Small Business Women Australia founder Amanda Rose has called on Parliament to act first and lead the nation in the implementation of the new Respect at Work laws.
Parliament officially passed the new anti-sexual harassment laws two weeks ago and businesses have 12 months to prepare for the updated legislation.
Speaking to Sky News Australia, Ms Rose admitted it was “really disappointing” the changes were needed and called on politicians to “lead the way” in their implementation.
“It would be nice to see Parliament actually lead the way and have a safe environment first,” she said to host Tim Gilbert on Saturday.
“Then we actually have leaders that we can respect and follow and at the moment that’s not really happening at all, so we need them to lead the way.”
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The bill follows a report from National Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins in 2020 which included 55 recommendations about what can be done to eliminate sexual harassment in workplaces across the country.
Some of the recommendations were about changing legislation and while the former government introduced some new laws, these are the first passed by Labor.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the time said he was “very pleased” to have delivered on a key commitment made during the election campaign.
“The new laws will take positive duty on employers to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate sex discrimination, sexual harassment and victimisation as far as possible,” he said.
“It will strengthen the Australian Human Rights Commission with new functions to assess and enforce compliance with this new requirement including the capacity to give compliance notices to employers who are not meeting their obligations.
“It expressly prohibits conduct that results in a hostile workplace environment on the basis of gender and it will ensure that Commonwealth public sector organisations are also required to report to the Workplace Gender Equality agency on its gender equality indicators.”
Ms Jenkins said the Respect at Work bill would change employers “from being reactive to proactive” on harassment in the workplace.
“It shifts the emphasis from a complaints-based model to one where employers must take action, and continuously assess and evaluate whether they are meeting the requirements of the duty,” she said.
Ms Rose also said the changes would help to educate and change behaviours rather than employees losing their jobs.
“Organisations now really need to look at bringing in experts or someone who can lead that charge so review policies, listen to people in complaints,” she said.
“There’s a lot of sexual harassment that I deal with when I’m coaching career women. They don’t know how to speak up, they don’t feel like they can speak up, they feel like they will be attacked and pushed out of an organisation if they speak up which is a reality.
“We need to change that, to make sure that you’re not going to be pushed out, and that even the person who made the mistake they need an opportunity to learn, to change their behaviour instead of them being kicked out.”
The SBWA founder added better complaint systems are introduced to ensure when conversations with human resources departments are had the response is effective.
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