Australia has laws to make sure that people with disability are treated fairly. However, disability discrimination and harassment sometimes still happen, including in the workplace. Find out what you can do if this happens to you.

What is disability discrimination?

Disability discrimination is when a person with disability is treated less fairly than people without disability.

People might also discriminate against relatives, friends, carers, co-workers or other people who know a person with disability.

In the workplace, discrimination can happen:

• when you’re applying for a new job
• while you’re doing your job
• when you’re applying for a promotion
• when you want to do training.

Examples of discrimination

These are just a few examples of what disability discrimination at work might look like:

• A person who uses a wheelchair applies for a promotion into a job serving customers. They don’t get the promotion because the manager says customers might feel ‘uncomfortable’
• A person who is deaf can’t get the same job training as other staff because the training isn’t in a format they can use
• A person with autism applies for a job and gets to the interview stage. They tell the employer about their autism and ask to bring a support person to the interview. The employer says no because they can’t give any ‘special treatment’
• A person who works in hospitality has a physical disability with medical clearance to work no more than 5 hours a shift. Their employer keeps giving them longer shifts.

What is harassment?

Harassment is a type of discrimination. Examples of harassment that are related to disability might be:

• teasing a person because of their disability
• asking questions about a person’s disability, when that person said they don’t want them too
• Making fun of a person with disability through jokes or doing gestures.

What to do if you experience discrimination or harassment

If you think you’ve been discriminated against or harassed because of your disability, there are different things you can do.

Talking to the other person

In some cases, you might be able to work through the issue by talking to the other person.

To do this, you could:

• ask for a meeting with the person to explain how you feel – take along another person, who is not involved with the issue, can sometimes a good idea
• write the person a message or email
• find out what work the other person does – this can sometimes help develop understanding and good relationships

It can be a good idea to talk to someone you trust about it first. This can help you decide what you want to say.

If you don’t feel safe or comfortable contacting the person, you don’t have too. Instead you can talk to someone else in the workplace, such as a supervisor or your Disability Employment Services provider, if you have one.

Raise it with your employer

In the case of an ongoing or serious issue, you can talk to:

• your supervisor or another senior person
• your workplace disability contact officer, if there is one
• someone in the human resources (HR) department.

You may also want to check if your organisation has its own complaints process you can follow.

Complain to an anti-discrimination organisation

If raising the issue with your employer doesn’t help, you can complain to:

• the Australian Human Rights Commission
• Fair Work Commission
• state and territory anti-discrimination organisations.

Below are some ways to do this.

Making a complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission

You can make a complaint to the Human Rights Commission no matter where you live 
in Australia. The service is free and independent.
Your complaint needs to be in writing. There are different ways you can send it to the Commission:

• fill in the online complaints form
• print off the form, fill it in and either post the form to GPO Box 5218, Sydney 2001 or fax it to 02 9284 9611. 

Your complaint should include:

• what happened
• when it happened
• where it happened
• who was involved
• the names of anyone else who can say what happened.

If you can’t write down your complaint, get someone you trust to write it for you. The Commission can also help you write it. For more information, visit the Commission’s website or phone 1300 656 419.

What happens after you make a complaint

The Commission can only look into your complaint if the law says it can. If they can’t deal with your complaint, they will write to you and explain why.

If they look into your complaint, they might contact the other person involved, to get their side of the story. The Commission will then work with you and the other person to find a solution everyone agrees with. This is called conciliation.

If conciliation doesn’t work, you can decide whether to take your complaint to court.

Other support

The Fair Work Commission website has information on how to deal with different workplace disputes. The Fair Work Commission can also tell you how to make a claim if you think you have unfairly lost your job due to your disability. They can also help if you have experienced discrimination in some other way.

There are also organisations in each state and territory that can help with information about your rights at work.

• ACT –  ACT Human Rights Commission
• NSW – Anti-Discrimination New South Wales
• NT – Northern Territory Anti-Discrimination Commission
• Queensland – Human Rights Commission Queensland
• SA – Office of the Commissioner for Equal Opportunity
• Victoria – Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission
• WA – Equal Opportunity Commission