SHOULD you discriminate in order to end discrimination?

This is the question that now confronts bosses and business owners, after the news that the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission is adopting a proactive stance on discrimination.





In the past the commission would have to wait for someone to complain about discrimination before it could do anything about it. Now it can go into any workplace and redress a perceived inequality without anyone making a complaint.



It is certainly a revolution in the way things are done.

From now on, instead of individuals fighting the system, the system will fight for individuals, even if they don't want to fight issues themselves.

But the bigger question is whether the commission should in fact treat people differently in order to make things fairer.

In other words, do we actually need positive discrimination to end discrimination? I would argue that yes, we absolutely do.

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking "equal" is the same as "identical", but they're not.

I can have a dollar coin in one hand and two 50-cent pieces in the other.

They are equal in value, but they are not the same.

In the same way, some groups in the community need different treatment to achieve equal status, and that is precisely what the commission is aiming to achieve.

They may get it wrong.

If they do, I will be the first to criticise.

But if they get it right, we might all end up living in a fairer world and that can only be a good thing.

And for all of you out there wondering why we can't just treat everyone equally, I would say this: if people start from different positions, then even if you treat them the same, they still don't end up as equals.

And after four decades of equal rights, people are now looking at outcomes, not just opportunity. '

I know we'd all like to think that if you treat everyone the same, then it's up to them personally whether they succeed or fail in the attempt.

Except that things don't really work like that.

You just have to look at Parliament House, boardrooms, executive offices and even sporting teams to see that able-bodied white men are still pretty much running the country.

Ah, you'll be thinking, what about our female Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Governor-General Quentin Bryce and the two female premiers, Kristina Keneally in NSW and Anna Bligh in Queensland?

I think many people look at what these women have achieved as evidence that anyone can do whatever they want.

And of course we now have Ken Wyatt, our first Aboriginal member of the House of Representatives.

But these high-flyers mask serious inequity in our society.

It's hard to believe, but the gap between what men and women earn is now the highest in 15 years - after four decades of feminism, things seem to be going backwards. Men on average earn 18 per cent more than women doing comparable work. This means, as the commission's research shows, women have to work an extra 66 days a year to earn the same as the blokes.

Some of the most unfair workplaces are the industries where there are plenty of women, such as cleaning and childcare, and it often means the pay rates are terrible and the few men around tend to rise fast.

In schools, for instance, women make up 80 per cent of teachers but less than 10 per cent of principals.

And so these changes are not about putting women and minorities ahead every time, but looking at systemic factors that stop women from being promoted, or Aborigines being hired, or black men getting taxis at night.

I've written about this issue in the past, when I stated that it was good to see an end to the power of VOMITs (very old men in ties).

"Forget the white rhino, the next endangered species is the white male," I wrote back in 2008.

But perhaps I was trying a little too hard to make the point.

Men as much as women stand to gain from this new law - getting a better deal at work so they can spend more time with their kids, or getting a boost in pay so they don't have to do so much overtime to survive.

But this legislation was originally designed by former public advocate Julian Gardner to help more than just women.

He envisioned that the commission could encourage landlords to put unemployed single mothers with four kids into their rental property - as long as they met the criteria applied to other tenants.

He also saw that taxi operators may be forced to address racism and ensure taxi drivers pick up all genuine customers - even if it's a big black African man being driven late at night by a young female driver.

He foresaw that aged care homes may even be forced to allow gay couples to share rooms even if it's against their philosophical or religious beliefs.

That may be going a bit too far for some people. But we need to start thinking, talking and acting on the issue of discrimination.

As Gardner said in his original report: "We cannot, for example, say that a fair go exists for indigenous Victorians who have 17 years' lower life expectancy or women with 18 per cent lower pay or the 40 per cent of migrants from non-English backgrounds who report discrimination at work."

It's not airy-fairy academic talk, it's about the way we live our lives - whether we can get a seat in a cafe, get paid fairly for the work we do, get a spot on a sporting team and so on.

In the end, Gardner is right - it's just about giving everyone a fair go.

And isn't that the Australian way?

Join Susie to debate this issue in her live blog from 1pm

Originally published as Strong vote for equality