Destructive and unjust "anti-discrimination" agencies: White males are presumed guilty

In practice, complaints made to them become the start of an official extortion racket

Perth college manager Peter O'Brien's life was almost destroyed when a female staff member wrongly accused him of sexually harassing her with lewd behaviour in the office at Christmas parties. He lost his job, his wife attempted suicide and the cost of defending the charge was nearly $40,000.

The case highlights a boom area for lawyers as employees turn to discrimination laws for protection and retribution. Mr O'Brien was vindicated just over four years after 25-year-old Joanne Robinson first made the accusations. The Western Australian Equal Opportunity Tribunal found Ms Robirson was an unconvincing witness with a tendency to exaggerate. ..In contrast. O'Brien was by , and large a reliable witness," the tribunal ruled.

This is at odds with the approach of the state's Equal Opportunity Commission. It had accepted Ms Robinson's complaint, tried to broker a $40,000 settlement on her behalf and provided the solicitors that ran her losing case in the tribunal.

Mr O'Brien's case is one of the 5 per cent of cases that proceed to a tribunal. Employment lawyers say the vast bulk are settled at the conciliation stage and usually involve a payment to the employee to make the matter disappear, regardless of the strength or otherwise of the case.

Mr O'Brien agrees there is a pro-plaintiff bias in the state's anti-discrimination laws. Mr O'Brien revealed that the state's Equal Opportunity Commission told him that if he paid Ms Robinson $40,000 she would drop her complaint. "We have a letter from them saying that if you pay her this amount the case will stop," he said. "The whole process seemed designed around deciding how much I was going to pay her. "It was an intimidation process. It was so bad that during the process my wife attempted suicide. "I came home one night and found her unconscious on my living room floor. "The commission does not investigate. It simply accepts a claim and then you have to disprove it," Mr O'Brien said.

West Australian Equal Opportunity Commissioner Yvonne Henderson said she was prevented by confidentiality provisions from discussing Mr O'Brien's accusations. But she said the commission investigated every complaint and had even been criticised for "over-investigating".

Last year, Mr O'Brien provided the state Government with a list of possible reforms that would ensure other managers were not subjected to the same experience. State Attorney-General Jim McGinty has defended the current arrangements, telling Mr O'Brien the Equal Opportunity Commission is required by law to help those who lodge complaints. He said many of those who complained of discrimination did not have the means to pursue their claims. "Many of the respondents to complaints of discrimination received by the commissioner are employers, large corporations and government agencies," Mr McGinty said. If the Government changed the law and required costs to be awarded against unsuccessful parties in discrimination cases, this would "significantly decrease the incentive to lodge complaints with the commissioner, particularly amongst those members of the community who are most vulnerable to acts of discrimination".

Mr O'Brien said he believed one of the factors that affected his case was that the complaint had been lodged by a single mother with a child of Aboriginal descent.

Employer groups fear that unless state governments intervene with the anti-discrimination commissions, more managers may soon be subjected to the same complaint-handling process. Some of those state anti-discrimination commissions are trying to expand their role in workplace disputes by encouraging employees to take harassment and discrimination proceedings against their employers as an alternative to unfair dismissal action.

The above article appeared in "The Australian" newspaper on 13 May, 2006



FORBIDDING THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

Below is an excerpt of an article from Portland, Oregon, that I recently put up on Dissecting Leftism. And below that is a comment from a reader:

Taking the "play" out of kids' playgrounds: "Most adults can remember the carefree days of childhood, climbing trees and jumping from swings, often on schoolyard playgrounds. Climbing, swinging and sliding was once a rite of passage during recess, a time for adventure, to see how high, how far and how fast we could go as a kid. Today, kids find themselves grounded, victims of a culture of fear and injury litigation. A growing number of school districts are going so far as to ban the game of tag and are even posting signs that read 'no running on the playground.' Is there real danger on the modern playground? Safety advocates say yes and want to eliminate it. Their first target: swing sets."

