Human Rights Act for NSW

Sydney University, Camperdown, 17 October 2024 

Thank you – it’s great to join you here tonight. 

I acknowledge the Gadigal people, their ancestors and elders and their continuing culture and connection to these lands we are on. 

I acknowledge the pain of this week’s anniversary of the failed Voice referendum for First Nations people who strongly supported the proposal for a greater say on issues that affect them. 

I also acknowledge the particular importance of strengthening human rights protections for First Nations people who have had their rights trampled since colonisation. 

A NSW Human Rights Act will help First Nations people and it will help all people in this state. 

Human rights are the blueprint for a decent, dignified life for all. 

They are the key to creating the kind of society we all want to live in. 

They reflect values like equality, freedom, respect, dignity, kindness, thinking of others and looking out for each other. 

When human rights are respected, our lives are better and our communities are stronger, healthier, safer and more prosperous. 

The Australian Human Rights Commission, under Professor Croucher’s leadership, made significant progress in advancing the case for a national Human Rights Act.  

The Commission’s landmark Free and Equal Report highlights the inadequacy of existing national protections and provides a roadmap for reform. 

While Australia has promised to protect the human rights set out in the major international treaties, these treaties are not directly enforceable in Australia.  

Our promises on the global stage are not backed up effectively in Australian law. 

Our human rights protections are patchy. 

Our human rights safety net has holes in it. 

We live in one of the most safe, stable and prosperous countries on the planet. But that safety, stability and prosperity has not been shared equally.  

There are countless examples in our history of human rights failings. From the white Australia policy, to the criminalisation of homosexuality, entrenched sex discrimination and more.  

Sadly, there are many contemporary examples also. 

At the federal level, the Royal Commissions into Robodebt and the abuse experienced by people with disability and in aged care, have exposed serious human rights breaches, and show how our existing systems are inadequate.  

Other federal failures include the criminalisation of Australian citizens attempting to return from India during COVID and the police raids on the ABC and a journalist’s home for their role in exposing potential war crimes. 

A national Human Rights Act will help to change this. 

The Commission’s Free and Equal project proposed a model for a national Human Rights Act that was largely adopted by the recommendations of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights in their report handed down in May. 

Importantly, our proposal is for a national Human Rights Act to apply only to Australian Government bodies – or in Human Rights Act language “public authorities”. 

Public authorities like Australian Government departments, the Australian Federal Police, Centrelink, Medicare, the National Disability Insurance Agency and more. 

It wouldn’t apply to State and Territory government bodies. 

In this way, a national Human Rights Act will complement the existing Human Rights Acts in the ACT (2004), Victoria (2006) and Queensland (2019). 

This underscores the importance of ensuring we achieve Human Rights Acts in those state and territories that don’t have them – like NSW. 

We need comprehensive Human Rights laws in all nine Australian jurisdictions. 

I’ve lived in Melbourne most of my life and most of my career as a community lawyer, human rights advocate and law reformer has been since Victoria’s Human Rights Charter was passed in 2006. 

I’ve seen firsthand the power of a state-based Human Rights Act or Charter. 

I’ve been involved in hard fought important Charter cases. 

But I’m firmly convinced that the biggest impact the Charter has had is well away from any court room. 

Working properly, what human rights acts do is prevent human rights breaches from occurring.  

Human Rights Acts do this by requiring governments and public servants to properly consider and act compatibly with human rights when developing laws and policies, making decisions and delivering services.  

This in turn fosters better understanding of rights and a culture of considering people’s rights. 

Human Rights Acts force governments to think about human rights before they act.  

The experience from Victoria, the ACT, Queensland and places like the UK and NZ is that this is where Human Rights Acts have had the biggest impact - in developing better laws, policies and services.  

Most of this work is done quietly, as part of the normal business of government by requiring governments to ask: 

• What’s the goal we’re seeking to achieve with this law?  
• Will it restrict rights?  
• If so, is it justified?  
• Is there are less restrictive way to achieve that goal?  

These questions, known as the proportionality test, are an incredibly powerful way of focussing government attention on people. 

This is human rights in action delivering good, human-focused law and policy making. 

It is of course critical that people have the power to take action to protect their rights. 

Otherwise governments won’t take people’s rights seriously. 

Rights without remedies are not rights at all. 

But again, most of the good work here happens efficiently through raising complaints with agencies directly or through the Ombudsman in Victoria, or the Human Rights Commissions in Queensland and the ACT. 

I encourage you to take a look at the Human Rights Law Centre’s online publication 101 cases showing the benefits of a Human Rights Act. 

It helpfully highlights the many ways, big and small, that a Human Rights Act can help make people’s lives better. 

Across the country, support for a national Human Rights Act is strong.  

It grew under COVID when there was a deeper appreciation of the lack of protection afforded to rights in Australia. 

We have the Commission’s Free and Equal Report and the excellent Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights Report pointing the way forward. 

I’m confident a national Human Rights Act will happen.  

And I encourage you to get behind the movement to ensure a Human Rights Act happens at the state level here in NSW.