Top CEO suddenly LEAVES World Vision after probe into bullying claims
World Vision Australia told staff on Wednesday it would not be extending the contract of its embattled chief executive, Daniel Wordsworth.
It comes after Mr Wordsworth was confirmed as the subject of a number of alleged bullying complaints that were independently investigated by the charity.
A source from World Vision Australia told Daily Mail Australia that investigations had been ongoing for about 18 months.
They said none of the complaints were deemed necessary to be taken further, except for one that remained under investigation.
According to the Fair Work Commission's website, Mr Wordsworth has initiated an adverse action claim against the charity which is listed for a conference on Monday.
Former employees have described the charity as having a 'toxic' workplace culture plagued by bullying and a lack of protections for staff.
One ex-employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told the ABC that a number of their colleagues were 'bullied out of the building', including themselves.
'Managers either couldn't or wouldn't protect their staff,' they said.
Mike Bruce, who served as World Vision's media manager from November 2019 to July 2022, said the company's culture did not align with its charitable goals.
'I reluctantly left WV over what I felt to be a culture of toxic and autocratic management that was at odds with a faith-based charity like World Vision,' he said.
It is understood the charity has recently undergone a restructure, including several redundancies, and that all staff were given the opportunity to participate in the investigative process.
A World Vision spokesperson confirmed Mr Wordsworth's contract had not been extended by the board, which would now 'seek fresh leadership'.
'As CEO, Daniel steered the organisation through the Covid-19 pandemic and the response to humanitarian crises and conflicts such as the ongoing war in Ukraine,' they said.
'The Board will shortly commence the search for Daniel's replacement.'
Mr Wordsworth was still listed as chief executive on the World Vision website at the time of publishing.
Born in Tamworth, in northeastern New South Wales, Mr Wordsworth began his career in the Royal Australian Navy.
He landed the top job in 2021 after 25 years of working in conflict hotspots across South East Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
He said he felt 'compelled and called' to work with World Vision when he was announced as the charity's chief executive.
Prior to joining World Vision, he served as the chief executive for US-based charity Alight and led emergency response for the Christian Children's Fund.
In December, he told Sky News Australia he had decided to commit his life to charity work after deciding he wanted to live a 'worthy life' at the age of 20.
'What will I think was a worthy life? At the time, I thought helping poor people and helping people who are struggling would be a worthy life,' he said.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Mr Wordsworth for comment.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Australia is suddenly flush with forest-friendly recycled toilet paper firms: what's the state of ply?
The Australian brand Who Gives a Crap (WGAC) has recently launched its toilet paper products in the UK supermarket chain Tesco. Having begun as a home delivery service, its recycled and 'sustainable' products are now stocked in Woolworths, Aldi and independent supermarkets such as IGA in Australia. Despite the growing presence of WGAC and other brands offering recycled products, the supermarket shelves remain dominated by plush, virgin-pulp toilet paper. So what are the prospects for further changes in the market? And what are the ethical and environmental options for consumers? Most mainstream toilet paper is made from virgin pulp – wood fibre sourced from hardwood tree plantations. 'They're grown for single-use products, without any environmental benefit,' says Jennifer Macklin, a senior research fellow at Monash University's Sustainable Development Institute. 'Recycled paper uses less energy and water to produce than virgin or bamboo products,' Macklin says. The head of sustainability at WGAC, Elissa Foster, says globally more than 1m trees are cut down each day to produce traditional toilet paper, citing 2022 research from Edge Environment, commissioned by the organisation. Sign up: AU Breaking News email Planting trees for low-value products such as toilet paper in place of old-growth forests contributes to the loss of habitat for species such as the yellow-tailed black-cockatoo, says Estelle Van Hoeydonck, a conservation campaigner at Zoos Victoria, which runs the Wipe for Wildlife campaign. 'Opting for recycled toilet paper is one tangible action Australians can take to support wildlife,' she says. Recycled toilet paper is made from post-consumer waste paper, diverting material from landfill, reducing demand for virgin pulp and supporting a circular economy, Foster says. Encore Tissue, an Australian company that produces the icare brand, was featured on Dr Karl's How Things Work earlier this year. It estimates its recycling operations save 138,000 trees, 185 gigawatt hours of electricity and 128,000 litres of water a year. But Macklin says it is just one part of the wider picture. 'Recycled toilet paper is a positive option when feasible – but we don't want people to feel guilty. Choices like reducing food waste have far greater environmental value than switching toilet paper brands.' Bamboo is often marketed as an eco-friendly alternative – including by WGAC – because it grows rapidly, reaching maturity in three to five years compared with 10 to 40 years for other trees commonly harvested, Foster says. She says it is 'a great alternative to wood-based paper', but agrees with independent experts that recycled paper is the more sustainable option. 