Council avoided one claim, but a manager's conduct still cost it $18,000

A senior Hamilton Zoo manager's conduct came close to sexual harassment, Employment Relations Authority member Nicola Craig found on 3 August 2026.

The finding came in a personal grievance case brought by a former zookeeper who worked at the Hamilton City Council run zoo from 2017 until she resigned in December 2020. Over her three years there she raised a wide range of concerns, including micromanagement, unclear processes, thin training and development opportunities, heavy workloads and animal welfare issues, the determination records.

At the centre of her complaint was a senior manager who moved from a newly created operations role into the zoo's top job. The zookeeper told the Authority he sought her out when she was alone, pressed her for information about colleagues, and began texting her late at night to catch up after she ended a relationship with another staff member. He once messaged asking if she missed him, with a winking emoji, and told her that no matter how hard she worked, she would not get anywhere because she lacked the right relationships with management. The Authority found her evidence about him credible.

"The behaviour comes very close to amounting to sexual harassment," Craig found, adding there was no explicit sexual element but an insidious quality to the manager's conduct, including asking her out for coffee and telling her their relationship was good enough that he would...

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