Anna Brown's impact at the Human Rights Law Centre

Since joining the Human Rights Law Centre, Anna Brown has been at the forefront of nearly every major reform for LGBTI people in recent years.

Anna played a critical role as Co-Chair of the Equality Campaign in the successful national campaign for marriage equality and has been a leading voice for human rights in the face of attempts to wind back the clock on equality in a toxic debate sparked by the Religious Freedom Review. Anna also played a leading role in the High Court challenge to the postal survey (M106) and the test case for transgender rights (Re Kelvin), as well strategic litigation to advance marriage equality (Cth v ACT) and recognise sex and gender diversity (Norrie’s case). Anna’s advocacy was pivotal in securing federal LGBTI discrimination protections in 2013 and laws across Australia to erase historical convictions for homosexual offences for gay and bisexual men. She was also a tireless advocate for gay refugee couple Ashkan and Nima during their detention on Nauru, a driving force behind the Victoria Police apology for the Tasty night club raid and national spokesperson for the ground-breaking No to Homophobia campaign.

In recognition for her contribution to the LGBTI community, Anna was named Victorian GLBTI person of the year in the inaugural GLOBE community awards in November 2014, was a finalist for the Tony Fitzgerald Community Award in the 2014 Australian Human Rights Awards, was a finalist for Victorian Australian of the Year in 2015 and won the Tim McCoy Award in 2015.

During her time at the Centre Anna also worked on discrimination and vilification reform, legal and institutional protection of rights, protester rights and police accountability. Anna led the Centre’s work on the Occupy Melbourne case and other strategic litigation on freedom of assembly and freedom of religion.