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‘It’s a Discrimination Law Julia, But Not As We Know It’: Part 3-1 of the Fair Work Act

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Simon Rice  and
Cameron Roles
Simon Rice
Affiliation:
ANU College of Law, The Australian National University
Cameron Roles
Affiliation:
ANU College of Law, The Australian National University
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Abstract

At first glance, Part 3–1 of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) seems to overlap with long-established anti-discrimination laws, offering protection against adverse, attribute-based conduct in employment. On close analysis, however, it turns out to be a new and quite different regime. Although the Fair Work Act offers a simple alternative to dated and complicated anti-discrimination laws, its provisions are at times overly-simple, raising uncertainty about how they will operate. Our analysis leads us to conclude that the approach to discrimination protection in the Fair Work Act, while an important addition to the remedies available to Australian workers, is compromised by failing to take account of lessons learned in the long history of anti-discrimination law.

Keywords

Adverse actionanti-discrimination lawdirect discriminationindirect discriminationdismissal protectionsemployment discriminationemployment lawFair Work Act Australialabour lawlabour rightsvictimisation
Type
Symposium: Assessing the Fair Work Act
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , October 2010 , pp. 13 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2010

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