Affirmative Action Bill (On President's Desk)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

My comment when I introduced the bill:

I recently noticed that the wording of the act that bans affirmative action is, frankly, dangerous. Thus...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Legislation as it currently stands;

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The first thing to note is the strange use of terms (why "special preference" instead of "preference"?) which could very easily be interpreted in ways that are, I would hope, found distasteful to the Honourable Senators present. Following on from this, the terms themselves are not actually defined. I should not need to point out why this is an enourmous problem in an area so prone to litigation as this.

Next, it could be argued that the existing legislation provides no protection for minorities already in employment (well, it does in theory, but certainly not in practice) and clearly removes any protections (against all but the most blatently racist (or whatever) employment practices) that existed before it was implemented.

Finally, there is a curious loophole in this (ahem) oh, so principled attempt to introduce a so-called level playing field into government jobs. Education is not mentioned. Why, you might ask, is this a problem at all? After all, surely education is a legitimate thing to base hiring decisions on, isn't it? I'm not talking about levels of education, of degrees and formal qualifications. I'm talking about the place of education, not the level of it. I'm talking about hiring someone with a bad degree from a so-called elite University over someone with an excellent degree from some unknown provincial Uni. I'm talking about giving someone a job because they went to "the right school". What I mean here, really, is that this act is not, actually, the Affirmative Action Act of 2005. It is the Affirmation of Old Boys Networks Act of 2005.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anyone got anything to say?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Aye

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It would have taken a little more than merely heavily amending the existing bill; we'd be talking a complete re-write and because of the tendency for this area to be the land of litigation it would be huge and endlessly complicated. I just don't have the time for anything like that at the moment. I would likely co-operate with future attempts to deal with the previous (and real-life) problems, over this issue, of course. I don't actually like "race" based affirmative action and am uncomfortable with, perhaps, bringing it back (albeit presumably on a temporary basis), but current Atlasian policy on this is issue is so awful that it cannot be allowed to stand.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The case has not been made here for affirmative action

That's because I'm not really interested in making the case for affirmative action and no one else seems keen to do so either. Instead, I've made the case for repealing one of the worst pieces of legislation ever passed by the Senate. There are legitimate arguments against affirmative action, there are none for legislation that actively encourages discrimination.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It seems like  a garden variety anti-AA piece of legislation to me.

That doesn't mean that it can't also be one of the worst pieces of legislation the Senate has passed

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True that there's no suggestion of retroactive application as regards hiring (I've not suggested otherwise), almost certainly untrue that no one would have lost their job as a result. The act explicitly mentions payment, treatment and dismissal, which, combined with a definition of "affirmative action" that is both extremely loose and open to abuse, effectively removes workplace protection against all but the crudest and most blatent forms of bigotry (or, at least, it could do).

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That's not what I was suggesting.

I should add, though I've hinted at this earlier, that if someone were to draft an anti-affirmative action bill that deals with my concerns, there's a good chance that I'd vote for it. This bill is only designed as a temporary measure.