'Bamboo is a substitution strategy,' Macklin says, 'less preferable than reusing existing materials.' Nevertheless, Macklin says she chooses bamboo for my household. 'After testing several options, that was the compromise that worked for us.' One reason is that recycled toilet paper is still not as soft as virgin or bamboo. It may also disintegrate less effectively, affecting plumbing. The consumer advocacy group Choice warned in its 2025 toilet paper review that some recycled brands did not break down quickly enough. Yes – for both online and in-store brands. WGAC reported a 21% year-on-year growth in Woolworths over the past 12 months, with rising interest beyond early adopters. The icare products, which are sold exclusively through supermarkets, have also consistently increased sales over the past few years. Experts agree that the more consumers embrace recycled options, the more likely it is supermarkets will expand their ranges. But availability is still patchy. Woolworths carries several recycled brands, including from WGAC, icare, Naturale and Emotions (online only). Coles lists just one icare product. Aldi does not stock recycled toilet paper year-round but has sold limited editions of WGAC products. Foster says WGAC has helped raise awareness and meet demand for recycled toilet paper in a more convenient way. 'We witnessed this demand rise in 2020 due to #toiletpapergate [the panic buying spree when Covid hit].' An icare spokesperson said WGAC's rise had not negatively affected its shelf presence. 'We try to match pack sizes, quality and prices with non-sustainable brands like Quilton or Kleenex.' Other home-delivery startups like Yarn'n, Oo Bamboo, About a Dog and Emotions, have followed similar models, often linking each purchase to a 50% charitable donation.
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- The Guardian
Australia shouldn't fear the AI revolution – new skills can create more and better jobs
It seems a lifetime ago, but it was 2017 when the former NBN CEO Mike Quigley and I wrote a book about the impact of technology on our labour market. Changing Jobs: The Fair Go in the New Machine Age was our attempt to make sense of rapid technological change and its implications for Australian workers. It sprang from a thinkers' circle Andrew Charlton and I convened regularly back then, to consider the biggest, most consequential shifts in our economy. Flicking through the book now makes it very clear that the pace of change since then has been breathtaking. The stories of Australian tech companies give a sense of its scale. In 2017, the cloud design pioneer Canva was valued at $US1bn – today, it's more than $US30bn. Leading datacentre company AirTrunk was opening its first two centres in Sydney and Melbourne. It now has almost a dozen across Asia-Pacific and is backed by one of the world's biggest investors. We understand a churning and changing world is a source of opportunity but also anxiety for Australians. While the technology has changed, our goal as leaders remains the same. The responsibility we embrace is to make Australian workers, businesses and investors beneficiaries, not victims, of that change. That matters more than ever in a new world of artificial intelligence. Breakthroughs in 'large language models' (LLMs) – computer programs trained on massive datasets that can understand and respond in human languages – have triggered a booming AI 'hype cycle' and are driving a 'cognitive industrial revolution'. ChatGPT became a household name in a matter of months and has reframed how we think about working, creating and problem-solving. LLMs have been adopted seven times faster than the internet and 20 times faster than electricity. The rapid take-up has driven the biggest rise in the S&P 500 since the late 1990s. According to one US estimate, eight out of 10 workers could use LLMs for at least 10% of their work in future. Yet businesses are still in the discovery phase, trying to separate hype from reality and determine what AI to build, buy or borrow. Artificial intelligence will completely transform our economy. Every aspect of life will be affected. I'm optimistic that AI will be a force for good, but realistic about the risks. The Nobel prize-winning economist Darren Acemoglu estimates that AI could boost productivity by 0.7% over the next decade, but some private sector estimates are up to 30 times higher. Goldman Sachs expects AI could drive gross domestic product (GDP) growth up 7% over the next 10 years, and PwC estimates it could bump up global GDP by $15.7tn by 2030. The wide variation in estimates is partly due to different views on how long it will take to integrate AI into business workflows deeply enough to transform the market size or cost base of industries. But if some of the predictions prove correct, AI may be the most transformative technology in human history. At its best, it will convert energy into analysis, and more productivity into higher living standards. It's expected to have at least two significant economy-wide effects. First, it reduces the cost of information processing. One example of this is how eBay's AI translation tools have removed language barriers to drive international sales. The increase in cross-border trade is the equivalent of having buyers and sellers 26% closer to one another – effectively shrinking the distance between Australia and global markets. This is one reason why the World Trade Organization forecasts AI will lower trade costs and boost trade volumes by up to 13%. Second, cheaper analysis