Anita,
The Coomonwealth's Race Discrimination Act was enacted in 1975. It's intersting to note that the Commonwealth's Disability Discrimination Act wasn't enacted until 1992 and has been amended since (arguably against the best interest of potential applicants). Each of the States in Australia have seperate discrimination legislation. In New South Wales (where I live) The Anti Discrimination Act (1997) covers discrimination on the basis of race, disability, sex, marital status,physical impairment, intillectual impairment, homosexuality (noted seperately from sex discrimination) and compulsory retirement from employment on the ground of age.
The Commonwealth covers each ground for discrimination with a different Act though most States incorporate them under the one piece of legislation. Its also worth noting the history of the NSW legislation in that it initially did not cover intellectual disability and when it did it distinguished between intellectual and physical impairment in such a way that it would get short shift from the disability sector. It initialyy defined intellectual impairment as an impairment arising in the brain and physical disability as arising in the body. Under this definition epilepsy and cerebral palsy were seen as intellectual impairments (resulting in a smaller number of claims with people with epilepsy or CP unwilling to define themselves as intellectually impaired. Good luck with the comparative study. I hope the above gives you food for thought.
On Friday, 19 May 1939, Anita Silvers <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Would anyone on the list happen to know when Australia enacted its race
>discrimination statute? I think it was sometime in the 1970s, but I don;t
>have the exact year. This is for a comparative study of disability and
>race discrimination protection in various nations. thanks very much to
>anyone who can help, and thanks also to other list members for their
>patience in permitting this inquiry -anita silvers
>
>
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