Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1697636892114.pdf (Australia)
Submission to the Senate Education and Employment Committee inquiry into the Sex Discrimination and Fair Work (Respect at Work) Amendment Bill 2021 (Cth) – July 2021 Dear Committee, Women’s Health Victoria (WHV) welcomes the opportunity to comment on the Sex Discrimination and Fair Work (Respect at Work) Amendment Bill 2021 (Cth).

However, due to the extremely short timeframe for submissions to this Inquiry, WHV is unable to make a full submission.
WHV endorses the submission and recommendations made by Victoria Legal Aid.

Women’s Health Victoria strongly supports implementation of all 55 recommendations made in the Australian Human Rights’ Commission’s (AHRC) landmark Respect@Work report.

The Respect@Work report outlines a comprehensive plan for better preventing gendered violence and harassment at work, holding perpetrators accountable, and supporting victim-survivors.
Individual recommendations from the report cannot be implemented in isolation; they must be implemented as part of a complementary and comprehensive suite of reforms.
We welcome the positive changes that the Bill will implement, including increasing the time limit for making a complaint of sexual harassment to the AHRC from 6 months to 24 months, prohibiting sex-based harassment, empowering the Fair Work Commission to make stop sexual harassment orders, and including miscarriage as a permissible occasion for compassionate leave.

However, the Bill falls far short of achieving the legislative reform recommended in Respect@Work.
It fails to adopt key recommendations that would place a responsibility on employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment and simplify complaints processes.
In particular, it fails to implement the following recommendations made in Respect@Work: • Recommendation 15 – Ratify the International Labour Organization’s Convention on the Elimination of Violence and Harassment at Work 2019 (C.190) • Recommendation 17 – Amend the Sex Discrimination Act to include a positive duty on employers to take reasonable measures to eliminate sex discrimination, sexual harassment and victimisation.
• Recommendations 18 and 19 – Amend the Sex Discrimination Act to give the Sex Discrimination Commissioner the power to undertake systemic investigations (eg where there is a pattern of sexual harassment in a sector or workplace) and undertake compliance monitoring to ensure that industries, organisations or sectors are complying with a new positive duty.
• Recommendation 23 – Amend the Australian Human Rights Commission Act to allow public interest actions to be brought to court by representative bodies such as unions.

• Recommendation 25 – Amend the Australian Human Rights Commission Act to ensure costs may only be ordered against a party if the proceedings are vexatious or unreasonable.

• Recommendation 28 – Amend the Fair Work Act to expressly prohibit sexual harassment.
Sex Discrimination and Fair Work (Respect at Work) Amendment Bill 2021Submission 28 Unless these recommendations are adopted, sexual harassment and gendered violence at work will continue to harm large numbers of women, particularly women from marginalised population groups who experience compounding forms of inequality and discrimination and barriers to reporting, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.
We echo VLA’s recommendation that the Committee to undertake direct consultation with Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations about the Bill and the reforms required.

We adopt the recommendations outlined in the submission from Victoria Legal Aid.
In particular we wish to highlight the importance of the following recommendations, which strongly align with previous submissions made by WHV:1 • changing the proposed definition of ‘harassment on the ground of sex’ in the Sex Discrimination Act from ‘seriously demeaning’ to ‘demeaning’; • prohibiting ‘creating or facilitating an intimidating, hostile, humiliating or offensive environment on the basis of sex’; • amending the Sex Discrimination Act to impose an enforceable positive duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment; • giving the Australian Human Rights Commission powers and resources to effectively investigate sexual harassment and take action against employers; • amending the Bill to ensure that ‘stop sexual harassment’ orders can be made in the fullest range of work-related circumstances possible; • amending the objects of the Sex Discrimination Act to include ‘to achieve substantive equality between men and women’; • amending the Sex Discrimination Act to extend the protections against sexual harassment to all areas of public life; • amending the Sex Discrimination Act to shift the burden of proof to the employer once a worker has established a prima facie case; and • amending the Australian Human Rights Commission Act to allow unions and other representative groups to bring representative claims to court.
We urge the Committee to adopt these recommendations to ensure that the Bill acquits the relevant recommendations of the Respect@Work report as part of a comprehensive and effective approach to ending sexual harassment and gendered violence at work.

Yours sincerely, Dianne Hill Chief Executive Officer 1 Women’s Health Victoria (2019), Submission to Inquiry into sexual harassment in Australian workplaces.
Available at: https://humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-07/submission 342 - womens health victoria.pdf Sex Discrimination and Fair Work (Respect at Work) Amendment Bill 2021Submission 28