IT must surely be the desire of any influential politician to leave the stage with a legacy which improves the lot of their fellow men – and women.

So the last-minute achievement by outgoing Home Affairs Minister Wendy Kinnard to pull a rabbit out of the budget box may provide us with a beacon of judicial equality. It could leave the new administration with more of Pandora’s toys to play with than they bargained for.

From next year, starting with race, then sex, disability and age, transgressors could find themselves guilty of an offence under the Discrimination (Jersey) Law.

As with any new legislation, it will need sensitive handling and bedding in. It was probably inevitable that local legislators would at some time want to follow the UK lead, regardless of whether our nuts actually needed the attention of litigious hammers.

There is a formidable larder of UK legislation to raid: Race Relations Act 1965 and 1976; Sex Discrimination 1975; Disability Discrimination 1995. All have indeed made a considerable difference to attitudes and legal process. None is near 100% effective and we’re now in 2008!

But however long it takes, active discrimination must be stamped on hard, though you can’t, on day one, haul someone off to tribunal if they still dare to talk about handyman, barmaid or waitress. So let’s not have silly prosecutions by mischievous litigants.

Over in the UK too, a new initiative has been spearheaded by Harriet Harman, trusty supporter of Gordon Brown, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Leader of the House of Commons, Lord Privy Seal and Minister for Women.
It’s called the anti-discrimination act. Trouble is, it has discrimination built into it with more than a whiff of social engineering reminiscent of the crude ‘positive discrimination’ introduced in the US during the ‘60s.

Under Harriet’s Law, if you have equally qualified contenders, one a white male, one a woman or someone from an ethic minority, in order to promote anti-discrimination and equality, you must choose the second two first.
How short is the institutional memory? When they tried such a hare-brained scheme for recruiting for the fire service, the applications from ethnic minority candidates was a sweet 3%.

Would you really want to succeed in a posting with the knowledge that you’d been fingered for the job because of what you were born with rather than what you’d achieved. And even if you were the choice by merit, because of this barmy legislation, who’d believe you? Thanks Harriet.

Defending the proposals, Ms Harman confided: ‘We’re saying to employers, the provisions are there. If you want to use them you can, but if you don’t, then you don’t have to.’

Well that’s cleared that one up mightily, though there will be other hoops to jump through – not the least, a possible challenge by the European Convention on Human Rights which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, race, language, religion and on several other criteria. And confusion persists when you consider the Harman crusade also champions allowing political parties to draw up all-black shortlists designed to increase the number of black MPs in Westminster, and extending the arrangement allowing all-women shortlists until 2030. Goodness only knows what she would have made of the gender representation of our own Senatorial line-up!

So what does the future hold for us here? A Minister for Equality within our post-election council, perhaps, with powers to ban adverts which contain commonly used terminology.

Frankly, the name of a job is hardly the problem. The focus of real discrimination is the attitude adopted against individuals of whatever race gender or age. It is subtle and endemic, and it won’t be confronted by pursuing entries in the personal columns of newspapers.

We are fast becoming a multi-cultural, gender-levelling, all-age encompassing society. It’s called evolution.
Placing artificial regulators in the way of enhancement, however well-intentioned, has a sad habit of creating tensions which never existed before. No two people are actually equal – there’s a real danger of discriminating to create equality.

But we have to start somewhere. All discrimination is ugly. Racial discrimination is relatively easy to detect, whether it be verbal abuse, restricted employment or living opportunities – and it’s not just a colour thing. It’s a highly sensitive area which has seasoned manipulators. The cause is not advanced by indiscriminate accusations of racism to confront – or obscure – unrelated failings.

Sex discrimination is harder to identify since it has probably been around longer. Society has formed historical expectations of male and female roles, though arguably, it is the area where most recent barriers have been lowered.

That’s not to say there’s not a fair way to go. Disability discrimination too, even without legal sanction, has seen huge strides made to empower individuals to participate alongside fellow citizens. You see there is a problem: before you legislate, you have to identify. And as soon as you do that, you discriminate.
Finally, age discrimination. It’s been in the news recently because of the attempt by Age Concern to prevent UK employers setting a retirement age. British law has actually banned age discrimination since 2006, but employers still operate a default cut-off at 65.

Given our increased life expectancy, maybe this could have a particular resonance for us here. If we were to fall into line with the EU’s Equal Treatment Directive, we could allow folk who wished to, and still were capable, to continue longer in employment, so reducing the ‘black hole’ we’re told we are staring into.

Fewer States-dependent elderly citizens, less inward migration needed to the Island, reduced building on the countryside, equality and prosperity.
Couldn’t be fairer!