FACT SHEET

AN AUSTRALIAN HUMAN RIGHTS ACT

Australia is a signatory to many international human rights treaties and conventions, but is the only major English-speaking democracy that does not have a charter or a bill of rights to enshrine these commitments in law. Unless the principles of these international human rights instruments are protected in domestic law, Australian governments are under no legal obligation to comply with them. The implementation of an Australian human rights act would rectify this.

Many Australians would be surprised to learn that we lack protect for most rights that we regard as essential, such as the right to a fair trial, the right to freedom of speech and freedom of association.

Although human rights charters have been implemented in the ACT and Victoria and Western Australia and Tasmania have undertaken community consultation with a view to introducing legislation, the value of a national charter of rights cannot be understated. The Australian Constitution allows for laws made in the national parliament to over-ride state legislation, when those laws are incompatible. Without a national charter of rights, protections that are in place at the state level can be overridden by Commonwealth legislation.

A human rights act would help to prevent governments from making laws without any consideration of the human rights of its citizens. Any legislation introduced into parliament would be checked against the human rights act.

Which rights would be protected?

An Australian human rights act must include both the civil and political rights contained in the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the economic, social and cultural rights in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This is necessary to ensure that all human rights that are important to the community are protected in Australia.

Over the past decade, we have seen numerous examples where fairness, equality and respect for human rights have been forgotten in government policy. These include:

	Children held in detention centres
	Anti-terrorism legislation, which severely curtailed the right to fair trial and freedom of speech and association
	The Northern Territory Indigenous Intervention, which went far beyond the recommendations of the ‘Little Children are Sacred’ report and was introduced without consultation with the communities affected
	Cornelia Rau, a permanent resident suffering severe mental illness, was detained by the authorities, sent to gaol, and then to immigration detention
	The WorkChoices legislation, which was allocated a formal inquiry of just one week and had far-reaching effects on the minimum basic working conditions of more than three-quarters of the workforce.

Each of these actions violated United Nations human rights conventions already signed by Australian governments. In the absence of national legislation embodying these obligations, Australian law did not prevent their occurrence.

Are your human rights at risk?

Community consultations in Western Australia on a state human rights act revealed the many ways in which everyday Australians were suffering from violations of their human rights:

	Land owners, including households and farmers, deprived of their rights to property by excessive environmental regulations without fair compensation.
	The elderly in nursing homes, whose rights are infringed through emotional and physical abuse and neglect.
	The mentally ill, discriminated against and treated unfairly, both in the community generally and by mental health authorities.
	Those in regional and rural areas, suffering from ineffective or scarce delivery of essential services.