The Human Rights Law Centre has welcomed proposed amendments to Victoria’s new pandemic legislation, revealed in Parliament today.

With Victoria’s current state of emergency set to expire on 16 December 2021 and unable to be extended, the Victorian Government has introduced the proposed pandemic law – the Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (Pandemic Management) Bill (the Bill) – to support the ongoing management of COVID-19 and any future pandemics.

In addition to the safeguards already in the draft legislation, key additional safeguards in today’s amendments include:

• A requirement that the Premier be satisfied on “reasonable grounds” that there is a serious risk to public health before declaring a pandemic.

• Making clear that Victoria’s Human Rights Charter applies to pandemic restrictions and other acts and decisions made under the new law.

• Strengthening, speeding up and properly resourcing some of the key oversight and review mechanisms.

• Confirming that health restrictions can only treat people differently on the basis of their age or other personal attributes when there is a clear public health reason for doing so.

Daniel Webb, Legal Director, Human Rights Law Centre:  

“These changes include many of the extra human rights and accountability safeguards we have been calling for.

“These are the sorts of safeguards that ultimately help government make better decisions and also help build and maintain public trust in those decisions.”

Mr Webb said the proposed legislation is a significant improvement on the current law and acknowledged the work of several crossbench MPs in securing these important changes.

“The pandemic isn’t over and governments around the country continue to use public health and emergency powers to help manage it. The easy thing for these crossbench MPs to do would have been to just grant another extension under the existing law. Instead, they’ve used this moment to take advice from a range of experts and worked to make the law better. It now looks like we’ll emerge from all of this with a much better law than what we had before, thanks largely to their efforts.

“The law still isn’t perfect. We think there should be an outer limit on how long a pandemic declaration can be extended for and stronger appeal rights for detention. But these things are partially addressed by other safeguards in the Bill and overall this is still a huge improvement on the current law.”

All states and territories in Australia continue to rely on public health or emergency legislation to manage COVID-19, however Victoria is the first jurisdiction in the country to develop a new law specifically for pandemics.

The Human Rights Law Centre’s full analysis of the Bill can be viewed here.

Media contact:
Michelle Bennett, Engagement Director, 0419 100 519, michelle.bennett@hrlc.org.au