Effectively addressing violations of human rights requires dealing with complex, multi-spatial problems involving actors at local, national and international levels. It also calls for a diverse range of inter-disciplinary skills. How can tertiary educators prepare students for such work? This study evaluates the coordinated implementation of human rights simulations at seven Australian universities. Based on quantitative and qualitative survey data from 252 students, we find they report that human rights simulation exercises develop their skills. In particular, students report that they feel better able to analyse and productively respond to human rights violations, and that they have a greater awareness of the inter-disciplinary skills required to do so. Overall, this study finds that simulations are a valid, scalable, classroom-based work integrated learning experience that can be adapted for students at undergraduate and postgraduate level, across a range of disciplines and in both face-to-face and online classes.

At first glance, Part 3-1 of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) seems to overlap with long-established anti-discrimination laws, offering protection against adverse, attribute-based conduct in employment. On close analysis, however, it turns out to be a new and quite different regime. Although the Fair Work Act offers 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.

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In 2008, an Australian senate committee report recommended a public inquiry into the merits of a national Equality Act, to harmonise existing federal anti-discrimination acts and to legislate for a positive equality duty along the lines of such a duty in the United Kingdom. The Australian Government has since announced a 'streamlining' exercise for federal antidiscrimination law, but has made no mention of an equality duty. I review the history of calls for an Equality Act in Australia and the process by which the United Kingdom has arrived at its own Equality Act. I propose that any Australian Equality Act is an advance on established methods of pursuing equality only if it enacts a positive equality duty, and I identify lessons for Australia arising from the extensive UK process of reform.

NSW Law Society membership data 1988–2004 enables mapping over time of the presence and movement of private legal practice in rural NSW. The changing ratio of legal practices per 10 000 population is calculated against data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. In short, while the rural population increases, the number of legal practices decreases at a much slower rate, resulting in an overall drop in the proportion of legal practices in the population. However, although some inferences could be drawn, the data do not go very far in illustrating the nature and degree of, and reasons for, the limits on access to law in rural Australia. One way of thinking about the further research that can be done is to consider the research implications of the many different ways the issue of rural access to law is expressed, and the different dimensions that are emphasised in those formulations.