The Human Rights Law Centre have made a range of recommendations about legislative reform, drawing from our extensive experience of working with health experts and law-makers across Australia, including in Western Australia, on abortion law reform.
Read MoreJoint submission from the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency and the Human Rights Law Centre on the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Remote Engagement Program) Bill 2021.
Read MoreThe submission, made to separate inquiries by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, highlights a number of deep flaws and serious consequences that would flow if the Religious Discrimination Bill was passed.
Read MoreA submission to the Independent Review into Commonwealth Parliamentary Workplaces (Review).
Read MoreThe Australian Government must take action to provide a decent and dignified standard of living to people who are forced to turn to our social safety net in times of need, the Human Rights Law Centre has told a Senate committee inquiry into the proposed increase to Jobseeker and other support payments of just $3.57 per day.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre - along with the Asian Australian Alliance, Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Get Up!, the Anti Defamation Commission and the Victorian Trades Hall Council - have made a joint supplementary submission to Victorian Government’s Inquiry into Anti-Vilification Protections.
Read MoreToday the Human Rights Law Centre – along with the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Get Up!, the Anti Defamation Commission and the Victorian Trades Hall Council – have made a joint submission to the Victorian Government’s Inquiry into Anti-Vilification Protections on how to enact best practice anti-vilification laws to stop hate in its tracks.
Read the submission, Stopping hate in its tracks.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre’s submission on the Second Exposure Draft of the Religious Discrimination Bill 2019 argues that the bill fails to strike the right balance between freedom of religion, and rights to equal treatment, access to healthcare and non-discrimination on the basis of a range of other protected attributes.
Read MoreThe exposure draft of the Religious Discrimination Bill 2019 (Cth) (the Bill), and associated amendments, seeks to protect Australians from discrimination on the ground of their religious belief or activity, as well as on the ground of not holding a religious belief or engaging in a religious activity.
This is welcome. Australian discrimination laws do not adequately protect people of faith from discrimination. People of faith should have legal protection from discrimination on the basis of their religion and other people should be free from having the religious beliefs of others imposed on them.
However, in seeking to achieve this, the Bill goes too far and fails to strike a fair balance between freedom of religion and the rights of other people. In a range of the circumstances the Bill licenses discrimination against other groups and includes provisions which are unorthodox and unprecedented in federal and Australian anti-discrimination law. The Bill should not be introduced to Parliament in its current form.
Read the Human Rights Law Centre’s submission on the Religious Discrimination Bill.
Read MoreA good government would ensure that every person has the means to buy nourishing food, keep warm on a cold night, sleep in a safe and secure home and pay for school excursions for their kids. Raising the rate of social security payments to a level that allows people to live, rather than scrap to “survive”, is a critical step to achieving that goal.
Download the submission here (September 2019)
Read MoreThe Federal Government is currently considering amendments to the racial vilification protections contained in the Racial Discrimination. An Exposure Draft has been released and the Government invited submissions on the proposed changes by 30 April 2014.
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