Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Ignoring the irony of a Liberal Party senator standing up for Human Rights Commission—I'll just put that to one side for a moment—the Human Rights Commission is entitled to their view. My understanding is they did propose a slightly different model to what we were putting forward. We took that into account. We took into account the views of people opposed to this. We took into account the people who are supportive of this. Following public consultations, we consider that this bill's modified equal access model best achieves the objectives of the Respect@Work report. This model prevents a court from ordering an applicant to pay the respondent's costs, except in certain circumstances, and this would address a barrier to justice for those pursuing unlawful discrimination matters, while recognising that not all respondents are large corporations or well resourced.