Positive Duty Oration and Panel Discussion

Join Australia’s Disability Discrimination Commissioner, Rosemary Kayess, for a keynote address and panel discussion on one of the most significant recent reforms in equality law.

Introduced in the Northern Territory in 2022 and becoming effective in 2024, Positive Duty shifts the focus from responding to complaints to actively preventing and eliminating discrimination, including disability discrimination in workplaces and beyond.

This session will demystify positive duty obligations and explore what they mean in practice: how organisations can move from compliance to culture, and build workplaces that are safe, inclusive and respectful for people with disability.

Whether you’re a leader, practitioner or advocate, this is a timely conversation on turning rights into action.

“For too long people with disability have carried the burden of addressing their daily experiences of discrimination in employment and other areas of public life. This presentation will examine how the inclusion of a positive duty in the Disability Discrimination Act will put the onus on duty holders to put in place mechanisms to ensure discrimination does not occur in the first place. Doing so can remove the onus on people with disability to bring a claim to address the discrimination that has occurred.”

Rosemary Kayess, Australia's Disability Discrimination Commissioner