accelerates and increases our problem-solving capacity, which can, in turn, speed up innovation by reducing research and development (R&D) costs and skills bottlenecks. By making more projects stack up commercially, AI is likely to raise investment, boost GDP and generate demand for human expertise. Despite the potential for AI to create more high-skilled, high-wage jobs, some are concerned that adoption will lead to big increases in unemployment. The impact of AI on the labour force is uncertain, but there are good reasons to be optimistic. One study finds that more than half of the use cases of LLMs involve workers iterating back and forth with the technology, augmenting workers' skills in ways that enable them to achieve more. Another recent study found that current LLMs often automate only some tasks within roles, freeing up employees to add more value rather than reducing hours worked. These are some of the reasons many expect the AI transformation to enhance skills and change the nature of work, rather than causing widespread or long-term structural unemployment. Even so, the impact of AI on the nature of work is expected to be substantial. We've seen this play out before – more than half the jobs people do today are in occupations that didn't even exist at the start of the second world war. Some economists have suggested AI could increase occupational polarisation – driving a U-shaped increase in demand for manual roles that are harder to automate and high-skill roles that leverage technology, but a reduction in demand for medium-skilled tasks. But workers in many of these occupations may be able to leverage AI to complete more specialised tasks and take on more productive, higher-paying roles. In this transition, the middle has the most to gain and the most at stake. There is also a risk that AI could increase short-term unemployment if investment in skills does not keep up with the changing nature of work. Governments have an important role to play here, and a big motivation for our record investment in education is ensuring that skills keep pace with technological change. But it's also up to business, unions and the broader community to ensure we continue to build the human capital and skills we need to grasp this opportunity. To be optimistic about AI is not to dismiss the risks, which are not limited to the labour market. The ability of AI to rapidly collate, create and disseminate information and disinformation makes people more vulnerable to fraud and poses a risk to democracies. AI technologies are also drastically reducing the cost of surveillance and increasing its effectiveness, with implications for privacy, autonomy at work and, in some cases, personal security. There are questions of ethics, of inequality, of bias in algorithms, and legal responsibility for decision-making when AI is involved. These new technologies will also put pressure on resources such as energy, land, water and telecoms infrastructure, with implications for carbon emissions. But we are well placed to manage the risks and maximise the opportunities. In 2020, Australia was ranked sixth in the world in terms of AI companies and research institutions when accounting for GDP. Our industrial opportunities are vast and varied – from developing AI software to using AI to unlock value in traditional industries. Markets for AI hardware – particularly chips – and foundational models are quite concentrated. About 70% of the widely used foundational models have been developed in the US, and three US firms claim 65% of the global cloud computing market. But further downstream, markets for AI software and services are dynamic, fragmented and more competitive. The Productivity Commission sees potential to develop areas of comparative advantage in these markets. Infrastructure is an obvious place to start. According to the International Data Corporation, global investment in AI infrastructure increased 97% in the first half of 2024 to $US47bn and is on its way to $US200bn by 2028. We are among the top five global destinations for datacentres and a world leader in quantum computing. Our landmass, renewable energy potential and trusted international partnerships make us an attractive destination for data processing. Our substantial agenda, from the capacity investment scheme to the Future Made in Australia plan, will be key to this. They are good examples of our strategy to engage and invest, not protect and retreat. Our intention is to regulate as much as necessary to protect Australians, but as little as possible to encourage innovation. There is much work already under way: our investment in quantum computing company PsiQuantum and AI adopt centres, development of Australia's first voluntary AI safety standard, putting AI on the critical technologies list, a national capability plan, and work on R&D. Next steps will build on the work of colleagues like the assistant minister for the digital economy, Andrew Charlton, the science minister, Tim Ayres and former science minister Ed Husic, and focus on at least five things: Building confidence in AI to accelerate development and adoption in key sectors. Investing in and encouraging up skilling and reskilling to support our workforce. Helping to attract, streamline, speed up and coordinate investment in data infrastructure that's in the national interest, in ways that are cost effective, sustainable and make the most of our advantages. Promoting fair competition in global markets and building demand and capability locally to secure our influence in AI supply chains. And working with the finance minister, Katy Gallagher, to deliver safer and better public services using AI. Artificial intelligence will be a key concern of the