The Andrews government should use an inquiry into Victoria’s criminal justice system as the catalyst to finally end mass imprisonment, the Human Rights Law Centre argued in its evidence.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre welcomes the opportunity to provide input to the PJCIS on the Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Bill 2020, and is concerned about the disproportionate scope of these powers and the lack of evidence justifying the need for warrants beyond those already available to the AFP and ACIC.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the Australian National Audit Office’s performance audit to assess the effectiveness of the design and management of international travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read MoreThe Australian government’s visa laws are devastating families and keeping parents away from their children for years, a Senate Committee inquiry has been told. The landmark inquiry into the Morrison government’s family migration policies has received evidence from legal experts and people separated from their families.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre and the National Family Violence Prevention Legal Services Forum provided a joint submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights’ inquiry into a legislative instrument which would amend the criteria for the discriminatory and punitive ParentsNext program, but do nothing to address the fundamental flaws in the program or its impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.
Read MoreOn the eve of the Tasmanian election, the Tasmanian Aboriginal Legal Service and the Human Rights Law Centre called on the Tasmanian government to raise the age in response to a survey being undertaken by the Commissioner for Children and Young People to help inform an advice they are preparing to the Government on the issue.
Read MoreThe implications of the proposed regulations, which significantly broaden the scope of activities for which charities can be deregistered, will be felt by virtually every one of the 58,000 charities registered in Australia. The proposal is a major overreach and the need for further regulation has not been (and in our view cannot be) properly explained. No obvious benefit will accrue, yet there is a significant cost to charities and, by extension, Australian civil society.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre, the Change the Record coalition and the Caxton Legal Centre call for the Queensland Parliament to reject the Youth Justice and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2021, and instead substantially increase investment in services that support marginalised young people and their families.
Read MoreThe Australian Government must take action to provide a decent and dignified standard of living to people who are forced to turn to our social safety net in times of need, the Human Rights Law Centre has told a Senate committee inquiry into the proposed increase to Jobseeker and other support payments of just $3.57 per day.
Read MoreCredible evidence of mass internments, forced labour and other atrocities against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang provide an urgent case for action by the Australian Government to ensure businesses are not profiting from these abuses, the Human Rights Law Centre has told a parliamentary committee.
Read MoreHands Off Our Charities' overarching concern with this review, and all future amendments to the Electoral Act, is that in seeking to achieve electoral integrity, legislation does not stifle the civil society voices that are vital to the health of our democracy, especially in the absence of any compelling evidence.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre and the Australian Conservation Foundation gave evidence to the Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee, which is reviewing the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Donation Reform and Other Measures) Bill 2020) (Cth).
Read MoreThe Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) has made bi-partisan recommendations for the scaling back of Australia’s controversial metadata retention regime.
Read MoreTwo of Australia’s leading human rights organisations - the Human Rights Law Centre and Amnesty International Australia - are calling on the Gutwein Government to prohibit the routine strip searching of children. The Tasmanian Government is currently considering laws that the two national organisations say miss the mark when it comes to the need to protect children from harm and prohibit routine strip searches.
Read MoreIn its submission to a Senate inquiry, the Human Rights Law Centre has called on Parliament to reject the permanent expansion of the Cashless Debit Card scheme into the Northern Territory.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre has made a submission to the parliamentary inquiry into the destruction of 46,000 year old caves at the Juukan Gorge in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
The destruction has rightly attracted international condemnation, and calls for a thorough examination of Rio Tinto’s actions and the broader legal and political framework that allowed this to happen.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre told the Senate Committee tasked with investigating the Federal Government's response to COVID-19 that human rights must be at the centre of the Government’s actions, both now and into the future.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre made a submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee inquiry about new laws that would allow the Morrison Government to stifle criticism of immigration detention, and cut off crucial support for the people detained.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre - along with the Asian Australian Alliance, Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Get Up!, the Anti Defamation Commission and the Victorian Trades Hall Council - have made a joint supplementary submission to Victorian Government’s Inquiry into Anti-Vilification Protections.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre, along with an alliance of civil society and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and senior academics, have made a joint submission to the Senate Committee tasked with investigating the Federal Government's response to COVID-19.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre joined 11 international NGOs in a Joint Paper that outlines how member and observer States of the Human Rights Council can more systematically use civic space indicators as objective criteria for interventions at the Council.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre commented on the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Consultation Paper relating to its proposed International Strategy on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery (Strategy).
Read MoreThe President of the UN Human Rights Council is consulting on a statement to be made to the Council on the human rights implications of COVID-19.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre has made a submission to the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability raising concerns about the use of harmful practices like solitary confinement on people living with disability in prisons.
Read MoreChief law-makers in Australia must promote the rights of children with a commitment to raise the age at which children can be locked up, the Human Rights Law Centre has told a Working Group tasked to consider raising the age of legal responsibility.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) and Australian Centre for International Justice (ACIJ) have made a joint submission to the Australian Law Reform Commission’s Inquiry into Australia’s corporate criminal responsibility regime. The HRLC supports proposals that would allow corporations to be better held to account for criminal misconduct overseas.
Read MoreToday the Human Rights Law Centre – along with the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Get Up!, the Anti Defamation Commission and the Victorian Trades Hall Council – have made a joint submission to the Victorian Government’s Inquiry into Anti-Vilification Protections on how to enact best practice anti-vilification laws to stop hate in its tracks.
Read the submission, Stopping hate in its tracks.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre’s submission on the Second Exposure Draft of the Religious Discrimination Bill 2019 argues that the bill fails to strike the right balance between freedom of religion, and rights to equal treatment, access to healthcare and non-discrimination on the basis of a range of other protected attributes.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreIf 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.
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