Malcolm Turnbull’s proposed lifetime visa ban is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist and an attempt to distract us from one that does.
The proposal is absurd, the wedge politics cynical and the explanations insincere. Sadly, the fear and harm being caused is real.
Read MoreLate last year, a friend told me that we need to make sure we don't look back in the future on human rights as just a passing phase. It was a comment that kept coming back to me over the past 12 months with Brexit, the re-rise of Pauline Hanson, the hardening of Turnbull and now Trump.
Read MoreLast year, Kumanjayi Langdon, a proud and respected 59-year-old Warlpiri man from a large family, died in police custody in Darwin.
His crime? Police suspected he was drinking in a local park. He wasn’t causing any disruption and was polite and cooperative at all times.
Read MoreDragged from her cell. Handcuffed and paralysed. Hauled, dying, into the back of a police truck. This week Australia may be confronted, yet again, with images and footage of the justice system failing Aboriginal people, with devastating results.
Read MoreOur Prime Minister, Immigration Minister and Foreign Minister have spent this week in New York attending high-profile global summits on refugees. They arrived insisting that the Australian government's policies were the "best in the world", but they'll leave having offered little more than self-congratulations.
Read MoreWhile the nation's eyes have been on federal parliament bickering over the marriage equality plebiscite this week, another critical LGBTI debate began in the Victorian Legislative Assembly.
Read MoreThe PNG government has conceded that the Manus facility must close. But while tearing down the fences would be a significant step, the real issue is not the future of the facility itself but of the 854 men trapped inside it.
Read MoreAustralia’s offshore camps are a house of cards. They’re unsustainable and liable to collapse amid increasing corporate aversion to complicity in abuse, legal uncertainty and human despair.
Read MorePrime Minister Malcom Turnbull's announcement of a royal commission into the abuse of children in Northern Territory jails gives an insight into his instincts on human rights.
Read MoreMonday night's Four Corners episode also revealed that cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment is endemic in its principal youth detention facility.
Read MoreEvery day that the Manus Island and Nauru camps stay open, people suffer. Every day that Ferrovial operates those centres, it is exposed to risk, writes the HRLC's Rachel Ball.
Read MoreThe Universal Periodic Review (UPR) has received mixed reviews about its effectiveness as a mechanism to achieve positive human rights change. However, the case study of Australia demonstrates the capacity of the UPR to open space for dialogue and facilitate positive, albeit modest, human rights progress and monitoring.
Read MoreThe PNG Supreme Court's unanimous ruling highlights the harmfulness of Australia's treatment of asylum seekers in the Manus Island detention centre.
Read MoreIt’s been twenty-five years since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, yet WA’s justice system remains utterly out of balance – it is destroying families and communities, writes the HRLC’s Ruth Barson.
Read MoreThis article was written for the special 2016 Children Rights Edition of the HRLC Monthly Bulletin, Rights Agenda, developed in collaboration with the National Children’s and Youth Law Centre, King & Wood Mallesons and the Human Rights Law Centre.
Read MoreNSW's new anti-protest laws are the latest example of governments in Australia steadily chipping away at our democracy's foundations, writes the HRLC's Hugh de Kretser.
Read MoreAttacks on environmental groups are part of an unmistakable broader trend of governments eroding many of the vital foundations our democracy, writes the HRLC's Hugh de Kretser.
Read MoreKelsey Montgomery a law student at the University of Western Australia. She did a placement with the Human Rights Law Centre at the end of 2015 and has since written this piece looking at the legality of solitary confinement.
Read MoreIf Australia is serious about protecting human rights, it should codify and enforce them, writes the HRLC's Ruth Barson on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Read MoreThese are the questions that should be plaguing the WA government after an inquest heard of a brutal and inhuman death in custody, writes the HRLC's Ruth Barson.
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