It's 2017 and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are again fighting against the systemic denial of fair pay for work. When people talk about stolen wages — the slavery-like system that saw Aboriginal people denied any or equal pay for hard work over decades — they typically speak of the past. But the pervasive and poisonous tentacles of systemic racism in Australia are very much of the present.
Read MoreAustralians said YES. The 61.6% YES margin revealed on 15 November 2017 was bigger than any federal election winner’s 2PP vote. This emphatic success is a cause for great celebration—but what happens next? What does it mean?
Read MoreThe debate on the consensus cross-party bill has resumed in the Senate. It is very clear that across the parliament our representatives have heard the overwhelming mandate delivered by the postal survey loudly and clearly.
Read MoreThis report to the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (the CERD Committee) examines Australia’s compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
Read MoreIn August 2017, Senator Dean Smith publicly released the Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Bill 2017. Find out what the Bill means for marriage equality in Australia.
Read MoreHow children could be left to languish in solitary confinement; how the abuses in Don Dale went unchecked for so long before journalists and advocates exposed a system rotten to its core.This Friday Australia will be provided with answers.
Read MoreOver the past month, almost 11 million Australians have responded to the postal survey, mailing in their forms on whether same-sex couples should be able to marry.If the will of the Australian people is reflected in the results, then our nation will be expecting politicians to listen, to act decisively and to get marriage equality done so we can unite around a reform that will bring our country together in a celebration of fairness and equality.
Read MoreMany Australians wouldn't think twice about putting their name to a petition to support a cause close to their hearts, but in Indonesia's Papuan provinces calls for independence can land you in jail for 15 years. So it is truly remarkable that 1.8 million Papuans have signed a petition — specifically banned by the Indonesian Government — calling on the United Nations to conduct a free vote about independence, writes Tom Clarke.
Read MoreMen are dying, women have been sexually assaulted and children traumatised on Manus and Nauru. This can’t continue writes Daniel Webb.
Read MoreThis report to the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee (the Committee) examines Australia’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
Read MoreThe postal survey on marriage equality is now underway. New laws have been put in place to try to ensure respectful debate. Here's what you need to know about how they impact on you.
Read MoreAustralia is failing to provide a safe and free environment for civil society and to ensure that people are free to speak out and peacefully protest on issues that they care about, said a UN Human Rights expert today. Michel Forst, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, has been in Australia for a two-week official visit, meeting with government, MPs and civil society organisations.
Read MoreFor the first time, we have a Bill that offers a real opportunity for support across the parliament and an opportunity to realise the hopes and dreams of the many lesbian and gay Australians and their families, friends and colleagues who just want to be treated equally under Australian law and marry the person they love.
Read MoreThis week marks four years since then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that no person seeking asylum by boat would ever be allowed to stay in Australia. Instead, people fleeing persecution would be warehoused indefinitely on the remote Pacific islands of Manus and Nauru.
Read MoreIn 2013 Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that no person seeking asylum by boat would ever be resettled in Australia. Four years on, this joint report from the Human Rights Law Centre and GetUp! calls for the end of offshore processing and the immediate evacuation of the men, women and children held in Australia’s detention camps on Manus Island, and in PNG, and the Republic of Nauru.
Read MoreIf you are reading this on your computer, phone or tablet, chances are it was made in China by a worker like 18-year-old Xiao Ya.
Xiao left her home town in rural China to find work to help support her ageing parents. She got a job cleaning tablet screens in Guangzhou, in one of the big factories which produce 90 per cent of the world's electronics.
Read MoreAustralia now looks certain to take a seat at the UN’s Human Rights Council, but will Australia play a spoiling or constructive role? The Human Rights Law Centre’s Tom Clarke takes a look at Australia’s track record in Geneva.
Read More“Tough on crime” was a stance that coloured many policies of the former Country Liberal Government in the Northern Territory. It was sold as the silver bullet to drive down youth crime rates and make communities safer. It was built up to be the solution to community fears of a so-called epidemic in youth crime that was fuelled by a willing media.
Read MoreAustralian governments must act now to safeguard and encourage vibrant debate on matters of public interest. Defending Democracy by the Human Rights Law Centre maps the worrying trend of Australian governments seeking to restrict the free speech of not-for-profit organisations, through practices such as gag clauses in funding agreements and threats to hamstring advocacy groups’ ability to fundraise.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre and Change the Record collaborated on this report to address the over-imprisonment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.The imprisonment rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women has skyrocketed 148 per cent since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women make up around 34 per cent of the female prison population but only 2 per cent of the adult female population.
