It’s easy for many of us living in a country like Australia to take our human rights for granted. For most of us, most of the time, Australia is a great place to live.
Read MoreAs we reach the end of 2020, four individuals – Bernard Collaery, Witness K, David McBride and Richard Boyle – are being prosecuted by our government. These whistleblowers spoke up in the public interest, and now face the very real prospect of jail time. If we want to live in a transparent, accountable democracy, that should trouble us all.
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As we reach the end of 2020, four individuals – Bernard Collaery, Witness K, David McBride and Richard Boyle – are being prosecuted by our government. These whistleblowers spoke up in the public interest, and now face the very real prospect of jail time.
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Laws currently being considered by the Tasmanian government would allow the practice of routine strip-searching of kids to continue. If it’s the government’s intention to enact laws that protect kids, rather than cause them more harm, this opportunity to finally get the law right shouldn’t be squandered.
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It’s clear there have been serious failures in Victoria’s hotel quarantine program and that infection control procedures must improve to protect the community. But what’s not been discussed enough is how quarantine needs to improve for the safety and welfare of the people being detained.
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Kids should not be in prisons, and they definitely should not be in prisons right now.
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Last 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.
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Some 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.
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Two 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.
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This month marked two important anniversaries for our region, but one is likely to go largely unmentioned in Australia.
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The 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.
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Backbencher 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.
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Social 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.
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Today 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.
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Prisons 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?"
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This 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.
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While 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.
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The 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.
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The 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.
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Our justice system is supposed to represent the best of us: principled, fair, equal and incorruptible. Underpinned by centuries-old common values that bind and protect us all. But 2018 has exposed a chasm between what is officially said, and what is officially done.
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We need a game changer - It’s time to put power into the hands of the people, to give us the tools to hold our governments to account, writes Lee Carnie.
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The public vote on marriage equality for LGBTIQ Australians was a bruising time. This anniversary comes with mixed feelings, with wounds that have only just begun to heal for some, and many more psychological scars may last a lifetime.
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Over the past five years we have seen children on Nauru go from being playful and curious little kids to listless, voiceless, hopeless bodies on a mattress, unable to eat or speak. We’ve seen their spirits slowly dissolve and the brightness slowly fade from their eyes.
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A major report confirms that religious conversion therapy and related practices are pervasive in many faith communities in Australia and causing real harm to lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people.
Preventing Harm, Promoting Justice: Responding to LGBT conversion therapy in Australia calls for action by governments, the health sector and religious communities to better respond to people experiencing conflict between their gender identity or sexual orientation and their beliefs.
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For too many of us in the LGBTIQ community, we know what it feels like to be mistreated because of who we are or who we love.
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It’s 2018 and women’s voices are still ridiculed, disregarded, dismissed and put down. But there’s no doubting that our voices are out there, loud and clear and they are increasingly more difficult to ignore. Our voices are out there and this is a good thing. But not all women’s voices are heard.
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On Friday, the people of Ireland will vote on whether a divisive constitutional ban on abortion should end. Ireland's abortion laws are some of the most harsh and archaic in the world – only since 2013 have abortions to save a woman's life been legal.
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Most Australians probably think that now we have marriage equality, LGBTI people's rights are fully respected. Unfortunately, that's not the case.
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For me and millions of other mums around Australia, today will be a special day. I'll wake to some slightly burnt toast, some slightly cold tea, a jar of jam from the school stall and probably a couple of earnest home-made Mother's Day cards, delivered to me in bed with a smile from my two beautiful boys.
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Rana Plaza is often described as the garment industry’s “worst industrial accident”, but the industry practices that led to it were far from accidental writes Keren Adams.
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We need to rethink a system that is funnelling people into harmful prisons as the default response, writes Shahleena Musk.
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How we treat people in prison matters not just because most will be released back into the community, but because we are all diminished the moment we start picking and choosing who is deserving of dignity, writes Ruth Barson.
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It was not Bob Brown’s first arrest, but it’s probably the one he’ll remember best.
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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.
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Australians 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?
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The 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.
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How 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.
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Over 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.
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Many 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.
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Men are dying, women have been sexually assaulted and children traumatised on Manus and Nauru. This can’t continue writes Daniel Webb.
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