The Human Rights Law Centre is supporting the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency (NAAJA) in their intervention in the coronial inquest into the police-shooting death of Warlpiri and Luritja teenager Kumanjayi Walker. The Human Rights Law Centre is assisting NAAJA to highlight systemic injustices experienced by Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory, including systemic racism in policing.
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Children do not belong behind bars. Yet across Australia, children as young as 10 can be charged by police and locked up in prison. Due to systemic injustice, this is disproportionately impacting Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander children. The Human Rights Law Centre is a founding member of the #RaisetheAge campaign which seeks to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to at least 14 years old Australia wide.
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The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, the Human Rights Law Centre and proud Wakka Wakka man Dennis brought a legal challenge in the Federal Court. The case called for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to be able to access the age pension earlier, to account for the gap in life expectancy.
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Join the Human Rights Law Centre’s national campaign to create an Australian Human Rights Act to ensure human rights are properly protected in law at the national level.
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This report from the Migrant Justice Institute and the Human Rights Law Centre proposes new whistleblower protections to enable migrant workers to address exploitation.
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The Albanese Government abolished Ministerial Direction 80, a policy which intentionally denied thousands of people fleeing persecution the basic human right to live in safety with their families.
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Big corporations shouldn’t be allowed to manipulate politicians to put their profits ahead of our wellbeing. The Human Rights Law Centre advocates for changes to laws and policies to end the cycle of corporate influence in our political system.
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Enshrining the right to a healthy environment in law is one way we can hold governments to account for the benefit of future generations. In November 2022, we secured a win when the ACT Government announced that in 2023 they will introduce the right to a healthy environment into the ACT Human Rights Act.
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In 2004, the Australian Capital Territory became the first Australian jurisdiction to establish a Human Rights Act. At present, however, people have to take legal action in the complex and expensive Supreme Court, which is out of reach for most people. In 2022, the Human Rights Law Centre called on the Australian Capital Territory to remove these needless barriers from the Act to make it easier for people to uphold their human rights.
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The Human Rights Law Centre has developed an online resource that shows 101 examples of how Charters of Rights that exist in the ACT, Victoria and Queensland are making peoples lives better.
Read MoreWhistleblowers make our democracy stronger, but too often, people are afraid to come forward when they witness wrongdoing for fear of reprisal. The Human Rights Law Centre pushes for stronger whistleblower protections through advocacy and strategic litigation.
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The Human Rights Law Centre has run a competition calling on high school students to write an essay explaining how a Charter of Rights would benefit Australians. The competition aimed to find the best introduction to an Australian Charter of Human Rights.
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Everyone should be able to access quality education, regardless of their postcode or bank balance. People living in remote and rural areas, First Nations people and children from migrant backgrounds often lack equitable access to education. The Human Rights Law Centre co-hosted a webinar on the right to education with the UTS Centre for Social Justice & Inclusion in February 2022.
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Truth and honest public debate are vital during an election campaign. But experience in Australia and around the world shows that elections are precisely when some candidates and media platforms choose to spread disinformation for their own financial and political gain.
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Global Warning: the threat to climate defenders in Australia by the Human Rights Law Centre, Greenpeace Australia Pacific, and the Environmental Defenders Office, reveals how the unregulated political influence of the fossil fuel industry is driving political inaction on climate change and the repression of those calling for action.
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The Human Rights Law Centre continued to support the work of the family of Yorta Yorta woman Aunty Tanya Day, who died in police custody in Victoria in 2017. Aunty Tanya was arrested for being drunk in a public place after falling asleep on a train and died after hitting her head in a police cell. The Coroner found that the checks conducted on Aunty Tanya while she was in the police cell were inadequate and that police had failed to take proper care for her health and welfare.
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The 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.
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