Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on behalf of the Jacqui Lambie Network. We have circulated an amendment on sheet 1700, but, for the benefit of this chamber, we would like to advise we are no longer intending to move it. There's another amendment that we are intending to move on sheet 1702, but I'll talk about that later.

First, I want to talk about the bill. Senator Lambie and I welcome the introduction of the government's bill, Anti-Discrimination and Human Rights Legislation Amendment (Respect at Work) Bill 2022, which implements the Australian Human Rights Commission's Respect@Work report. This legislation is long overdue. The Respect@Work report was published over two years ago, and for two years we've known that women experience higher rates of workplace sexual harassment than men. For two years we've known that certain groups of workers experience sexual harassment at a higher rate than others. Workers under 30 are copping it hard. Workers with a disability are copping it hard. And nobody should be copping it at all. For two years we've also known that sexual harassment takes place in certain workplace settings, like workplaces where there's a high level of contact with third parties and workplaces with strong hierarchies. These facts are disturbing. What's also disturbing are the statistics behind this.

The Respect@Work report looked at the data from the 2018 fourth national survey on sexual harassment in Australian workplaces. The survey results revealed that 33 per cent of people who had been in the workforce in the previous five years experienced workplace sexual harassment—that's one in three. And, of the one in three, 80 per cent never reported it. The survey also revealed that 23 per cent of Australian women and 16 per cent of Australian men had experienced workplace sexual harassment in the previous year. Clearly, there's a massive problem with sexual harassment in the workplace.

The Respect@Work report made 55 recommendations that will help address these problems. Labor told us before the election that they'd fully implement all of these recommendations, and I think that's the right thing to do. One of the recommendations is to introduce a positive duty on employers to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate unlawful sexual discrimination, sexual harassment and victimisation. What does this mean? Well, employers already have a workplace health and safety responsibility to prevent sexual harassment, and this comes under the broader duty to eliminate or manage hazards and risks to a worker's health. But the Respect@Work report highlighted how the current WHS framework is not enough. At the moment it is focused on harassment that has already occurred. This bill will require workplaces to create a safe place to work, free of sexual harassment. This means people can feel safer at work before they're given a reason not to. Another recommendation is to empower the commission to assess compliance and enforce this positive duty. This means the commission can make sure employers comply with their legal obligations. I'm happy to see the recommendations of the Respect@Work report have been supported by the government and appear in this bill.

We're also happy the new functions the commission will get under this bill were fully funded in the budget. I'm a huge supporter of the Australian Human Rights Commission. They do important work on a shoestring budget and they could be doing more, which is the tragic bit about this. The reason we need this bill is we need the commission to be able to do more. If it's going to do more, it's got to be funded to do more. That's something we want to see happen. We're not going to push for it now, but it's something we will continue to raise with the government. While we are happy with the bill, it's because we are happy with how it looks on paper. It's one thing to look good on a piece of paper. It's another thing to work when it hits the factory floor.

That's why Senator Lambie and I, together with the Greens, are proposing an amendment for a review of the changes this bill will make. This review will include the new positive duty and the additional functions of the commission. It also includes looking at the capacity of the commission to undertake its new functions. These powers are new, and we hope we get them right the first time. But, as I have said before, we are going to make mistakes. Sometimes groundbreaking changes break more than just ground. We need a statutory review in place to see if this bill actually works how we want it to. We need to know if it's operating as intended. If not, that's fine; I'm happy to make further changes down the track if we need to. What's important is that we get this right, and the only way we will know for sure if the changes we make in this place are right is if we take the time to check in and check under the hood to see how these changes are playing out in the real world.

The review we are proposing within our amendment is a flexible one, and I'm happy that this has broad support. The review will be independent, and it's set to take place anywhere between two and three years after the commencement of these changes. Usually, a review is done no later or no earlier than a certain period. But we're proposing something different here; we've given the government some flexibility so that the review can happen when it's most appropriate. We want to make sure the commission will have had the time to do its important work of educating employers on this new positive duty. We also want to make sure that, if an employer is not meeting its duty to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace, the commission has had the time to use its enforcement powers. We want to make sure that the legislation is tested in the courts. This all may take two years to play out or it may take three, and that's why we've included some flexibility in the review. Basically, we want to make sure that this bill is working well for all parties involved—employees, employers and the commission. So that's our amendment.

There's also the issue around costs. There's been a bit of talk about the cost provision in the bill. We've heard from legal centres who represent victims of sexual harassment that this wording would stop costs being a barrier to pursuing an action. But the government didn't adopt this wording in the bill. The government had proposed a default position where parties bear their own costs. The government's proposed cost provisions were an important change to the status quo. But those costs of bringing an action can still be big. They can be huge if the other party is all lawyered up and happy to drag out proceedings. We weren't alone in being concerned about this; we heard from those same legal centres that they had concerns with proposed cost provisions in the bill. They were concerned this would still be a barrier to justice. That's why we proposed an amendment that adopted the recommendation in the Respect@Work report. This is what the member for Kooyong did in the other place, and we were prepared to put forward amendments that mirrored hers because we had the same concerns.

The government has heard these concerns; the Attorney-General and the Minister for Women published a media release about this today. The government has decided to take this part out of the bill. They've told us they're going to consult a little more on this. The Attorney-General's Department will conduct an immediate review, which will be completed by May next year. They want to get this right. We want this too. And that's why we're happy to not proceed with our amendment to the cost provisions. We're happy that the government is taking the time to listen to the concerns of the legal centres and the people they represent. We're happy that they've committed to conducting a departmental review and implementing the recommendations of that review as quickly as possible. We will see the legislation that gives effect to those recommendations here next year. I'm looking forward to working together with the government on this issue next year so that we can get it right, so that cost is not a barrier to anyone seeking justice. Your rights aren't conditional on your bank balance. They're yours all the time.

We can't accept a world where it's fine to harass somebody so long as they're poor. That's why costs can't be a barrier, and that's what they'll be so long as justice has a price tag.