"In some ways, this article scares me more than anything else...it's an indoctrination of our children from the get-go, so they can be good little obedient and HUMORLESS storm troopers. It's one thing to use modern advances in materials to make a safer playground set, but it's entirely another to take away CHILDHOOD.

We see this in other areas...at least here in the States, you can't go to an aquarium or zoo or museum of any kind, for that matter, and ever just have fun...it's all about "the environment"..and that would be ok, but the message is never lighthearted, it's always thrown in our face. I remember going to a dolphin show at a large acquarium in Baltimore...and being hit on the head with how we should worry and feel guilt for pollution and throwing anything in the water...I just wanted to watch the freakin' dolphins catch rings on their noses and do backflips!

I guess this is the hallmark of the Left (and venal lawyers). No fun. No humor. It's part of the package, to make life colorless and drab, only see the bad in things, never the good. Optimists would say, fine, let's work on finding clever ways to work on pollution, it can be done, or, we can enhance safety on a playground, sure, but the Left is engaged in an all-or-nothing attitude about everything.

No running on a playground? Might as well just lobotomize the children early, get it over with, or give them ALL drugs (enough are on them for ADD, and sometimes it's just exuberant childhood behavior that humorless and spoiled parents don't want to deal with)....

You can divide the world into Leftist and conservatives or libertarians...I would make a different designation or division. There is the 1/2 the world that loves power and bureaucracy and putting their thumbs on everyone else...these are the Humorless people...and the rest of us who want to figure out HOW TO ENJOY the world."



BLAIR ADMITS PERVERSE BRITISH "JUSTICE"

Tony Blair will make a frank admission today that Labour has failed to sort out the criminal justice system he came to power pledging to make one of his top priorities. Mr Blair, who promised in 1994 to be "tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime" will say that most people do not think that Labour has made Britain safer or fairer. The Prime Minister, who promised yesterday to consider new legislation to stop offenders taking advantage of the Human Rights Act, will admit that the justice system is far from what voters want.

Speaking at the launch of Let's Talk, a Labour consultation exercise, Mr Blair is expected to say: "I believe people want a society without prejudice but with rules; rules that are fair; that we all play by; and rules that when broken carry a penalty. The truth is most people don't think we have such a society. "The problem of crime can be subject to lurid reporting or undue focus on terrible but exceptional cases. But even allowing for this, the fundamental point is valid. Despite our attempts to toughen the law and reform the criminal justice system - reform that has often uncovered problems long untouched - (the criminal justice system) is still the public service most distant from what reasonable people want."

Mr Blair's pledge to improve the Human Rights Act followed intense pressure from the Conservatives and the media after several high-profile cases including the decision to allow nine Afghan hijackers to stay in Britain. He used new proposals on human and animal rights yesterday to try to regain control of the political agenda after three torrid weeks for him and his party, during which Labour has slipped in the polls. He also sent letters to Cabinet ministers spelling out key aims, telling John Reid, the Home Secretary, that his top priority was to shape criminal justice around "targeting the offender and not just the offence . . . to enhance public protection".

Mr Blair ordered improved management of offenders after the foreign prisoners fiasco, in which more than 1,000 criminals were released when they should have been considered for deportation. Mr Reid was also told to look again at whether new legislation was needed after recent Human Rights Act rulings.....

Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, conceded that there had been too many occasions when there was evidence of something going wrong with the use of the Human Rights Act. He cited the case of the rapist Anthony Rice, who murdered a woman while on parole.

David Cameron, the Tory leader, said last week that he would repeal the Human Rights Act if it could not be improved. David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said that the Government was catching up with concerns raised by the Tories since the Act was passed in 1998. He told BBC1's Sunday AM programme: "Tories are not against human rights but we think the way the Government has done it has led to disasters . . . Lord Falconer attacked me three years ago for raising these sorts of problems."

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