Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

One of the Albanese Labor government's commitments was, of course, to implement the recommendations of the Australian Human Rights Commission's 2020 Respect@Work report and to introduce a positive duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment as a priority. The bill implements all remaining legislative recommendations from the Respect@Work report. The exception from this bill is recommendation 28, which Minister Burke is progressing separately.

This piece of legislation is the result of decades of advocacy by women's organisations, which began calling for laws to combat gender based discrimination in the seventies. Almost 40 years ago, in 1984, this parliament legislated the Sex Discrimination Act, which prohibited sexual harassment at work. However, as Australia's Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins noted in her Respect@Work report:

… the rate of change has been disappointingly slow. Australia now lags behind other countries in preventing and responding to sexual harassment.

A 2018 survey by the commission found that one in three people had experienced sexual harassment at work. Two in five women, 39 per cent; and one in four men, 26 per cent, were subjected to this reprehensible act. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were even more likely to be sexually harassed at work. The Jenkins report recommended a new model to fix our broken regulatory system that is clearly not fit for purpose and not protecting people.

The report's 55 recommendations included calls for a national survey every four years; developing a national evidence base on sexual harassment; recognising it as a form of gender based violence; school based training on respectful relationships; establishing a workplace sexual harassment council; legislating an objective of substantive equality between women and men, rather than equality of opportunity; creating a positive duty on employers to eliminate sex discrimination; giving the commission a broad inquiry function and enforcement powers to examine witnesses; requiring ASX limited companies to report on cases; and funding to re-establish working women's centres. At the last election, Labor committed to fully implementing all recommendations of the Respect@Work report.

I personally was very committed to lobbying for and ensuring funding for the NT Working Women's Centre. It is something I have done for years, and I've seen firsthand the positive impacts that they have. The Northern Territory represents a unique and often complex environment for working women that can leave them more vulnerable to harassment. The NT Working Women's Centre reported that 30 per cent of their clients came from culturally and linguistically diverse communities; 16 per cent identified as living with a disability; 11 per cent were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander First Nations women; and 56 per cent were from regional, rural or remote communities. The centre is the only service provider in the NT that provides holistic support to women experiencing issues in the workplace. I thank them for and congratulate them on their ongoing work representing and assisting Territory women.

While sexual harassment in the workplace is a very serious issue, the NT Working Women's Centre also provides services to women experiencing other workplace issues such as discrimination, bullying and harassment, and the impacts of domestic and family violence. For many women working in the Northern Territory, maintaining employment is critical because they might have limited options finding another job—even if they wanted to. Some of the obstacles include living in a regional or remote area with very few work opportunities; visa restrictions that are tied to specific employers or regions; family responsibilities, including caring for relatives; and cultural or community links and obligations.

I am delighted that we have been able to provide more support for women at work by extending our funding for these services. The Albanese Labor government is proud to equip the Australian Human Rights Commission in the fight against the national scourge that is sexual harassment in the workplace. This bill realises the government's election commitment to fully implement the recommendations of the Respect@Work report, something I note that the previous government did not do. After commissioning the work in 2018, the Morrison government ignored the final report for over a year, leaving it to gather dust on the desk of the former attorney-general. You do have to wonder why that may have been. It simply should not have taken this long.

The Sex Discrimination Commissioner herself described the former government's weak response to her report as a 'missed opportunity'. The former coalition government eventually presented a bill to parliament in response to this report, but that was nowhere near strong enough to deliver the legislative changes proposed by the Sex Discrimination Commissioner. In A roadmap for respect, the current opposition was unclear on whether it even supported the positive duty recommendation in the report, which would make it a duty for employers to monitor and prevent sexual harassment at work.

In this bill, the Albanese Labor government is proposing reforms that are critical for ensuring safer, respectful and more equitable workplaces for all Australians. This Anti-Discrimination and Human Rights Legislation Amendment (Respect at Work) Bill 2022 updates a suite of legislation: the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, the Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986, the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012, the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 and the Age Discrimination Act 2004.

Following recommendation 17, the bill introduces in the Sex Discrimination Act a positive duty on employers to eliminate sex discrimination, sexual and sex based harassment, hostile work environments and victimisation. Employers will be responsible for protecting workers from, for deterring against and for reporting on these odious acts. Following recommendation 18, the bill gives the commission the function of assessing and enforcing compliance with the positive duty in the Sex Discrimination Act. This legislation, in other words, equips the commission with the powers it needs to hold accountable anyone who sexually harasses a colleague and anyone who covers up for them.

Following recommendation 16a, the bill replaces a clause stating that an object of the act was to achieve 'equality of opportunity between men and women' with a new object to 'achieve substantive equality between men and women'. This is a major reform, and it raises our collective aim to achieve full equality between men and women. That's an objective this government is very proud to advance.

Following recommendation 16b, the bill ensures that the provisions relating to sex based harassment in the Sex Discrimination Act extend to conduct of a demeaning nature—not just to conduct of a 'seriously' demeaning nature. That will lower the threshold for reporting harassment so that all levels of toxic work cultures can be exposed to the light of day and sanitised.

These are not small reforms or mere tinkering with legislation. These are profound changes which have the potential to leave workplaces across the country a lot safer for everyone. Sexual harassment doesn't just affect those two-in-five women and one-in-four men, although it affects them for life due to trauma. Sexual harassment affects workplaces from small businesses up to large corporations and, in turn, the productivity of our economy. But, most of all, it tarnishes our self-respect as a nation and shakes our belief that all Australians can walk this land and work in workplaces safely. Freedom from harm shouldn't be a dream. Respect at work is a right—not a privilege for only some of us. Again, in finishing, I want to thank all of those working in this space to get us safer workplaces, because everyone deserves to feel safe at work.

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