The sort of behaviour experienced by the Centre for Community-Driven Research (CCDR) will come as no surprise to many of this publication's readership.
Of course, it is one thing for sections of the health bureaucracy to coerce or attempt to bully a global pharmaceutical or medical device company, it is quite another to direct that same behaviour at a nurse-led patient organisation.
Neither is appropriate, particularly from a government that has spent so much of the past year emphasising its high expectations of conduct.
The officials who are the subject of the CCDR complaint have a right to the presumption of innocence pending the outcome of an investigation.
Yet in what world is it fair or appropriate for any stakeholder group to be directed to engage with an official against whom they have lodged a formal complaint?
Surely it suggests a bureaucracy that is not taking the complaint seriously?
The federal government's own statutory agency with responsibility for providing advice on workplace health and safety, Safe Work Australia, provides guidance on the handling of allegations of bullying.
It says all matters should be treated seriously and assessed on their merits and facts. The person accused of bullying should be treated as innocent until proven otherwise while the person reporting the alleged conduct should be respectfully listened to and their report treated as credible and reliable unless conclusively proven otherwise.
"It is important to ensure anyone who reports workplace bullying is not victimised for doing so," it says, adding, "If necessary interim measures should be taken to minimise the risk to health or safety. This may involve temporarily reassigning tasks, separating the parties involved or granting leave."
Based on its duty of care as an employer, the board of CCDR formally communicated its request to the Department of Health and Aged Care (department) that the organisation not be required to deal with the officials who are the subject of its complaint.
The request was entirely consistent with the federal government's own approach to these issues.
Yet the department essentially ignored the request.
A raft of communication to the organisation has repeatedly directed the organisation to work with the official.
The department has clearly decided that the official, who is named in the complaint, will not be subject to the complaint. This decision has obviously prejudiced, pre-determined and compromised any investigation.
The correspondence, emails and text messages between CCDR, senior officials and even the personal staff of ministers, make for disturbing reading.
They are replete with misrepresentations and contradictions. Correspondence that includes an expression of concern over the "distress" caused but then directs that the organisation continues to work with the official who is alleged to have caused this distress.
There needs to be accountability for the treatment of this organisation and its chief executive. Australia has spent recent years lamenting the insidious impact of workplace bullying, particularly against women. Institutional bullying is bad enough. Yet the deployment of institutional power to obfuscate and gaslight the victims of its bullying makes it even worse.
