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Legal

Law Seminar 2008: The Importance of Australia’s engagement with International Human Rights Law: coming in from the cold? by Gillian Triggs

While Australia may have come in from the cold, the wind has been taken from my sails. The typical role of an international lawyer over the last few years, whether in Australia or in the UK, Europe and North America has been to berate their respective government ministers with numerous failings and to list the necessary reforms to policy. In Australia’s case these have been to persuade the Commonwealth government to:

Rights and Freedoms

Launch of Rights of Passage: Dr Sev Ozdowski (2005)

I would like to welcome everybody to the launch of Rights of Passage: A Dialogue with Young Australians about Human Rights. I thank you all for coming.

Rights and Freedoms

Association of Childrens Welfare Agencies Conference

I am delighted to be invited to speak today at the Biennial Conference of the Association of Childrens Welfare Agencies, in association with partner organisations dedicated to the wellbeing of children.

Commission – General

20 Years of Mandatory Immigration Detention: the imperative for community-based arrangements for those who seek Australia’s protection

Thank you for your kind introduction. I wish to start today by acknowledging the Kaurna People of the Adelaide Plains, the traditional owners of the land on which we are meeting. On behalf of the Australian Human Rights Commission, I pay my respects to their elders past and present.

Commission – General

President speeches: Speech at Annual UNAA Day Dinner

I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Kaurna people, and pay my respects to their elders past and present.

Commission – General

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The topic for discussion is the role of human rights in good governance. Along the way I will touch on HREOC’s perceptions of cultural change at DIMA, legal roadblocks to cultural change, and the importance of human rights principles in the law and policy making process.

Commission – General

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Set against the wreckage and the unthinkable horror of the Second World War, the Declaration was something of a phoenix rising from the ashes, a document which sought to rekindle a human dignity which had been gravely debased in the preceding ten years.

Rights and Freedoms

Speeches on Human Rights Issues

Speeches on Human Rights Issues [ Year: 2011 : 2009 : 2008 : 2007 : 2006 : 2005 : 2004 : 2003 : 2002 : 2001 : 2000 : 1999 : 1998 : 1997 : 1996 ] For more recent speeches: see the speeches of the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission On 12 July 2009, the President took on the additional...

Race Discrimination

Speech: Indigenous Issues in the Durban Review (2009)

In September 2001, after a gap of 18 years the United Nations finally held the third World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice

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I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of Cairns, the land where we meet today, and to pay my respects to their elders. I would also like to thank the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists and Professor Ernest Hunter for organising this event and inviting me to open this very important conference.

Sex Discrimination

Launch of Set the Standard

Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Kate Jenkins launches “Set the Standard” report aims to improve safety and respect in Australian parliamentary workplaces.

Disability Rights

World Mental Health Day Address

Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today, World Mental Health Day. I am very pleased that World Mental Health Day this year is dedicated to the theme Human Rights and Mental Health. This theme recognises that mental health issues are human rights issues - a view argued strongly and consistently by our Human Rights Commission for many years.

Commission – General

A Revitalised National Human Rights Framework for Australia

Marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Fraser Oration Emeritus Professor Rosalind Croucher AM FAAL FRSA FACLM(Hon) Introduction Vice-Chancellor, Duncan Maskell, Dean Matthew Harding, Mrs Tamie Fraser and the Fraser family, Melbourne Law School staff, distinguished...

Disability Rights

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Acknowledgment of where we stand and where we are is, it seems to me, an essential precondition to good decisions about where we want to go, and how we might get there.

Disability Rights

NOT HAPPY JAN : Speech for Epilepsy Action AGM

Thank you for the chance to speak with you at your AGM today. AGMs are important formal processes in the corporate life of an organisation. But they also provide an opportunity to reflect on what the organisation has achieved over the last twelve months, and to look into the future at the challenges ahead. You - as members, directors, staff and supporters of Epilepsy Action - know the organisation much better than I do. So I'm not going to attempt a review of your past, or polish up my crystal ball for some future gazing.