AHRC Costs Protection Bill
Inquiry into the Australian Human Rights Commission Amendment (Costs Protection) Bill 2023
The Australian Human Rights Commission Costs Protection Bill 2024 was passed on 19 September 2024.
Freedom for Faith was heavily engaged in advocacy to the Government, including a submission, testifying before the Parliamentary Committee, and individual advocacy. We are very disappointed that the Government continued with the legislation without amendments.
This bill was created to correct a perceived imbalance in sexual harassment cases, which was identified by the Respect@Work Report. However, by extending the bill to cover all anti-discrimination cases before the Federal court, the bill opens up a pandora’s box of vindictive claims against faith-based organisations.
The legislation changes the costs allocation so that an applicant will never have to pay the costs of the defending organisation, and the defendant has to pay the applicant’s costs even if only part of the claim is successful. The argument is that this is an appropriate rebalancing for sexual harassment.
However, the legislation is not limited to sexual harassment. Instead, this rebalancing applies to all discrimination claims in the Federal court. This risks a wide range of unintended consequences. The most obvious is that it allows activists to weaponise the federal court system without ever facing any consequences.
Self-funded complainants can launch cases with almost no chance of success, incurring massive legal costs to the organisation having to defend itself. The activists know that they will never be forced to pay any of those costs, allowing them to cause significant damage to organisations that they disagree with just by launching baseless claims.
This bill exacerbates the situation where “the process is the punishment”.
