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Children's Rights

Children’s rights to safety and to a holistic education

Good morning everyone and thank you Katharine O’Donnell, ANZELA National President, for inviting me to be part of what I hear has been a stimulating event to date and to present the Dr Ann Shorten Memorial Lecture. I too would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we...

Category, Speech
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice

Key Forum on Education, Garma Festival

Garma Festival 2017 June Oscar Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Australian Human Rights Commission Key Forum on Education Friday 4 August 2017 Acknowledgements and Intro [Introduction in Bunuba] Yaningi warangira ngindaji yuwa muwayi ingirranggu, Yolngu yani u...

Category, Speech
Disability Rights

Hanson's comments remind us we still have a long way to go

As Disability Discrimination Commissioner, it is my job to promote and protect the rights of people with disability. So when a person who has been elected to represent the concerns and aspirations of the Australian people uses the floor of Parliament to suggest that students with disability should...

Category, Opinion
Disability Rights

The NDIS: delivering results, delivering equality and even delivering your coffee

Getting a morning coffee on the way to work is a ritual many of us take for granted.   Not Jeremy, who is a young man with a communication disability.  The thought of not only being able to order coffee, but run a business, was a pipe dream.  Until the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)...

Category, Opinion
Rights and Freedoms

Tony Blackshield Lecture

HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE OVERREACH OF EXECUTIVE DISCRETION: CITIZENSHIP, ASYLUM SEEKERS AND WHISTLEBLOWERS It is a special pleasure for me to speak in honour of Professor Blackshield, who is a long time colleague of mine in the law. He is a constitutional law scholar of the highest order and one of the...

Category, Speech
LGBTIQ+

I want to hold your hand: LGBTI people have some surprisingly modest aspirations

Visibility remains one of the greatest challenges in tackling the legacy of state-sanctioned discrimination against people on the basis of their sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex status. In the past 30 years we’ve made great strides in ensuring people are treated equally before the law...

Category, Opinion
Race Discrimination

Forty years of the Racial Discrimination Act

In October 1975, at a ceremony for the proclamation of the Racial Discrimination Act, then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam described the legislation as ‘a historic measure’, which aimed to ‘entrench new attitudes of tolerance and understanding in the hearts and minds of the people’.(1) The Act was...

Category, Opinion
Children's Rights

Children the victims of AMF’s anti-gay marriage advertisement

THE running of the Australian Marriage Forum (AMF) advertisement on television last weekend to coincide with the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade can only be described as pointless and cruel. This anti-same sex marriage message deliberately seeks to undermine the thousands of healthy gay...

Category, Opinion
Children's Rights

Children as Citizens Book Launch

Megan MitchellNational Children’s Commissioner Children as Citizens Book LaunchUniversity of South Australia8 August 2014 Check Against Delivery Introduction Hello everyone and thank you for having me here. Thank you, Dr Dobson, for the kind introduction. Thank you in particular to Professor Pauline...

Category, Speech

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