Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Amendment Bill 2012 passed awaiting assent

The Legislation amends the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act 1999 giving effect the government says to a 2010 election campaign commitment to support gender equality and improve workforce participation and workplace flexibility, through retaining and improving the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act 1999.

For starters the amending law changes the name of the principal Act to the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 and the reason given for the change is to emphasise that the focus of the Act is on gender equality and seeking to improve outcomes for both women and men in the workplace.

The Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency will also undergo a name change to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. The title of the Director of the Agency will also change to the Director of Workplace Gender Equality, to reflect the new focus of the Act.

The principal objectives of the current law are amended to reflect the new focus of the Act being, to promote and improve gender equality in the workplace, with specific recognition of equal remuneration, family and caring responsibilities as issues central to the achievement of gender equality.

The passage of the legislation in the last week has been praised by commentators as “a significant improvement on its predecessor, the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act 1999’. Helen Conway, the director of the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency, is quoted as saying “it represents a more contemporary approach to the issue of discrimination, particularly in relation to family and caring responsibilities”.

Kate Galloway (a senior law lecturer at James Cook University and PhD candidate at Melbourne University) in article (first appearing in Women's Agenda republished by SmartCompany) writes:

“I am undecided in my views on this change.

On the one hand, I have long been suspicious of the default position linking childcare with women's child-rearing responsibilities. Affordable and accessible quality childcare is widely recognised as essential to women's full civic participation, including in the paid work force. …

What if we reframed the issue of childcare to focus on children, instead of women? Should we not be challenging the implicit assumption that women alone will take time off to care for infants and young children? And the assumption that women alone should arrange and pay for childcare? I think the new legislation heralds the potential to break this deep-seated assumption.”

Read the full article here

More about the legislation here

Uniform Anti-discrimination is not a Free Speech Issue

At last some attempt at the Federal level is to be made to create effective and cohesive anti-discrimination laws. Much discussed in the last two years, the Attorney General has this week released draft legislation consolidating the five separate pieces of Federal anti-discrimination legislation into a single Act to be called Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Act.

Although the law is yet to be introduced into Parliament, consultation closed earlier this year and the draft bill will cover issues and problems like:

1. Defining the levels of protections to the highest current standard, to resolve gaps and inconsistencies without diminishing protections.


2. Clearer and more efficient laws provide greater flexibility in their operation, with no substantial change in practical outcome.


3. Enhancing protections where the benefits outweigh any regulatory impact.


4. Voluntary measures that business can take to assist their understanding of obligations and reduce occurrences of discrimination.


5. A streamlined complaints process, to make it more efficient to resolve disputes that do arise.

This new legislation is aimed at a unified response to discrimination across Australia.

Already debate from some of the more predictable quarters has attacked the proposed law as an example of the Labor government attacking free speech. These glib critics refer to the Bolt Case and continue to argue that someone who attacks a persons race in forums where the people he attacks have no equal chance to respond or reply is exercising free speech. And they might be right if you equate "unfettered speech" and "free speech" but they are not the same. Free speech is a democratic right that comes with the responsibility not to have it abused unlike unfettered speech which has no rules and creates a jungle of abuse and innuendo without redress or defense.