Fair Work Commission trials conciliation "cooling off" period
Following a trial last year, Australia's national workplace relations tribunal is offering parties conciliating unfair dismissal claims a "cooling off" period of three business days to give unrepresented parties a chance to seek advice about the proposed settlement. The effect of the new cooling off period is that a party can decide to withdraw from a settlement reached at a conciliation conference by notifying the Fair Work Commission during the cooling off period of three business days following the conciliation conference. However, the cooling off period can be waived by the parties at their request.
FYI: A conciliation conference is an informal, private and generally confidential process where a member of the Fair Work Commission assists the parties to resolve an unfair dismissal application by agreement. It is a preliminary step intended to encourage resolution of the unfair dismissal claim before the application is considered and determined formally through a conference or hearing.
Back to the Drawing Board for Commonwealth Consolidated Discrimination Laws
We previously reported in our December 2012 Update that the Australian Government had been working to consolidate existing discrimination laws and had released an Exposure Draft for public comment. Recently, the Attorney-General confirmed the Australian Government was not proceeding with the Exposure Draft (which was launched by his predecessor) and will instead continue to work on consolidating Australia's anti-discrimination laws.
Since this announcement, the Australian Government has introduced draft legislation to amend the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) to extend the current discrimination laws to cover sexual orientation, gender identify and intersex status. If the Sex Discrimination Amendment (Sexual Orientation, Gender Identify and Intersex Status) Bill 2013 (Cth) is passed in its current form, it will provide new protections against discrimination and is intended to provide protection against discrimination for same-sex de facto couples.
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