undertake the work”.
The 2025 ACTPS Employee Survey was held from 1 to 28 September 2025. 13,506 responses were received, and the results were published on 29 January 2026. The survey found that only 59 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander respondents feel culturally safe, only 58 per cent agree their team has effective Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural capability to enable a culturally safe workplace, and 14 per cent personally experienced discrimination in the past 12 months – the most common form being racism – compared to a rate of 6 per cent across the service.