NFAW response to the Attorney-General’s Department – consultation on remaining legislative recommendations from Respect@Work

NFAW is concerned that, while women want meaningful action to prevent sexual harassment, this consultation paper appears focused on reasons for legislative inaction.

Over and over again, the consultation paper deploys the four standard reasons for not implementing critical amendments to Commonwealth anti-discrimination legislation. These are:

1. that change is complicated,
2. that existing legislation should address the matter,
3. that education will make everything better, and
4. that empowering the relevant agency will threaten its cooperative relationship with employers.

We note that the last reason seems to apply only to regulators addressing discrimination against women, and not for example the Fair Work Ombudsman or WHS regulators or AUSTRAC or the ACCC.

These reasons have been recycled for at least fourteen years (see Respect@Work, p. 477), during which change has been made only at the margins. Over that time, the Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) has remained reactive, costly and a deterrent to complainants. Employers have been educated, and yet workplace harassment increases. According to WGEA, 98.2% of reporting organisations have sexual harassment policies in place, 98.1% have a grievance process, and 87.1% provide training for managers – and the prevalence rates of sexual harassment have continued to rise from 11% in 2003 to 33% in 2018.

Our comments address both what the consultation paper says and what it fails to say. Those silences indicate a deep reluctance to engage with any significant policy or legislative change.

 

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