Justice
We need a Human Rights Act
Let's fix our patchy human rights protections
We need a Human Rights Act
We should legislate an Australian Human Rights Act to ensure human rights are properly protected by law at the national level.
Australians’ human rights protections shouldn’t differ because of which state they live or work in.
Human Rights are the fundamental, inherent freedoms and protections belonging to every person. You can find out more about what they are here.
The Current Approach – Piecemeal and Confusing
Right now, we have a piecemeal approach to Human Rights in Australia. It leaves some rights explicitly protected whilst others are only implicitly protected, and some protected in some states and others not.
At the national level, only some rights are protected under national law, such as through the Age Discrimination Act 2004, the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 and the Disability Discrimination Act 1992.
We also have an Australian Human Rights Commission, which has responsibilities related to these laws, such as resolving complaints about discrimination. But the Commission doesn’t have a national human rights framework to use, with the President of the Commission describing our protections as “patchy” and our “human rights safety net has holes in it”1.
Other rights and freedoms are protected through the common law (laws established through precedents made by Judge’s decisions in the courts). The common law principle states that legislation should not infringe fundamental rights and freedoms unless the legislation expresses a clear intention to do so and the infringement is reasonable.
Then we have differing legislation for states and territories, which protect human rights in some states/territories, but not others.
This is so messy for something so important! We need to take a national approach to protecting our human rights.
A better approach – an Australian Human Rights Act
An Australian Human Rights Act would ensure the values we all share – like fairness, respect, dignity and compassion – are always at the heart of all government decisions, laws and policies. It would clearly articulate our human rights and freedoms so that every person in Australia knows their rights and understands what we value and prioritise as a community. A Human Rights Act would also provide a powerful tool to challenge injustice and means if someone has their rights violated.
Legislating a Human Rights Act was a key recommendation from the Inquiry into Australia’s Human Rights Framework 2024, and is also being advocated by more than 130 civil society organisations, and legal and human rights experts such as the Human Rights Law Centre. This approach is not just backed by experts, it has been effectively adopted by other countries around the world.
An Australian Human Rights Act will take some time to get right, but we need to start action now.
What does an Australian Human Rights Act look like?
You might be wondering, this sounds like a reasonable idea, but what does an Australian Human Rights Act actually look like?
A lot of the hard work has already begun to develop a national human rights law suitable for Australia. As part of the Inquiry into Australia’s Human Rights Framework 2024, the committee prepared an example Australian Human Rights Bill, which would broadly reflect the model proposed by the Australian Human Rights Commission, with some changes (found at Appendix 5 of the report).
Experts think this is a great draft to work from and would work well to protect our human rights and bring all our patchwork existing laws together.