Last year, new Respect at Work legislation shifted the responsibility for tackling sexual harassment in the workplace, a burden which was primarily on individual complainants, by introducing a positive duty on employers.
We are seeing a similar shift across many of our pro bono projects, where we are supporting organisations calling for human rights frameworks and other legislative reforms that will address discrimination and other harms at a systemic level.
For example, the new Age Discrimination Commissioner has made a public call for the Australian Government to support a new UN Convention on the Rights of Older Persons. Our team provided research support to the Commission in the lead up to their appearance at the United Nations in New York identifying the inadequacy of existing domestic legislation which largely relies on individual older persons to make a complaint when they face discrimination on the basis of their age.
In 2022, WK went public with a commitment to reduce gender equality as part of our 20 Actions for 20 Years project. In alignment with this commitment the firm has put its resources behind efforts to tackle financial abuse, recognising that 99% of cases of family and domestic violence involve an element of financial abuse.
Recognising the power that businesses have to effect change at a system level, we leveraged our insurance expertise, to conduct research on how the Insurance Contracts Act could be modernised to support the work of the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety which published Designed to Disrupt: Reimagining general insurance products to improve financial safety written by Catherine Fitzpatrick.
We hosted the launch of this paper on International Women's Day, where we also launched a new cadetship program with Arise Foundation to provide paid, flexible employment pathways that will allow women impacted by financial abuse to re-skill and further develop their confidence and professional networks as they transition into the labour market.
“The Centre for Women’s Economic Safety was delighted to work with Wotton Kearney (WK) on the development of the Designed to Disrupt Report (D2D) on general insurance. WK contributed valuable insurance expertise in a research paper which fed into the work of author Catherine Fitzpatrick. Designed to Disrupt: Reimagining general insurance products to improve financial safety provides a blueprint for industry and regulatory action to tackle financial abuse. The guidance WK provided on potential changes to the Insurance Contracts Act was especially valuable.
We were also incredibly grateful for WK’s support in launching the Report for International Women’s Day. The report is already having an impact. In the three months since the Report’s launch, one more Australian insurer has adopted a ‘conduct of others’ clause, and two major insurance companies have committed to updating their terms and conditions to make it clear than an insurance policy is no place for abuse.
Further, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services has launched an inquiry into the regulatory framework for addressing financial abuse in the financial services sector.”
Leveraging our insurance expertise, WK has made a submission to the parliamentary inquiry and looks forward to continuing this work in partnership with CWES.
Wotton Kearney acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands on which we work, and pay our respects to Elders past and present.
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