Submission for the Inquiry into Australia’s Human Rights Framework – July 2023
The Inquiry into Australia’s Human Rights Framework, conducted by the the federal Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, examines the need for human rights legislation and how such a law could better uphold the human rights of all Australians. Our submissions reflects on our experience with Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities.
In 2010, the Australian Government launched the National Human Rights Framework. The framework contained commitments to strengthen the promotion and protection of human rights in Australia, including the establishment of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights and the development of a National Action Plan on Human Rights. There was also a commitment to conduct a four-year review. Thirteen years on, the review has not occurred, and several critical elements of the National Human Rights Action Plan have not been implemented.
The framework was released four years after the introduction of the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities (the Charter). Approaching almost two decades in operation, the Charter is now the second longest operating human rights act in the country after the Australian Capital Territory’s Human Rights Act 2004 and has been the subject of two statutory reviews.
Since the introduction of the Charter, Queensland introduced its Human Rights Act 2019 (Qld) and the ACT has passed reforms that allows a person to bring an independent cause of action against a public authority for breach of the Human Rights Act 2004 (ACT). There are significant lessons to be learned from the experiences of these three jurisdictions with human rights legislation in place.
We consider that the introduction of an Australian Human Rights Act would complement the three existing state and territory–based human rights laws.
We broadly support the re-establishment of the Framework.
This submission focuses on the proposal for a national Human Rights Act. Our experience in overseeing the operation of the Charter provides critical insights into the value of human rights legislation, the components that should be included and the most effective means to implement such laws. To this extent, the insights contained in this submission also reflect the issues addressed in the two statutory reviews of the Charter, noting that the recommendations from those reviews are yet to be implemented in Victoria.