Fair Work Action Plan 2022 and Anti-Racist Employment Strategy 2022: island communities impact assessment

7. Conclusions

The intention is that eventual outcomes of the Fair Work Action Plan do not differ across the islands, nor between mainland and islands.

The overall assessment of the impact on island communities of the refreshed Fair Work Action Plan and Anti-Racist Employment Strategy suggests an overall positive impact.

However, there may need to be differences of approach, and differences in impact across different geographic areas as regions have their own unique strengths and challenges and will require different solutions to create the desired equality of outcome.

There are some actions where impact has not been possible to assess at this stage. As a result, it will be important for a continuous monitoring and evaluation framework to be mindful of capturing the direct and indirect impacts on island communities.

In addition, due to limited timeframes and capacity of external stakeholders, the engagement captured for this impact assessment was limited in scale. While many stakeholders spoke about the impact of the actions on a range of communities, the engagement from island employers, island organisations and island communities themselves was limited. This comparable lack of lived experience has provided a limitation to this assessment and, where possible, continued engagement with island communities or representative groups should be considered during the implementation and evaluation stages of the Fair Work Action Plan and Anti-Racist Engagement Strategy up to 2025.