Weakness of Equal Opportunity Act

THE EDITOR: The Equal Opportunity Act does not say how complaints and evidence to substantiate them are to be collected, stored and collated, nor does it say how or when they should come to be allocated in an action or in actions against a “discriminating” individual or group or “offensive” behaviour, nor which persons ultimately should benefit from that and why.

If these functions are to be carried out in an organised way, which in fact is what is necessary at some level for the legislation to have an efficacy, the Act does not identify who should do it, nor say how they come to be recognised and qualified for it and by whom. This means that some people, including complainants, will be in the positions of tying information to undisclosed duality and then multi-laterality on events, relationships and purposes, much of which would otherwise be private, distorting them, as if the complaints, evidences and business interests old or newly proposed and performances, were already of merit, even where some other complaints were never intended to be used so, or where original complainants are not available.

Yet others might generate extortions, for personal or group benefits now made quite easy.  It also means that private and confidential communications marked or known to be so, are not respected. It means further, that those who are not involved in such activities will not know what information was being amassed about them, by wire-tappings, one-sided letters, total or incomplete leaks, un-substantiated reports, “observations,” fabrications, forgeries, etc, nor when, so will not and can not carry physical evidence, witnesses, chronologies and explanations to the contrary —which is not to suggest either, that they could answer positively and rationally, to charges of “discrimination” in issues, for example, of contract freedom, price or privity, or no case, amid also simultaneously keeping the confidences of their own legitimate interests and that of their associates.

Politics and a real need should be enough for a public authority or quasi-public authority, to determine when wheel-chair or blindness accessibility is needed at any of its buildings; but legislation to achieve this by law-suits, is really very silly. The same legislation additionally fosters all kinds of secretive, indeterminate and open-ended opportunities without knowable controls and time limits, for subjection of others by self-promoting professionals, public servants and citizens, retired and un-retired, the paranoid and avaricious, cock-and-bull victims and enthusiasts, malicious, ill-willed, ignorant, “cautious” or foolish — not a mere laughable absurdity, rather, a strange, dangerous and disappointing mix of personal and socio — political values, ambition and achievement. Were information repositories, their agents, managers and authority, identifiable, or partly identified only, the whole thing would be equally bad, which explains the absence of exposition in the Act and debate on the bill at the time. The system of bureaucracy and majority government operating in this country, which is able to pass legislation like this with only a tenuous lead in Parliament and without intrinsic opposition, cannot hide the areas in our paragon constitution, but shows us better, where we all must address ourselves more intelligently.

ELIAS I GALY
Maraval