Our vision: An Australia where the values we all share – like fairness, equality and compassion – are properly reflected and protected in our laws and where everyone understands their rights and freedoms and has the power to take action to ensure that those rights and freedoms are respected and upheld.

Our lives are better when we all treat each other with fairness and respect and when we can enjoy our rights and freedoms. Unfortunately, powerful politicians and corporations don’t always respect the rights of individual people or communities.

We need to create an Australian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms to help level the playing field.

A Charter of Human Rights will ensure the decisions and actions of our governments are guided by the values of freedom, equality, compassion and dignity. It will help everyone from school children to new Australians understand the rights and freedoms that we all share and it will mean that if someone’s rights are violated they can take action to get justice.

The Human Rights Law Centre is building the public campaign to create an Australian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms with a wide range of community and not-for-profit organisations.

This year we conducted in-depth research, focus groups and online testing and surveys to examine community views on human rights, assess public understanding of laws that currently protect human rights, and help identify the messages that will best engage and motivate people to support the creation of a Charter.

The findings and recommendations are informing our efforts to kickstart a national conversation about the need to create a Charter. We are using digital media to reach new audiences and increase support and we have also hit the road to hold various community events.

While we build public support for a Charter over the next three years, we’re also reaching out to foster political support and, with pro bono support from law firm Gilbert + Tobin, we are working with leading legal experts to draft a model Charter.

A Human Rights Act for Queensland

In 2019, we celebrated a huge win for human rights in Queensland with a Human Rights Act passing through parliament. Queensland is now the third Australian jurisdiction with a Human Rights Act or Charter, joining Victoria and the ACT.

This means that 23 vital human rights including freedom of association, freedom of expression, the right to education and the right to humane treatment in detention will be better protected in Queensland law when the law comes into force in 2020. It will require government to properly consider and comply with human rights, and in the event it doesn’t, it will give people an avenue to seek redress and justice.

The Human Rights Law Centre provided expert legal advice along with logistical and strategic support to the coalition of Queensland community groups that secured this important reform. We will continue to support Queensland community groups to use the Human Rights Act to advance people’s rights in Queensland.

Moves for Human Rights Charters across Australia

The Human Rights Law Centre is also supporting efforts to achieve Human Rights Charters in New South Wales and Western Australia. We want to secure Charters in all Australian jurisdictions to ensure better legal protection of human rights across Australia.

Pushing for balanced Religious Discrimination legislation

The Human Rights Law Centre has long advocated for comprehensive, fair and effective anti-discrimination laws across Australia. Australia needs stronger protections from discrimination for people of faith, but unfortunately, draft legislation released by the Morrison Government in 2019 contained a number of major flaws and failed to strike the right balance.

By prioritising the interests of doctors who conscientiously object to providing certain health services like abortion, the draft laws would threaten the ability of women and LGBTIQ people in particular to get the health care they need.

We engaged with the Government and in the media to highlight flaws in the proposed laws and ways to fix them. We also highlighted the fact that the Prime Minister has not delivered on his promise to address discrimination against LGBTIQ children in religious schools. It is outrageous that children can still be expelled from a school because of their sexuality or gender identity.