March 2026
Balancing the scales starts with a baseline
In an industry-leading response to recent Respect at Work legislation, 11 CEOs chose to disclose their workplace data on employee experiences of workplace discrimination and harassment in Consult Australia’s new Meeting Positive Duty report.
Across the participating organisations, comprising a workforce of 25,000 employees, 31 incidents were reported in the 2024 calendar year, according to figures released in Meeting Positive Duty.
The number of reports underscores an important insight, acknowledged in the report: experiences of unacceptable workplace behaviour are often under-reported and reporting data does not reflect its prevalence. This reinforces the importance of transparency and building confidence in reporting systems.
Small numbers, bigger questions
The Consult Australia Champions of Change Group, comprising 11 CEOs leading more than 25,000 employees, has committed to the broader Champions of Change ambition of inclusive, gender equal workplaces by 2030.
Positive Duty reforms to the Sex Discrimination Act in 2022 require employers to take reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent workplace sex discrimination, sex-based and sexual harassment, hostile working environments based on sex and victimisation of those that raise concerns. This shifts the focus from responding to complaints to actively preventing harm.
“Preventing harm is not a matter of intent alone,” says Consult Australia Chair, Natalie Muir. “It requires evidence, transparency and sustained leadership.”
The Group’s new report, Meeting Positive Duty, provides “an important industry-wide baseline,” that will help leaders to “better understand risk, track progress and focus our efforts where they will have the greatest impact,” Natalie says.
Meeting Positive Duty details the type of incident, location, timing, method of reporting and organisational response. In the 2024 calendar year, 31 reports were received across participating firms, with 94% people who reported identifying as women. As the report notes, reporting data is influenced by confidence in systems and should not be interpreted as a measure of prevalence.
Sixty per cent of reports resulted in an investigation. Of those investigations, 61% were substantiated, with disciplinary processes undertaken in most substantiated cases and some resulting in termination, in line with organisational policies and processes.
While 100% of participating organisations reported the incidents to their boards, Meeting Positive Duty highlights the importance of sharing insights collectively with employees across the sector.
The challenge of underreporting
The findings are a reminder of the “challenge of underreporting” and that “prevention depends on trust, clear systems and consistent leadership attention,” observes Greg Kane, the Group’s Chair.
National research provides valuable context. The Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2022 Time for respect survey found that 41% of women and 26% of men reported workplace sexual harassment in the preceding five years.
Other research, noted in Meeting Positive Duty, found that 22% of women in engineering had experienced sexual harassment in the previous three years. The prevalence was higher in some engineering-intensive industries, including construction at 29%.
Set against this backdrop, 31 reports across 25,000 employees in a single year likely reflects barriers to reporting rather than the true prevalence of incidents.
Under the Positive Duty reforms, employers are required to take “reasonable and proportionate measures” to eliminate unlawful conduct. This obligation means underreporting is more than a statistical gap. If employees do not report, leaders cannot see risk. If leaders cannot see risk, they cannot prevent it.
These insights are not a measure of the scale of the issue, but a starting point to strengthen prevention, trust and accountability.
A compass for collective leadership
Consult Australia’s Meeting Positive Duty report was released in the same month that the Workplace Gender Equality Agency published its 2024-25 employer gender pay gap data.
The WGEA data highlights the scale of the challenge across the built environment.
In construction – the sector where infrastructure and building projects are ultimately delivered – 84% of employers report a gender pay gap above the national benchmark, second only to financial services at 85%.
The consulting professions that support this work sit in a different category. Engineering, architecture and quantity surveying fall under professional, scientific and technical services, where nearly 43% of employers report a gender pay gap above the benchmark.
Consult Australia members operate at the intersection of two systems, which explains why change can feel slow.
Dismantling the black box
Across all industries, half of employers pay men 29.7% more than women in bonuses, overtime and additional payments. The Australian Financial Review has described these discretionary payments as “an aviation black box” that is “obscure and difficult to dismantle”.
International Women’s Day was marked on 8 March under the theme “Balance the Scales”. Launching the theme for 2026, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese observed that there is “no single act, no one reform” that will stamp out gender inequality. Balancing the scales, he said, will take economic, social and legal change – and “it will take all of us”.
Pay gap data and data on the prevalence of unacceptable behaviours under the Sex Discrimination Act measure different phenomena. But they both point to the same conclusion: transparency matters. Without it, inequality remains nebulous and no one’s problem. With it, leaders have a compass and a clear benchmark for collective leadership.
Download Consult Australia’s report Meeting Positive Duty.