The Human Rights Law Centre stands in solidarity with the refugee activists who have maintained a constant protest outside government and ministerial offices in Melbourne since 14 July 2024.
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26 January is not a day to celebrate.
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Governments must not give into their demands for profit at the expense of our planet, and our right to speak up. This is why we have released our Declaration of Our Right to Protest. The Declaration calls for governments across Australia to adhere to international standards and human rights law to protect protest rights.
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We need to step back and ask ourselves: How did we get to this point, where both sides of parliament talk openly of flouting High Court judgments and subjecting migrants and refugees to lifelong punishment based solely on their legal status? And we need to ask ourselves: Who will be next?
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In Australia, as we’re seeing across the globe, disinformation is being used as a powerful weapon by far-right groups to gain public support for regressive movements that want to wind back human rights.
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Two years ago yesterday, the ACT Court of Appeal handed down a landmark judgment in defence of truth and transparency in our democracy. There's one problem: to this day it remains secret.
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This week’s revelation of secret messages between Home Affairs Secretary Michael Pezzullo and Liberal lobbyist Scott Briggs tell us what we already knew: that, under Pezzullo’s direction, the Department of Home Affairs has grown into a vast, secretive and militarised force exerting extraordinary power over ordinary people seeking to make a home in Australia.
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Former army lawyer David McBride will soon face trial accused of leaking classified defence information. What does this say about Australia?
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The Project being launched today is a new step in encouraging and supporting these whistleblowers. It is a major initiative in relation to a matter of considerable public importance.
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Whistleblowers make the public service a better place. We avoid the next robodebt saga by decreasing the cost of courage and ensuring that those who speak up are protected, not punished.
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What would we not know were it but for brave whistleblowers speaking up? And what do we not know right now because the cost of courage in Australia is too high? These are the questions that keep me awake at night, and they are the reasons the Human Rights Law Centre is this week launching the Whistleblower Project, a new initiative to protect and empower Australian whistleblowers.
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Item 2: Enhanced interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan and the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls
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Temporary migrants are not simply numbers on the national balance of payments. Nor are they passive victims who require law makers to step in and take responsibility for their lives. They are people who are an integral part of our community.
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Protection for journalists’ sources is a vital component of press freedom. Together, the media and their sources bring transparency and accountability. Without whistleblowing, public interest journalism is often not possible; and wrongdoing remains hidden. Which is why it is absolutely crucial for press freedom in Australia that whistleblowers are protected, not punished.
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First Nations people must work until they're 67 before getting the pension, just like white people. But we have a much lower life expectancy.
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Australians should not be punished for speaking the truth. When courageous whistleblowers speak up about human rights violations, government misfeasance or corporate misdeeds, we can demand action.
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Whistleblowers are vital actors in our democracy, upholding our right to know. Without them – and the public interest journalism they make possible – corruption and human rights abuses go unaddressed. In recent weeks, Senator David Pocock and members of parliament Zoe Daniel and Andrew Wilkie have all given voice to whistleblowers.
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Every day these other prosecutions remain alive, democracy in Australia suffers. The cases send a chilling message to prospective whistleblowers: don’t speak out or you will pay the price.
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For years – to justify spending billions of dollars on prison expansion – governments across Australia have parroted the line that prisons support “community safety”. This premise is false.
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The recent change of government in Australia represents a much-needed opportunity to revitalise Australia’s approach to corporate respect for human rights, including to reorientate the Modern Slavery Act by requiring companies to undertake effective human rights due diligence aimed at preventing harm.
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Every day these other prosecutions remain alive, democracy in Australia suffers. The cases send a chilling message to prospective whistleblowers: don’t speak out or you will pay the price.
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It was hard to watch the bureaucratic machine perpetrating injustice – Mark Dreyfus must now intervene in the other two cases
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Access to abortion is a matter of life and health for all people who experience pregnancy.
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At the election, Australians told its leaders two things: we want decisive action to help stop the climate crisis, and greater integrity in our political system. With the most progressive Parliament seen in decades, there is now a once-in-a-generation opportunity to achieve both.
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On the first day of March this year, Scott Morrison declared his commitment to democratic principles. ‘My government will never be backward when it comes to standing up for Australia’s national interests and standing up for liberal democracy in today’s world,’ the prime minister told reporters.
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The freedom to protest – to gather, to object, to call for change – is an indispensable component of our democracy. Social change has never been inevitable.
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The only people brought before the courts over illegal spying and war crimes are the people who helped expose them.
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In early October, the ACT Court of Appeal refused to allow the trial of whistleblower Bernard Collaery to go ahead in secret, behind closed courtroom doors. A one-page summary said secret trials erode public confidence in the court and open the door to political prosecutions.
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Secret evidence, secret hearings and secret judgements. Each step in the prosecution of Bernard Collaery comes with another layer of opacity. If it were not so serious, the accumulation of secrecy in this case would be comedic.
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The dire warnings from some about Victoria’s proposed new pandemic laws are mostly wrong or overblown. There are important areas where the bill needs fixing but overall, it’s a big improvement on the current laws.
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Whilst the special treatment experienced by the British and their descendants ensured their prosperity, the special treatment our people experienced entrenched our disadvantage, economic and social exclusion, poor health outcomes and shorter life expectancy.
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Prisons are Covid-19 tinderboxes and now we have seen case numbers connected to prisons across NSW explode. You couldn’t get a more dangerous breeding ground for the virus - indoors, poor ventilation, lack of sanitation, overcrowded with little ability to physically distance.
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Achieving human rights progress can be hard. It can take years and sometimes decades of advocacy, campaigning, strategy, suffering and sacrifice. Sometimes all that effort comes to nothing. Sometimes things go backwards despite our best efforts. Sometimes change happens, but the pace is far too slow.
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For decades, women seeking abortion care in Australia have been targeted by anti-abortionists as they tried to walk to their doctor’s front door.
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Recently, a report tabled in the Victorian Parliament by the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission uncovered serious and systemic wrongdoing in Victorian prisons.
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Sitting in the magistrates court in Canberra this week, I felt like I was watching a scene from Franz Kafka’s The Trial – the famous novel in which a man is arrested and prosecuted by a mysterious authority for an unknown crime.
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Sitting in the magistrates court in Canberra this week, I felt like I was watching a scene from Franz Kafka’s The Trial – the famous novel in which a man is arrested and prosecuted by a mysterious authority for an unknown crime.
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The prosecution of Bernard Collaery, which returns to the ACT Court of Appeal today, is about right and wrong. It was wrong for the Australian government to spy on our neighbour Timor-Leste for commercial gain.
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According to the United Nations, World Press Freedom Day - marked today - is intended to serve "as a reminder to governments of the need to respect their commitment to press freedom."
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Victoria’s bail laws are broken and need to be fixed.
As the world marks International Women’s Day, which this year aims to challenge gender inequality, it is fitting to call out Victoria’s broken bail laws and the discriminatory impact they are having on women in our prison system.
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