No matter who we are or where we are, our lives are better when we all treat each other with fairness and respect and when we can all enjoy our rights and freedoms. Human Rights Acts and Charters promote respect for human rights and give people power to take action if their rights are breached.

A new report by the Human Rights Law Centre, ‘Charters of human rights make our lives better’ tells the success stories of the ACT’s Human Rights Act 2004, Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 and Queensland’s Human Rights Act 2019.

It analyses 101 cases that show how these laws have empowered people and their advocates when rights were threatened or breached, highlighting outcomes such as stopping the criminalisation of sleeping in cars and ensuring a man with a disability was allowed to open his own mail. It includes dozens of cases from the Covid-19 pandemic showing how human rights laws played an important role.

Despite the success of these laws in three jurisdictions, Australia is the only western democracy without an Australian Human Rights Act. The Human Rights Law Centre is calling on the Albanese government to move swiftly to introduce an Australian Human Rights Act.