One of the things we heard in the consultations that we undertook was a lot of concern about the protection of personal information. A number of experts came forward indicating that they were concerned that people are not now coming forward and won't in the future with complaints about harassment and violence if they feel that they are going to be the subject of gossip. With a range of people in the committee, when something is being dealt with through a committee, that's a whole lot of people knowing your personal information. They suggested to us that we needed to find a way to be able to ensure that this information is protected.
The exclusion of the workplace committees is really just for the investigation of the incident itself. There's nothing preventing an individual who has experienced harassment and violence from seeking support from a member of their committee, from seeking support from their union, any of those. That's up to the person who has experienced the incident, but really the goal in this is to involve as few people as possible in the very specific investigation of that particular incident.