The Economic and Labour Relations Review Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 13–36 * ANU College of Law, The Australian National University ‘It’s a Discrimination Law Julia 1 , But Not As We Know It’: Part 3-1 of the Fair Work Act Simon Rice * Cameron Roles * Abstract At irst glance, Part 3-1 of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) seems to overlap with long-established anti-discrimination laws, ofering protection against adverse, at- tribute-based conduct in employment. On close analysis, however, it turns out to be a new and quite diferent regime. Although the Fair Work Act ofers a simple alternative to dated and complicated anti-discrimination laws, its provisions are at times overly-simple, raising uncertainty about how they will operate. Our analysis leads us to conclude that the approach to discrimination protection in the Fair Work Act, while an important addition to the remedies available to Australian workers, is compromised by failing to take account of lessons learned in the long history of anti-discrimination law. Keywords Adverse action; anti-discrimination law; direct discrimination; indirect discrimination; dismissal protections; employment discrimination; employment law; Fair Work Act Australia; labour law; labour rights; victimisation. Introduction here have for some years been anti-discrimination provisions in industrial law, limited to termination of employment on the basis of certain deined attributes (race, sex and so on). he overlap with anti-discrimination legislation’s own provisions regulating termination of employment has been of little practical rel- evance for employees except in the few weeks ater dismissal, when an employee is required to choose a jurisdiction. If a dismissed employee received advice, it was usually to commence unfair dismissal proceedings in the industrial jurisdic- tion, and to gain a quick and generally efective outcome that was usually good advice. Remedies for discrimination in the course of employment, and in the arrangements for deciding who would be employed, have however been found only in anti-discrimination law, not in industrial law.