economic reform roundtable I'm convening this month because it has major implications for economic resilience, productivity and budget sustainability. I'm setting these thoughts out now to explain what we'll grapple with and how. AI is contentious, and of course, there is a wide spectrum of views, but we are ambitious and optimistic. We can deploy AI in a way consistent with our values if we treat it as an enabler, not an enemy, by listening to and training workers to adapt and augment their work. Because empowering people to use AI well is not just a matter of decency or a choice between prosperity and fairness; it is the only way to get the best out of people and technology at the same time. It is not beyond us to chart a responsible middle course on AI, which maximises the benefits and manages the risks. Not by letting it rip, and not by turning back the clock and pretending none of this is happening, but by turning algorithms into opportunities for more Australians to be beneficiaries, not victims of a rapid transformation that is gathering pace. Jim Chalmers is the federal treasurer
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- The Guardian
Sportsbet advertises multi bets on AFL website after pulling TV ads due to ‘community sentiment'
Gambling giant Sportsbet has splashed ads for its expanded same-game multi bets on the AFL's website, months after pulling them from free-to-air broadcasts due to 'strong community sentiment'. The ads, which reveal Sportsbet now accepts same-game multi bets on how many possessions a player acquires during a match, encouraged people to 'bet now' and surrounded the AFL homepage. While the ads did not breach any rules, Sportsbet has previously voluntarily withdrawn ads for the same product on different platforms 'after listening to stakeholder and community sentiment on gambling advertising'. 'Same-game multis' allow gambling on a combination of outcomes such as possessions and goal scorers, and all must succeed for the bet to be paid out. Analysis has shown that multi-bets have a high fail rate for gamblers. Sign up: AU Breaking News email Crossbench MP Kate Chaney, who sat on a parliamentary inquiry into gambling harm led by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy, said the ad showed why the gambling industry's attempts to self-regulate had failed. 'Expecting gambling companies to take their own hand out of the cookie jar is a joke and the government must know it,' Chaney said. In early July, weeks before the ad was published, the communications minister Annika Wells met the AFL's chief executive, Andrew Dillon, to discuss the government's long-awaited plan to restrict gambling advertising. The former communications minister Michelle Rowland's proposed changes, made in response to June 2023 parliamentary inquiry, were abandoned shortly before the election. The inquiry recommended a total ban on gambling advertising after a three-year transition period. ACT independent senator David Pocock urged the federal government to fast-track its reforms and said the industry could not be trusted to regulate itself. 'Sportsbet response to concern over recent advertising highlights this, after they pulled advertisements from TV only to then splash them over the AFL's website,' Pocock said. Prof Samantha Thomas, a Deakin University academic who specialises in gambling and who gave evidence to the inquiry, said the ad was 'a clear example of why comprehensive bans are needed'. 'Partial restrictions will continue to leave the door open for the gambling industry to promote their products across multiple platforms,' Thomas said. The Alliance for Gambling Reform's chief executive, Martin Thomas, accused Sportsbet of 'virtue signalling' by removing its ads from television and then 'resorting back to type' by splashing them on the AFL's website. Sportsbet and the AFL were contacted for comment. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion Unlike television broadcasts, the ad was only visible to people aged 18 or older. Anyone who visits the AFL website can also opt out of seeing gambling odds and wagering content. Earlier this year, Guardian Australia reported on leaked documents showing the AFL received a bigger share of gambling revenue when people submitted same-game multi bets. Shortly before the season began, the AFL sought an even bigger share of revenue from these bets, arguing the money was necessary to address an 'unprecedented' increase in 'integrity risks' posed by the wagering industry. That proposal was not accepted by some bookmakers and the Victorian gambling regulator is considering whether to make an unprecedented intervention in the dispute, which could set a limit on the league's revenue from wagering. In recent weeks, Wells has also discussed proposed gambling ad restrictions with NRL chair Peter V'landys and chief executive Andrew Abdo, Seven West Media's chief executive, Jeff Howard, and the chief executives of Free TV Australia and Foxtel. Before those meetings, Wells met Rod Glover, who was Peta Murphy's husband for more than 20 years before she died from cancer in December 2023, six months after delivering her report into gambling harms. So far, sources familiar with the consultation say it has focused on identifying the main objections and testing support for compromises. They say the government intends to act by the end of the year. In Australia, Gambling Help Online is available on 1800 858 858. The National Debt Helpline is at 1800 007 007. In the UK, support for problem gambling can be found via the NHS National Problem Gambling Clinic on 020 7381 7722, or GamCare on 0808 8020 133. In the US, call the National Council on Problem Gambling at 800-GAMBLER or text 800GAM.
