The exposure draft of the Religious Discrimination Bill 2019 (Cth) (the Bill), and associated amendments, seeks to protect Australians from discrimination on the ground of their religious belief or activity, as well as on the ground of not holding a religious belief or engaging in a religious activity.This is welcome. Australian discrimination laws do not adequately protect people of faith from discrimination. People of faith should have legal protection from discrimination on the basis of their religion and other people should be free from having the religious beliefs of others imposed on them.However, in seeking to achieve this, the Bill goes too far and fails to strike a fair balance between freedom of religion and the rights of other people. In a range of the circumstances the Bill licenses discrimination against other groups and includes provisions which are unorthodox and unprecedented in federal and Australian anti-discrimination law. The Bill should not be introduced to Parliament in its current form.Read the Human Rights Law Centre’s submission on the Religious Discrimination Bill.

If the Victorian Government is serious about reducing the overrepresentation of Aboriginal children in the youth legal system, the approach to youth offending must be culturally safe and reflect current research and knowledge of adolescent development and neuroscience. Aboriginal community input and the evidence should inform the goals, design and implementation of Victoria’s youth justice law and policy framework.Read the Human Rights Law Centre’s submission to the inquiry into the overrepresentation of Aboriginal children and young people in youth justice.

A proposed law that would allow the Morrison Government to force a new form of income control onto thousands of people in the Northern Territory should be rejected, the Human Rights Law Centre has told a Senate Committee.

We joined international NGOs to make two public calls for UN member states to provide suitable funding to the UN treaty bodies, and to propose a model for enhanced predictability and coordination of treaty body reviews.

A good government would ensure that every person has the means to buy nourishing food, keep warm on a cold night, sleep in a safe and secure home and pay for school excursions for their kids. Raising the rate of social security payments to a level that allows people to live, rather than scrap to “survive”, is a critical step to achieving that goal.Download the submission here (September 2019)

The Australian OECD National Contact Point (AusNCP) is Australia’s principal corporate complaints body for communities and individuals harmed by Australian companies operating overseas. Since 2017, the Human Rights Law Centre and other civil society organisations have advocated for reforms to make this complaints process more accessible, transparent and effective for communities.Read the joint submission by the HRLC, OECD Watch and the Australian Corporate Accountability Network on the reforms we say are needed. (July 2019)

The Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) welcomes the opportunity to comment on the Department of Home Affairs’ (DHA) Draft Guidance for Reporting Entities under the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth) (MSA) (the Guidance).Download the submission online here (May 2019)

At a time when wage theft is making headlines, wages growth is at record lows and work is becoming increasingly insecure, the advocacy work that trade unions do on behalf of workers has never been more important. Trade unions play an integral role in a healthy democracy and serve as an important mechanism to help workers exercise their right to safe and fair work conditions.The Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019 (Cth) (the proposed law) proposes amendments to the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act 2009 (Cth). While it is framed by the Federal Government as reform aimed at addressing serious crime and misconduct in the trade union movement, the proposed law will weaken and undermine the democratic operation of the trade union movement internally and drastically limits its ability to perform its function in a democratic society.Read the Human Rights Law Centre’s submission: Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019.

The June 2019 Australian Federal Police (AFP) raids on the ABC’s Sydney headquarters and Annika Smethurst’s home laid bare some critical tensions in our democratic systems that need urgent attention.Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are tasked with keeping us safe and protecting our democracy. That is why we entrust them with extraordinary powers that go well beyond what ordinary citizens can lawfully do.However, Australian authorities now have extensive powers to monitor citizens’ communications and devices, including those of whistleblowers and journalists. When granting those new powers to law enforcement and intelligence agencies, Parliament has not imposed corresponding safeguards to ensure that these powers are not misused and do not disproportionately limit our right to privacy, freedom of expression and the maintenance of a healthy democracy.Read our submission to the Senate Environment and Communications References Committee inquiry on press freedom. 27 August 2019.