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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Thursday, 5 August 2004) . . Page.. 3570 ..

We are fortunate to have an example of how section 109 might operate. The very same issue of gender imbalance in primary school teaching was the basis for an application for an exemption by the Catholic Education Office under the similarly worded Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act of 1984. The Catholic Education Office wanted to offer male-only scholarships to school leavers for the purpose of increasing the number of male primary school teachers, based on the same reasoning as Mr Stefaniak uses here.

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission refused a temporary exemption. It held that “sex-specific” scholarship schemes designed to attract male Higher School Certificate students to primary school teaching are not a reasonable response to the imbalance of male and female teachers. The commission said that there appeared to be no practices that exclude, disadvantage, restrict or result in an adverse effect upon males seeking to enter the primary teaching profession. It held that the adverse effects of the exemption would be out of proportion to the benefits alleged to accrue. It also pointed to the fact that there are other ways of increasing the number of male teachers that do not involve discrimination against females, such as improving the perceived status of teaching among boys.

By contrast, the commission responded differently to a revised application by the Catholic Education Office. When the Catholic Education Office presented a request for a temporary exemption to offer an equal number of scholarships to male and female applicants, the commission agreed to do so on certain conditions. The proposal was to involve the creation of additional scholarships and not to impact negatively upon the existing scholarships currently being offered. It was also stipulated that this was to be only one element.

Sitting suspended from 6.31 to 8.00 pm.

MR STANHOPE: As you would recall, I was halfway through my response to the Discrimination Amendment Bill 2004. I will continue. For the sake of connection, I will start where I think I finished. I did not note it quite accurately.

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission refused a temporary exemption. It held that sex-specific scholarship schemes designed to attract male high school certificate students into primary school teaching are not a reasonable response to the imbalance between male and female teachers.

The commission said that there appeared to be no practices that exclude, disadvantage, restrict or result in an adverse effect upon males seeking to enter the primary teaching profession. It held that the adverse effects of the exemption would be out of proportion to the benefits alleged to accrue. It also pointed to the fact that there are other ways of increasing the number of male teachers that do not involve discrimination against females, such as improving the perceived status of teaching among boys.

By contrast, the commission responded differently to a revised application by the Catholic Education Office. When the Catholic Education Office presented a request for a temporary exemption to offer an equal number of scholarships to male and female applicants, they agreed to do so on certain conditions.

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