Alysia Blackham

It is an incredible privilege to have such an esteemed panel reflect on this book. Reforming Age Discrimination Law is, at its heart, a call to action. It maps the many ways in which individual enforcement of age discrimination law is struggling to achieve meaningful change. It puts forward a series of reforms to improve the individual enforcement model, strengthen positive equality duties, bolster the roles of statutory equality agencies, and enhance collective enforcement. This is an ambitious programme of reform, that requires action by governments, employers, unions, statutory agencies, legal practitioners, legal educators, courts, and judges. I argue, too, that these reforms work best together; they are mutually supportive and reinforcing, just as these forms of enforcement work best together.

The Hon Anthony North KC

Congratulations to Alysia Blackham on a very high-quality contribution to the learning in this area. I was particularly impressed by the logic and coherence in the development of the argument.

There are many issues raised in this book that capture my interest. I have chosen two, each of which reflects the different phases of my career, first as a judge, and then as a law reformer. Improvements here would make a significant difference to age discrimination law. The first concerns the reverse onus of proof, and the second concerns the enforcement of positive duties.

Oanh Tran

When we think about age discrimination, we think and talk about how it affects older people, but it equally affects young people. The law itself is discriminatory for young people. Alysia Blackham’s new book both explains the problems, and proffers solutions. Blackham's book considers the framework of ‘naming, blaming and claiming’ to explain how disputes emerge. In this post, I discuss some relevant examples where young workers name and blame, and discuss why they do not claim. I also comment on a few of Blackham’s suggested reforms.

Andrew Byrnes

At the outset let me congratulate Associate Professor Blackham on the publication of what is a major contribution to the literature on discrimination law and age discrimination. There is, of course, a considerable body of literature examining the limitations of the legal frameworks that we have adopted in Australia and comparable jurisdictions to address different forms of discrimination. However, this book makes important and innovative contributions on the empirical, theoretical and policy levels: it should stimulate deep reflection and policy change.

Rosalind Croucher

This post was prompted by remarks I made as part of a panel discussion to mark the publication of Associate Professor Alysia Blackham’s new book, Reforming Age Discrimination Law: Beyond Individual Enforcement, published this year by Oxford University Press in their prestigious Oxford Labour Law series.

First, I should say, that this is a fine book. Even before you get to page 1 you find a set of endorsements that would make any author blush. Phrases like ‘must read’ and ‘”go-to” resource’, ‘groundbreaking’, and ‘outstanding contribution’ leap off the page. This is in addition to the usual accolades you would expect for an academic book, like ‘meticulous research’, ‘scrupulous comparative doctrinal research with meticulous empirical case studies’, ‘sophisticated account’, ‘nuanced understanding’, ‘impressive socio-legal study’. It is, as Professor Colm O’Cinneide, acclaims, ‘a remarkably good book’.