Page 4459 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 19 November 1991
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Of course, that sort of procedural discrimination came out in the Estimates Committee hearings recently. I refer to this Territory's Department of Education's age profile and access to employment, particularly for middle-age women. That is not a directly discriminatory process. No-one could suggest that of the officials involved. But the procedures for advertising - the manner in which advertised vacancies are dealt with - has produced extraordinary problems for this and successive Territory governments in relation to that age grouping. The fact is that access and equity issues are at a very difficult stage in that service and perhaps elsewhere in the department.
To finalise my comments at the in-principle stage, the other area that this Bill deals with is the question of disparities. This refers to the situation, such as that which has developed in North America, where no individual has identified that discrimination exists, but where disparities are found to exist only because you can do statistical inferential studies and you can determine, from agreed standard variation issues, what is happening, particularly in hiring, in the employment sector. There is an important aspect of this to debate at the detail stage, in terms of the exemption of much of the industrial award area from the provisions of this Act.
This is momentous legislation. It represents an historic and herculean effort by the government law officers and the other people who contributed to it. It does not tackle some of the really hard issues. For example, at a feminist theologians conference last May, Justice Elizabeth Evatt, for whom I have great respect and who I hope will be the next Governor-General, criticised the continuing exemptions in Australia for religious bodies from sex discrimination legislation.
So, what we can do in this debate is foreshadow what further we have to tackle and what we cannot do at this stage, due to reactionary forces, a lack of initiative and a difficulty in educating our own population to accept the reforms. I commend our Bill to the Assembly and I hope that, with relevant amendments and adjustments, particularly those dealing with incitement to racial disharmony - amendments which I propose to move later on in the debate - this Bill will be carried.
MR STEFANIAK (9.41): Mr Speaker, the Liberal Party will be supporting the Bill in principle. We have a number of amendments for the detail stage. I think at this stage it is important to put a number of points on the record. Mr Collaery is, indeed, quite right when he refers to this Bill as "our Bill" or "my Bill". I note that, in the Bill that is now before the house, there are some seven changes from the Alliance draft Bill. I hope I am not misrepresenting them, but they relate to a small number of points.
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