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Rights and Freedoms15 May 2017Webpage
OPCAT Consultation Page
Learn how Australia ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT). -
Rights and Freedoms15 March 2017Speech
The lion and the lamb: freedom of religion in multicultural Australia
The lion and the lamb: freedom of religion in multicultural Australia Affinity Intercultural Foundation: Lunchtime Lecture Series CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY Introduction Acknowledgements Gadigal people of the Eora nation; Ahmet Polat. The Hon Ray Williams MP (NSW Minister for Multiculturalism, and Minister for Disability Services) Dr Elizabeth Coombs, Acting NSW Privacy Commissioner Australia is… -
Rights and Freedoms24 February 2017Publication
Missing out: The business case for customer diversity (2017)
The Australian Human Rights Commission is very pleased to launch Missing out: The business case for customer diversity in partnership with Deloitte Australia. -
Rights and Freedoms13 February 2017Opinion piece
OPCAT could revolutionise Australia's treatment of detainees
The federal government has announced it will ratify and implement the OPCAT treaty . Few people will have heard of OPCAT (Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture). It creates no new legal rights. Yet it could be the single most positive step this decade in improving conditions in all Australian places of detention. OPCAT will enhance how independent bodies inspect places of… -
Rights and Freedoms30 November 2016Speech
Access and equity: human rights in practice
Speech to SydWest Multicultural Services AGM Edward Santow – speaking notes – CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY Acknowledgements: the traditional Aboriginal owners of the land, the Darug people Dr Chandrika Subramaniyan (Chair, SydWest Multicultural Services) Elfa Moraitakis (CEO, SydWest) Introduction Australia is a wonderful country: warm, welcoming, open. It’s the country that my father’s father… -
Rights and Freedoms29 November 2016Speech
Human rights in action: the role of social workers in detention
Speech to Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) Queensland State Social Work Conference University of Queensland, St Lucia Campus – Lecture Theatre Room 234, Parnell Building Check against delivery Acknowledgements: the traditional Aboriginal owners of the land, the Turrbal and Jagera people Australian Association of Social Workers and Professor Karen Healy AM (National President) … -
Rights and Freedoms23 November 2016Opinion piece
Striking the right balance on free speech
Discover how a former Human Rights Commissioner was asked whether the Racial Discrimination Act impinges on freedom of expression under international law. -
Rights and Freedoms18 November 2016Speech
National Faith and Civil Marriage Equality Forum
National Faith and Civil Marriage Equality Forum Hosted by Australians 4 Equality Main Committee Room, Parliament House, Canberra Edward Santow, Human Rights Commissioner, Australian Human Rights Commission Check against Delivery Introduction My late father used to talk about our family’s motley religious heritage. Dad’s mother was Anglican, his step-mother was a Quaker and his father, my -
Rights and Freedoms11 October 2016Speech
Peering through human rights-tinted glasses
Annual Lecture, Castan Centre for Human Rights Law. Given at the State Library of Victoria on 7 October 2016. This year, we celebrate (or mourn, according to your perspective) the 60th anniversary of the first computer to defeat a human in chess. It occurred, predictably enough, in Los Alomos, and the human was a novice. Over the next 30 years, the best humans easily saw off the best… -
Rights and Freedoms26 September 2016Speech
Human rights and the overreach of executive discretion: citizenship, asylum seekers and whistleblowers
HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE OVERREACH OF EXECUTIVE DISCRETION: CITIZENSHIP, ASYLUM SEEKERS AND WHISTLEBLOWERS GILLIAN TRIGGS [*] (Annual Tony Blackshield Lecture delivered at Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University, 5 November 2015) I 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… -
Rights and Freedoms19 August 2016Speech
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 most influential figures in Australian legal education over the last 50 years. I have two… -
Rights and Freedoms6 June 2016Speech
Jessie Street Trust Annual Lunch 2016
Jessie Street Trust Annual Lunch - I am pleased to join you today to honour the work and annual birthday of Jessie Mary Grey Lillingston Street, a remarkable, and very modern Australian woman. Well before the First World War, she was an advocate for many of the social issues we care about today; equality for women, constitutional recognition of indigenous Australians, world peace and for… -
Rights and Freedoms31 May 2016Speech
Female Genital Mutilation Conference
Check against delivery Female Genital Mutilation Conference A Human Rights Perspective I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and their elders past and present. May I welcome each of you to the Australian Human Rights Commission. Congratulations to the organizers, the Australian Paediatric Surveillance Unit and NO FGM, and especially… -
Rights and Freedoms11 May 2016Speech
Human rights across the Tasman: a widening gulf
I am honoured to have been invited to give this lecture at the Law School of the University of Canterbury, funded by the generosity of the Sir Eric Hotung Fellowship. While I had settled the subject matter of this lecture, I thought it would be helpful to know what other Hotung Fellows had discussed in previous years. I looked at last year’s lecture and was pleased to see that Professor… -
Rights and Freedoms11 March 2016Webpage
Guides
Federal Discrimination Law (updated 2016) Human Rights Explained fact sheets (last updated 2009) -
Rights and Freedoms2 March 2016Speech
Religion, Law and Social Stability
Speech: ‘Religion, Law and Social Stability’ by Tim Wilson Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner 22nd Annual International Law and Religion Symposium, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA -
Rights and Freedoms8 February 2016Opinion piece
Another 'aberration' shows that 18C is the problem and must be changed
State and federal governments should reform laws that make offensive acts unlawful and refocus them on protecting free speech and stopping workplace and public harassment. This week a news story broke about a complaint made under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act by a Queensland University of Technology employee. Section 18C makes it unlawful to "offend, insult, humiliate or… -
Rights and Freedoms3 February 2016Opinion piece
Logic says Valizadeh shouldn't get a visa
Daryush "Roosh" Valizadeh’s freedom of speech won’t be suppressed if the Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, denies him a visa. In the past few days there have been increasing calls on the Federal Government to block so-called ‘neo-masculinist’ Valizadeh from entering Australia. Outraged politicians have called for him to be denied a visa. Online petitions have been set up to “let the NSW… -
Rights and Freedoms12 November 2015Speech
Introduction of the Religious Freedom Roundtable
Thank you. Thank you to the Attorney-General for his presence this morning. I know he has to run because he has commitments in Canberra, but I greatly appreciate his efforts to come this morning to support the discussions we are about to have. I’d also like to thank the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Professor Gillian Triggs, who will be present for part of this… -
Rights and Freedoms6 November 2015Opinion piece
Finding a balance for freedom of religion
Those of different beliefs need to be active in reshaping the conversation about religious freedom if it is to be preserved in law. Yesterday, the Australian Human Rights Commission hosted the first of many religious freedom round tables. These round tables have resulted from a year-long consultation identifying that there are tensions surrounding the way religion is treated in culture and…