Annual Report 2023-24

Year in Review 

The Australian Human Rights Commission is a vital national institution which has been promoting justice and human rights for Australians for close to forty years. It is an honour to write this message as the Commission’s new President. 

In December 2023, the world commemorated 75 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration lays the foundation for peace, prosperity and freedom globally and is one of the great modern human achievements. 

Australia played a leading role in drafting the Declaration and establishing the United Nations. Successive Australian Governments have signed and ratified the major international human rights treaties. Under our legal system however, people whose rights are breached cannot directly enforce these treaties or the Declaration under Australian law. Australia’s promises to the world to uphold human rights are not backed up effectively in Australian law.

Our national human rights protections are patchy. Our human rights safety net has holes in it. 

This past year the Commission finalised its major Free and Equal Project to address the gaps in human rights protections for people in Australia. In December, the Commission delivered its final report Revitalising Australia’s commitment to human rights and in June, the Commission held the Free and Equal conference. 

The Commission’s Free and Equal reports outline a roadmap to better protect people’s rights in Australia through a new national human rights framework. Key recommendations include simplified and modernised anti-discrimination laws, improved human rights education and the establishment of a national Human Rights Act. 

A Human Rights Act will protect the rights of all people in Australia and help ensure that everyone is treated with dignity and respect. It will promote better understanding of rights. It will help to prevent rights abuses from occurring and give power to people to take action if their rights are breached. 

In March 2023, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus tasked the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights with a national inquiry into Australia’s human rights framework and laws. The inquiry had a strong focus on the Commission’s Free and Equal recommendations. In May 2024, the Committee published its report. The report indicated that there was significant community support for the Commission’s proposed reforms. The report’s recommendations endorsed the Commission’s models for both a new human rights framework and a Human Rights Act.

Similarly, the Royal Commission into violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with disability endorsed the Commission’s reform proposals for federal discrimination law (as they related to people with disability) in its final report in September 2023.

The Commission’s Free and Equal work, together with the reports of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Royal Commission, provide the momentum and reform agenda to fix our human rights safety net and build a fairer, healthier, safer and more prosperous Australia. I look forward to working with the Australian Government, parliamentarians and civil society to advance these reforms.

Across the year, human rights issues featured prominently in national debates. The Commission contributed to these debates in line with our legislative mandate which requires us to promote an understanding and acceptance of human rights.

 The defeat of the Voice referendum in October was felt heavily by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who strongly supported the proposal for a greater say in issues that affect them. The referendum outcome set back progress on the other elements of the Uluru statement; truth and treaty. 

The brutal October 7 attack by Hamas and the devastating and continuing response by Israel has impacted communities in Australia with sharp rises in antisemitism and Islamophobia. The Commission is undertaking work to support Australian communities affected by the conflict including by conducting a national study into racism in Australian universities. 

The Commission has long supported calls to expand federal anti-discrimination laws to protect people of faith, and to reform exemptions in the Sex Discrimination Act that allow discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students and staff by religious schools and other bodies. Despite promises from successive governments, these important reforms remain unfulfilled. 

The Commission is Australia’s national human rights institution (NHRI). NHRIs are a key part of the global system protecting people’s rights. There are internationally agreed standards for accrediting NHRIs. Independence from government is a key aspect of these standards.

The Australian Government has implemented reforms to improve the independence of the Commission through transparent, merit-based processes to appoint the President and Commissioners. These reforms are important for community trust in the Commission. They were also critical in ensuring that the Commission was re-accredited as an ‘A status’ NHRI by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions in October 2023. 

The Commission received welcome additional funding in 2022 to stabilise our budget and fund new work developing the National Anti-Racism Framework and implementing new positive duty functions to eliminate sexual harassment, sex discrimination and other unlawful conduct. Despite this, our core funding continues to pose problems. The funding challenges are best demonstrated by the fact that:

• The Commission continues to have a significant backlog of discrimination and human rights complaints. Temporary funding has helped us to make inroads into the backlog but complaint time frames remain too long, making access to justice harder to reach for people affected by discrimination and human rights breaches. Complaint timeframes have been impacted by the sustained increase in complaints received by the Commission which have remained at heightened levels ever since the COVID-19 pandemic. 
• Many Commission activities require externally sourced funding from the private and philanthropic sectors. 
• Our current core funding for workplace and community education supports only two FTE staff and is inadequate to properly deliver on this important function. Our education capacity has had to be supplemented by fee for service funding.

Finally, I want to pay tribute to my predecessor Emeritus Professor Rosalind Croucher AM. I am grateful for her leadership and in particular her work on the Free and Equal project and to strengthen the Commission’s governance. I also acknowledge the important contributions of Commissioners June Oscar AO, Kay Patterson and Chin Tan who finished their terms in the reporting period. I join the Commission at a time of change. Over the reporting period the Commission welcomed new Commissioners Katie Kiss, Robert Fitzgerald AM, Rosemary Kayess, Giridharan Sivaraman and Dr Anna Cody who bring a wealth of expertise and energy to their roles. 

I thank the Commission staff, led capably by our Chief Executive Leanne Smith, and the partners who we have worked alongside, who have enabled the human rights progress outlined in this report. 

Human rights are the blueprint for a decent, dignified life for all. Human rights are the key to creating the kind of society we all want to live in. I am looking forward to working over my five year term to help realise the Commission’s vision of an Australian society where human rights are respected, promoted and protected and where every person is free and equal in dignity and rights.

Hugh de Kretser 

President