December 2021 A reform agenda for federal discrimination laws 2.1 The case for reforming federal discrimination law is longstanding and known A concerning factor that reappears throughout this paper is that numerous reviews have identified the need for reform of federal discrimination laws – and over a long period of time. This includes parliamentary committee inquiry reports, a major Productivity Commission review and an ambitious attempt to consolidate all discrimination laws into one cohesive framework. These are discussed in section 3.4 below in more detail. There are unaddressed reforms that have been identified as necessary for federal discrimination laws going back over decades. It is also notable that the current Government has embarked on an ambitious and commendable effort to modernise the regulatory powers across a wide variety of areas of federal law since 2014. In doing so, they have sought to standardise the operation of regulatory agencies and provide greater clarity and simplicity for the business community among others. Federal discrimination law is a notable absence in this modernisation effort. Model provisions for some of the key reforms that have been proposed for federal discrimination laws exist in the Regulatory Powers (Standard Provisions) Act 2014 (Cth), suggesting that reform is achievable if matched with the political will to undertake it. The consequence is that federal discrimination laws have remained mostly untouched since they were introduced over 45, 35, 30 and 15 years ago. They are now in need of a significant overhaul. 20 FREE AND EQUAL An Australian Conversation on Human Rights