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It is now 12 months since the introduction of WorkChoices radically restructured Australia’s industrial relations system.  Today, I propose to reflect on the implications of WorkChoices for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) and to outline reforms HREOC believes are necessary to safeguard fairness and equality in the workplace.  

This Representative Complaints workshop aims to develop a document on representative complaints to be used by the DDA Legal Advocacy Services, other legal services and other representatives and advocates in making representative complaints and to assist them in if the representative complaints procedure is appropriate in any particular case.

In the contemporary world, and particularly amongst developed economies, many of us believed that the culture of civil liberties, freedoms and non-discrimination are reasonably well established and these precepts have clear links to innovation, creativity and the broader concepts of economic productivity and a well functioning civil society. Indeed, I believe that many of us had come to accept…

I also want to thank and congratulate the organisers of today's workshop, in particular Dr Gerard Goggin from the University of Sydney , Dr Chris Newell from the University of Tasmania and Philip French from the Disability Studies and Research Institute.

Amongst all this expertise, it is fair to ask why is the President of the national human rights commission – and particularly a President who has only fairly recently commenced in this role - here presenting the keynote speech to such a conference?

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.

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and to pay my respects to their elders both past and present.

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…

It's great to be here today. I can't think of a better time to be taking stock of developments in human rights law and policy in Australia, or a better place to be doing this than Victoria. As a Sydney-sider I have to admit I haven't always been fully appreciative of the number plates down here, which proclaim: ‘Victoria: The Place to Be!’ But there's no doubt that Victoria is the…