In Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial, the protagonist K is arrested, charged, tried, found guilty and executed without being told what his crime was. While my experience of the legal system is neither as comically surreal nor as malignantly awful as Kafka’s K, the shenanigans and machinations of the City of Armadale (CoA) and the Equal Opportunity Commission (EOC) are a dreadful indictment of how process can be used to stifle justice and how ideologically captured our institutions have become.

Spectator Australia readers will know I was forced to resign from my job in the CoA library service because I do not accept transgender ideology or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Local government is required to be philosophically neutral, yet these ideologies surreptitiously introduce politics and pseudoscience into government institutions under the guise of inclusivity.

George Orwell said the image of the future was ‘a boot stamping on a human face – forever’. The latest iteration of the authoritarian impulse insists that the victims of injustice should be grateful to their oppressors for teaching them morality. Under this logic you can act like a political commissar and virtue signal at the same time.

The first act in the satire (or tragedy) began when I applied to the CoA for electronic communications from 2023 under a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, following advice from the Free Speech Union of Australia (FSUA). The FOI officer said she had found 156,000 files and that I would have to reduce the scope of my request or the CoA would reject it. The idea that I was mentioned so many times in electronic communications in one year was patently absurd. At the time the FSUA had not publicly backed me, so the CoA likely assumed I – a layperson – would be easy to dupe. The FSUA and I provided, in my name, detailed instructions about how to obtain the requested information. It was only after we told the FOI officer (again in my name) that I had a computer expert who could talk her through the process that she produced the relevant documents.

The FOI release was revelatory. It contained prima facie evidence of discrimination. The human resources officer handling my case, replying to someone in authority who had noted that the evidence was ‘a bit light’ – said, ‘We didn’t have much to work with’. When an HR employee in error allowed me to reply in writing to the allegations, the manager of library services wrote, ‘That noise you hear is me screaming and hitting my head on the desk!’ When I took stress leave, a manager wrote: ‘It only delays the inevitable in my mind.’ The day before the final human resources meeting, called to determine my guilt or innocence, HR emailed the library manager: ‘Please find attached letter of outcome for Declan… As discussed we will take a break and then come back with the outcome letter so it’s all completed tomorrow.’

Many similar comments appear in the FOI release, and they point in only one direction – that I was guilty of thoughtcrime. ‘Looking at the titles of other articles by the same person – oh, dear!’

What, you ask, though, was my bullying offence? I said two sentences: ‘So-and-so put a USB in a computer. You’re not supposed to do that.’ That is the alpha and omega of my alleged bullying. When I discussed the ridiculous charges with colleagues, in a private conversation – library management asked two staff to report my conversations and these women were misled by rhetoric about my terrible thoughtcrimes – the CoA claimed (you couldn’t make this up) that I was ‘gossiping’ and they included talking in the letter of allegations. They also included the allegation that I said the CoA had mismanaged the process – which was true because I knew in August (as did most library staff) that I had been accused of ‘bullying and harassment’ and I was only officially informed about the allegations in early October. This, by definition, is either malicious intent or incompetence – in other words, mismanaging the process.

One result of the mismanagement was that, for the first time in my life, I suffered extreme, debilitating stress worrying about my reputation and my financial future, which, in a darkly comic, Schopenhauerian irony, have come true. I no longer have a job and I’m contemplating, without adequate funds, early retirement. Both charges – disagreeing with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and bullying and harassment – were brought against me, in a perfect coincidence, at the same time.

Not long after the FSUA lodged a discrimination claim against the CoA with the EOC, I viewed a video of the Equal Opportunity Commissioner delivering a speech praising Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. How, I thought, could I obtain justice from a man who advocated the ideology that had driven me from my job? In ordinary circumstances, a person in authority with a conflict of interest would recuse themselves. This, of course, did not happen.

Instead, the FSUA and I spent a year before the EOC in an exercise that resembled the Ministry of Silly Walks. The Commissioner had a limited understanding of his powers, and each legal error had to be patiently explained to his office. Eventually he exercised the little influence he had, although he was unable to provide reasons beyond a curt dismissal of my case.

This is not, I imagine, the EOC’s usual treatment of people. If it were, the office would be superfluous. Perhaps its role is to disabuse members of the public from exercising their rights.

Timing is everything in comedy, and in a perfect existential joke, the Office of the Information Commissioner contacted me one working day before the EOC dismissed my case to say they were going to check I had received the correct FOI documents.

In contrast to most people, I am taking my case, with the support of the FSUA, who are crowdfunding my legal costs, to the Tribunal. I would gratefully appreciate any support.

The battle of process is over. The battle of accountability is about to begin. Unlike Kafka’s K, let us hope that anyone involved in my case is afforded every opportunity to defend themselves. From this perspective, everyone wins.