December 2021 Building a preventative culture The VEOHRC guidelines emphasise that taking proactive steps will help to ensure that organisations can meet the positive duty, prevent and address discrimination, sexual harassment or victimisation in the workplace and defend any future vicarious liability claims.28 Victoria has also recently introduced the Gender Equality Act 2020 (Vic) which includes duties on the Victorian public sector, local councils and universities to take positive action towards achieving workplace gender equality and promote gender equality in their policies, programs and services.29 The Act provides for education, monitoring and enforcement by the newly established Commissioner for Gender Equality in the Public Sector. Relevant entities are required to: • develop and implement a Gender Equality Action Plan, which includes the results of a workplace gender audit and strategies for achieving workplace gender equality • publicly report on their progress in relation to workplace gender equality • promote gender equality in policies, programs and services that impact the public • complete gender impact assessments, and • consider intersectionality when developing strategies.30 (b) UK Equality Act 2010: Public Sector Equality Duty The Equality Act 2010 (UK) (Equality Act) consolidated and simplified previous discrimination legislation that had evolved and expanded over 45 years. It replaced nine statutes and over 100 other pieces of legislation and expanded the scope of some protected characteristics.31 The Act encompasses nine protected characteristics: age; disability; gender reassignment; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; and sexual orientation.32 A key element of the Act is the public sector equality duty (PSED), which imposes positive obligations on public authorities. (i) Origin and development of the PSED When the PSED was created under the Equality Act, it replaced three separate duties under the former discrimination law regime.33 The first of these duties was the race equality duty. It arose out of the report of a review conducted by Sir William Macpherson, which examined the racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager, and the subsequent failings in the police investigation of the crime (Macpherson Report).34 Having found institutional racism in the Metropolitan Police, the Macpherson Report provided the impetus for a proactive approach to combating racism in the UK.35 In addition to police, the report noted racism across other institutions: It is clear that other agencies including for example those dealing with housing and education also suffer from the disease. If racism is to be eradicated there must be specific and co-ordinated action.36 64 FREE AND EQUAL An Australian Conversation on Human Rights