Silent prayer outside abortion clinics can be particularly harmful to women trying to access healthcare. The objects of the Health Care (Safe Access) Amendment Bill 2020 (SA) (‘the Bill’) would be completely undermined by an amendment that authorises silent prayer within a health access zone, by allowing anti-abortion activists to invade the privacy and threaten the wellbeing of patients seeking abortion care.
Read MoreWhile politicians say that police are committed to taking a "sensible approach", history has shown that too often marginalised groups are disproportionately punished through an expansion of policing powers. In particular, people living with a disability, women escaping family violence and those experiencing homelessness may be hardest hit. In addition, increased powers - and police discretion - open the way for racialised and discriminatory policing, too often experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre works with international NGOs to highlight the human rights challenges presented by COVID-19 globally and to ensure that UN human rights mechanisms, such as Human Rights Council and Special Procedures, can support countries like Australia in implementing human rights based responses to COVID-19, and hold them to account when they fail to do so.
Read MoreKids should not be in prisons, and they definitely should not be in prisons right now.
Read MoreThis messaging guide seeks to help people and organisations who are advocating for a an Australian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms to craft their public messages in a way that will energise supporters and convince neutral audiences about the many benefits a Charter will provide to the whole community.
Read MoreLast year, Philanthropy Australia held its Philanthropy Meets Parliament Summit where ideas about the state of our democracy were debated, tested and challenged. Continuing that debate in to 2020, Hugh de Kretser, Executive Director of the Human Rights Law Centre, highlights how important charity advocacy is for a healthy democracy.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre has long advocated for comprehensive, fair and effective anti-discrimination laws across Australia. Australia needs stronger protections from discrimination for people of faith, but unfortunately, draft legislation released by the Morrison Government in 2019 contained a number of major flaws and failed to strike the right balance.
Read MoreSome politicians seem to spend more time with their mates in the corporate box than with voters. The Palaszczuk Government is proposing laws to change this. But donation caps will hurt grassroots advocacy and charities the most, and lets corporations off the hook.
Read MoreTwo men, lawyer Bernard Collaery and his client, known as Witness K, now face jail time for blowing the whistle on a disgraceful chapter in Australian intelligence history. The episode highlights the need for stronger whistleblower protections in Australia.
Read MoreThis month marked two important anniversaries for our region, but one is likely to go largely unmentioned in Australia.
Read MoreThe Australian Government has a duty of care to provide proper healthcare to the people it has held offshore on Nauru and Manus for six long years. Before the Medevac laws, it is clear that the Government was failing in its duty.
Read MoreBackbencher Andrew Hastie is chairing a powerful parliamentary committee that is looking into laws that criminalise whistleblowing and journalism. It's ironic, because his opinion piece for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald last week is a perfect example of what is wrong with these laws.
Read MoreSocial security is a vital safety net that most people in Australia will turn to at some point in their lives. In this context, the 2019 federal election offered two very different futures for remote communities in the Northern Territory.
Read MoreToday marks an awful milestone. It is six years since then prime minister Kevin Rudd announced that anyone arriving in Australia by boat seeking safety would be deported to Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.
Read MorePrisons are fundamentally at odds with the notion of rehabilitation. On the brink of tears, a 19-year-old locked up in Port Phillip Prison recently asked me: "How can I think about tomorrow when I can barely survive today?"
Read MoreThis week saw a big win for women's rights in Australia in the High Court. It is an historic step forward in the long journey for reproductive freedom for women in Australia. It's also a timely reminder of how far we have to go.
Read MoreWhile protest is vital for our democracy, its importance isn’t well understood, and our protest rights aren’t properly protected in Australian law. It’s time this changed. Because while Australia has a proud protest history, we also have a history of governments trying to suppress protest.
Read MoreThe medical and humanitarian crisis in Australia’s offshore detention camps in Nauru and Manus Island keeps escalating, with the bearers of our government’s harsh policies being the bodies of the people who have been held captive for nearly six years.
Read MoreThe government keeps playing politics with innocent people’s lives but the public mood has shifted. After almost six years of unmitigated cruelty to innocent people, Australia is finally rediscovering its moral compass. There’s a palpable sense that this has all gone too far, for too long.
Read MoreThis report shines a spotlight on ten cases of human rights violations involving Australian multinationals. The cases cut across countries and industries, from ANZ’s involvement in financing land grabs in Cambodia to BHP’s role in the Samarco dam disaster in Brazil and Broadspectrum and Wilson Security’s responsibility for alleged sexual assaults on refugee women and children held in offshore detention on Nauru.
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