The director of the PH, who was interviewed by ORF, considered the procedure to be lawful, as the teacher had pointed out at the beginning of her course that gender was a component of her assessment. A specialist centre for gender and diversity even recommended that non-gendered work should be assessed negatively from the fifth semester onwards and that people who refused to do so should not be allowed to complete their studies. However, this is still under discussion. In a written statement, the Ministry of Education described this as the sole concern of the PH, which is why no panellist was sent to "Bürgeranwalt". Five other universities interviewed by ORF emphasised that they promote gender-sensitive language, but that they do not automatically view non-gendered work as negative.
Ombudsman Rosenkranz explained in "Bürgeranwalt" that the PH Burgenland had made it too easy for itself. The constitution states that the state language is German. However, the Council for the German Language, which is made up of representatives from Austria, Germany and Switzerland, rejects anything that makes it difficult to read, speak or understand, such as spellings with colons or asterisks. According to her, the student is by no means the only person at the PH who does not want to use gender. "However, this case also raises further questions: for example, what happens to teachers who - perhaps also citing their constitutionally guaranteed academic freedom - do not attach any importance to gendering and do not judge non-gendered work any differently to gendered work?" says Ombudsman Rosenkranz. It is unacceptable that work with excellent content is judged less favourably or even negatively due to a lack of gender. The PH Burgenland is not above the constitution with its interpretation either.
Enquiry: Neighbourhood nuisance caused by transport companies - tardiness of the trade authority
A woman from southern Styria complained to the Austrian Ombudsman Board about the noise nuisance caused by an adjacent lorry parking area: especially at weekends and at the beginning of the week, forty lorries would arrive and depart from three o'clock in the morning. When she bought her house in the early 1990s, there were only fields in the neighbourhood. Over time, however, a neighbouring business has bought 4,000 m² of additional land, so that her house and other residential buildings now border it on two sides. 29 lorries have been allowed to park in the car park since 2022 according to a permit; before that, the car park had been operated without consensus.
The business owner relied on the municipality, stating that no permit was required for a lorry parking space according to the Leibniz district authority (BH), only a notice. He had posted this notice and then started to use the property as a lorry parking area. The municipality, on the other hand, pointed out that it had only ever been responsible for building regulations and not for commercial law. The BH explained that the procedure for approving the site had been ongoing since 2017 and had only been delayed until 2022 due to numerous complaints from the complainant.
When the case was first broadcast, Ombudsman Dr Walter Rosenkranz criticised why the business owner was fined for operating the parking space without a consensus, but no action was taken against the woman's noise nuisance. A new noise barrier had been built after the programme. This would be sufficient to end the noise nuisance if the other conditions for operating the car park, such as the limit of 29 lorries, were also complied with. Ombudsman Rosenkranz therefore advised the woman and other similarly affected persons to continue to document violations of these trade authority regulations well and to report them to the trade authority.
On the ORF TVthek you can watch the current Citizens' Advocate programme online for one week at a time.