Draft Legislation Federal Anti-Discrimination Laws continues to be Hot Topic

As we have previously posted the federal Attorney General has released draft legislation consolidating five separate Federal anti-discrimination laws into a single Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill. However the Attorney-General has had defend the federal government's draft law reforms, insisting that the Government has “no intention of seeking to prevent people from speaking about religious, political or other “topical” issues”.

The federal opposition continues to harshly criticises the reforms, calling them “some sort of ideological crusade to control what people can say” and opposition has also come from conservative politicians, media and retired judiciary. However, despite the chorus forming against the reforms the Attorney has defended the proposed legislation but also said the Government will listen to criticism. 

There has also been support for the reforms, SBS for example quotes, the Vice-president of the legal advocacy group Liberty Victoria, as saying “the proposed draft is a significant improvement on the current legislation”. He then says, “The current legislation is divided into silos. It's somewhat inconsistent and it doesn't, of course, cover all the grounds it ought to cover and that the new legislation does. So, in a very large number of ways the Human Rights and Anti-discrimination Bill exposure draft is a substantial improvement on the current federal situation."

Read more here.

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