Amy Taeuber was a cadet for Seven in Adelaide.

Ever had to make a complaint about a senior person in your organisation? Being at the bottom of the pecking order and reporting the inappropriate behaviour of a senior colleague is hard because no one believes you. You've been there a short time and the perpetrators have accrued connections and cultural capital over their careers. You want it to stop, but it won't. People keep telling you that you haven't got a sense of humour.

The Australian Human Rights Commission's most recent report into sexual harassment in 2012 said more than one in five of us have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace – with many more women than men as victims. A new survey begins next year.

Nearly every woman I know has experienced the unacceptable at work. A comment, an act of physical violence (a friend's former boss slapped her across the fingers with a ruler), constant sexual remarks framed as a joke. Yet the culture continues in workplaces across Australia and leaders let this behaviour continue. Sara Charlesworth is one of Australia's leading researchers into sexual harassment and sees little improvement in the culture of Australian companies. She says there is a common chain of events where the employer seeks to find a way to make the victim the organisational problem to be fixed and often but not always use the excuse of poor performance in penalising or sacking the victim

With Paula McDonald from QUT, she examined a six-month period of complaints to Australia's nine human rights commissions and, overwhelmingly, the issue was this: employers sought to get rid of the complainant instead of the offender. How is that right or just? How on earth do we permit human resources departments to oversee this kind of behaviour? Every person I spoke to on Monday recommended never ever going alone to a meeting with human resources.