Frequently asked questions
What is a Human Rights Act or Charter?
Australians overwhelmingly believe that we should be all treated fairly and equally – that who you are, where you’re from or what you look like shouldn’t determine your opportunities in life.
We should all be able to see a doctor regardless of our bank balance and all children should get a quality education regardless of their postcode. Unfortunately, powerful corporations and politicians don’t always respect the rights of individual people or communities. We need to create an Australian Human Rights Act or Charter to help level the playing field.
A Human Rights Act or Charter will ensure the decisions and actions of our governments are guided by the values of freedom, equality, compassion and dignity. It will help everyone from school children to new Australians understand the rights and freedoms that we all share and it will mean that if someone’s rights are violated they can take action to get justice.
So we’re asking people to stand up, speak up and get involved in making it a reality.
How will an Act or Charter work? What will it do?
An Australian Human Rights Act or Charter will do three key things:
Help prevent human rights violations from occurring because it will require governments and public servants to consider people’s human rights when creating new laws and policies as well as when delivering services – like aged care, Medicare, disability services, and so on.
Ensure that if someone’s human rights are violated, they can take action and get justice.
List all our rights and freedoms in one spot, so everyone from school kids to new Australians, can read it to learn what their rights and freedoms are and to understand the type of community we want to be.
In summary it will have a preventative effect on human rights violations, it will provide a powerful tool to challenge injustice, and will help give our community a better understanding of their human rights and freedoms.
What kind of rights would it protect?
We are seeking an Act or Charter that protects all of our human rights – everything from our right to healthcare, for children to get an education, for people to have the freedom to come together and speak out on the issues that they care strongly about.
What form would the Act or Charter take, what’s the model?
That’s exactly the conversation we’re trying to kick-start, because this would be an Australian Human Rights Act or Charter – something we create to articulate who we want to be as a nation and to protect in our laws the values we all share like fairness, respect and compassion. So it’s going to be very important to get community input on these issues.
At the end of the day, there are different ways to get it done, but two key points we’d make are:
The Act or Charter should protect everyone’s human rights – politicians might like to pick and choose which rights they want to respect, but that’s not how it works – we need to treat everyone with respect.
And secondly, it must be enforceable – that is, people need the power, they need the ability to take action if their rights are violated.
It would be fantastic to have all of our human rights protected in our Constitution, but even without a referendum, the Australian Parliament can still introduce a Human Rights Act or Charter at any time and we’d be very happy to have what’s called a ‘legislative model’.
How likely is that given the political landscape?
This is an important reform and we’re confident we can achieve it. At a time when here and around the world, the very concept of human rights – that we should all treat each other with compassion and respect – can no longer be taken for granted, these are the conversations we need to be having.
Various political parties and politicians have differing levels of support for an Act or Charter. There’s a lot of potential to build on that support, because at the end of the day human rights are above politics – it shouldn’t matter if you’re left wing or right wing, human rights are about the essential rights and freedoms that we should all benefit from and that we should all respect.
So the task at hand is to have the conversations, to build the momentum in the community and take that message to Canberra.
How can I get involved?
We’re bringing together people from across Australia from different backgrounds and with diverse interests – people who, despite their different opinions or different political leanings, are all united in a belief that the world is a better place when we all treat each other with respect.
We’ve got a range of digital activities planned and will be unveiling the text of our Charter of Human Rights later in the year. With the COVID health crisis currently preventing community meetings, the best thing you can do right now is to sign up to our mailing list to stay informed or help us build the campaign by making a donation today.
Thanks!