Australia’s Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights published a report on Thursday calling for establishing a federal human rights act. The recommendation is the result of the committee’s inquiry, which began in March 2023, into the scope and effectiveness of Australia’s current human rights legislation. The committee was made up of 104 civil society organizations representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, LGBTIQ+, women, children, people with disabilities, and people from migrant and refugee communities.
Currently, Australia is the only western liberal democracy without a human rights act. Unlike many constitutions, the Australian Constitution does not contain a bill of rights, although some provisions provide limited protections for specific civil and political rights, like the right to vote and to trial by jury. Australia is also a signatory to several international conventions on human rights, such as the ICCPR; however, it has yet to incorporate this into domestic legislation fully.
However, Australia has several federal anti-discrimination laws, such as the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 and the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. Likewise, several human rights acts exist at the state level, including in the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, and Queensland. The report, however, referred to these current legislative human rights protections as a “piecemeal approach” that is “inadequate to ensure rights and freedoms are properly respected, protected and promoted” in Australia today.
The report focused on the need for a human rights act so governments are forced to consider human rights when creating new laws and policies or delivering services like healthcare, disability support, and education. Importantly, this would then legally empower people to challenge human rights abuses, as Law Council of Australia President Greg McIntyre stated, “under our current patchwork of laws…when people’s rights are breached, there may not be means through which they can seek effective remedy”.
Chair of the inquiry, Labor MP Josh Burns, stressed the importance of governments taking into account human rights when legislating, citing the Robodebt debt scheme – the 2015 Liberal-National Coalition Government’s unlawful debt recovery program, as evidence of “what happens when officials, both elected and unelected, fail to properly consider the effect of government action on the rights of vulnerable people.”
The Guardian reports that despite this, the Deputy Chair of the Committee, Liberal MP Henry Pike, has since stated that the liberal party has rejected the “unnecessary and dangerous” proposal, citing its potential to compromise Australia’s ability to “keep our citizens safe and borders secure” and place “excessive restrictions” on the freedoms of religion and expression.