Read MoreGovernments can no longer plead ignorance when it comes to the risks associated with locking up Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. The tragic and preventable death of Ms Dhu, a 22-year-old Yamatji woman, while in WA police custody because of unpaid fines is a devastating example of how the justice system fails our women.
Read MoreYouth justice in Victoria is at the crossroads. The Supreme Court has ruled, yet again, that it was unlawful for the Victorian government to lock up children at the state’s most notorious maximum security adult jail.
Read MoreMandatory sentences are not the right tool for reducing crime, writes our Executive Director, Hugh de Kretser, following the misguided policy announcement from Victoria's Opposition Leader.
Read MoreCurrently transgender young people can only access cross sex hormones (Stage 2 treatment) for ‘gender dysphoria’ if they have approval from the Family Court.
Read MoreIf we’ve learnt anything from the #LetThemStay campaign. If we’ve learnt anything from Baby Asha and the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital. If we’ve learnt anything from the church sanctuary movement, it’s this: on this issue, we can’t sit back and hope for leadership from our politicians. It’s you who must lead them.
Read MoreOn the eve of a fresh Supreme Court challenge to stop the Andrews Government keeping young people in Barwon prison, a 17-year-old offender has revealed the toll of being in the State’s most secure adult jail.
Read MoreQueensland MPs stand at a crossroads when it comes to the state's abortion laws, but one thing is abundantly clear: the status quo is unacceptable. New polling released this week shows overwhelming public support for women's right to choose abortion in Queensland and that voters are turned off by MPs who support criminalising abortion.
Read MoreTo achieve the Close the Gap measures, the federal and territory governments need to engage in genuine dialogue with Aboriginal people. The chronic crisis of overcrowding can only be addressed through a collaborative approach, with a view to ultimately giving control back to Aboriginal communities.
Read MoreWomen in the Northern Territory are being told that they still can’t be trusted to make decisions about their bodies. That’s the message that comes through in a discussion paper released by the Northern Territory Government proposing changes to the Territory’s abortion laws.
Read MoreTrump is set to sign executive orders imposing a freeze on all refugee resettlement – those detained offshore should be brought to safety in Australia.
Read MoreOver the weekend, millions of demonstrators across the world took to the streets with a clear message for the new U.S. President: if you tread on women's rights, you've got a fight on your hands. It was a stunning display of the dynamic relationship between the state and its people and how democracy continues to operate in between elections.
Read MoreWhile the exhibition, Another Day in Paradise which opens at the Campbelltown Arts Centre on Friday, is a chance to reflect on his life and the brutality of the death penalty, we mustn't shy away from a difficult home truth: the Australian Federal Police's role in his death.
Read MoreJust a day after Victoria’s highest court confirmed the government acted unlawfully in detaining children at the Barwon adult prison, the Minister has tried yet again to keep them there. The government is spending extraordinary resources defending the indefensible – jailing children in the state’s most notorious adult prison.
Read MoreThere is indeed a crisis in Victoria's youth justice system. It is not one, as the Government suggests, of available beds or suitable facilities – these things are imminently fixable with a dose of political will. Rather, the crisis is one of a myopic outlook and a merciless attitude: a willingness to countenance cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
Read MoreBrutal images of Aboriginal women and children being mistreated in custody are a defining feature of 2016. From Dylan Voller and the young detainees of Don Dale to Ms Dhu, Australians have been forced to reckon with the cruel reality of Australia's over-imprisonment crisis.
Read MoreI've just returned from Barwon maximum security adult prison. I found myself squatting on the floor to talk to one of our clients – a 16-year-old child – through the trapdoor to his cell. The tight steel opening so small I could only see his anxious eyes. He is being held in solitary confinement; pacing his cell, uncertain when he will be let out. He hasn't seen the sky since Thursday.
Read MoreWe need to get to the bottom of what went wrong with the riot at the Parkville Youth Justice Centre. We don’t need lazy, kneejerk populist responses, like transferring kids to adults jails, which are designed to sound tough on crime and which in fact will only make things worse.
Read MoreMalcolm 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.
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