“Consolidating anti-discrimination laws will make compliance easier, reduce costs and shift the focus from redressing wrongs to preventing discrimination from occurring in the first place – this is particularly good news for small business,” she said.
The draft legislation also introduces sexual orientation and gender identity as protected grounds of discrimination.
“It’s ridiculous that at the moment an African woman, for example, who has been discriminated against needs to separately make complaints of sex and race discrimination – now she can make a single complaint recognising the discrimination was because she was both a woman and African,” Roxon said.
Under the draft legislation, anyone discriminated against under multiple grounds need only make one complaint.
Religious exemptions will continue as under the current scheme, except in relation to aged care whereby Commonwealth-funded aged care providers will no longer be permitted to discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity.
The government says this change is consistent with the introduction of protection against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination and in recognition that aged care services become a person’s home.
Kath Fawcett, consultant at law firm Slater and Gordon, told SmartCompany the new definition of discrimination as unfavourable treatment introduced in the legislation may make establishing discrimination easier for complainants.
“Presently, most discrimination legislation requires less favourable treatment which involves comparison with another group,” she says.
Fawcett says the introduction in the draft legislation of a new general exemption for conduct that is justifiable is a “very new approach”.
“Presently, the various different acts detail various different exemptions whereas this is a new catch all and it is unclear how it will operate. It has the potential to be quite broad so may cause some concern for complainants,” she says.
“The third interesting feature is the number of new enforceable grounds introduced but in reality those grounds may not make much difference as they are already present in state anti-discrimination laws.”
Fawcett also says from a process point of view the general rule under the draft legislation will be that parties bear their own costs, which is a change from currently where, generally, the successful party pays their own costs.
