December 2021 A reform agenda for federal discrimination laws One aspect of the proposed reforms was implemented, to amend the Sex Discrimination Act to include sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex status as protected attributes (the SOGII reforms), but the attempt to consolidate the four anti-discrimination laws did not proceed. While many participated in the processes of consultation conducted by the Attorney-General’s Department and the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee, the failure of the reform exercise demonstrates that another exercise towards consolidation of any kind needs to be conducted with great care. The ‘flash points’ that emerged in the consolidation process need to be acknowledged – particularly in relation to laws that have been in place for a number of decades. Professor Beth Gaze and Associate Professor Belinda Smith observed that consolidating the Commonwealth Acts ‘proved to be a more difficult task than was probably expected’,57 and that ‘[a]s this is a politically charged area of law, proposals for amendment raise strong views, and proposals for broad changes can attract very strong resistance’.58 There is much ‘unfinished business’ in the serious reform agenda undertaken in 2011–2013 and the Commission seeks to address some key aspects of this in this Report. As Gaze and Smith observe, the HRAD Bill ‘was not radical’: it addressed the inconsistencies between the four federal laws, and some weaknesses in Australia’s laws, but fundamentally it still defined a series of negative duties not to discriminate, to be enforced by individual victims of discrimination, through a two-stage dispute resolution process of conciliation by an agency followed by a hearing and determination by a federal court.59 They also note that there is ‘an urgent need for greater depth of understanding of what the law can and cannot do to ensure better informed public debate over proposals’.60 The reform proposals in this Position Paper have different horizons. There are some crucial amendments that should be made as a matter of priority. Incremental reforms can, and should be, undertaken. But the bigger project, of achieving some drawing together of other aspects of the four Discrimination Acts, and advancing broad-based reform, also needs to be continued. Since the HRAD Bill, there have been further considerations of aspects of the discrimination law framework. An inquiry of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights in 2016, concluding in February 2017,61 led to amendments to the AHRC Act in relation to complaints-handling procedures and reporting.62 36 FREE AND EQUAL An Australian Conversation on Human Rights