ALHR has provided a submission to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) consultation on LGBTQIA+ human rights in Australia’s development program.  Despite engagement with LGBTQIA+ rights internationally, Australia has not, to date, developed a formal LGBTQIA+ foreign policy strategy.  We therefore welcome the Federal Government’s intention to increase its support and advocacy for the human rights of LGBTQIA+ persons, including through the development of an LGBTQIA+ Human Rights Strategy (the Strategy) and a new Inclusion and Equality Fund (the IE Fund). The developm ..read more

Australian Lawyers for Human Rights (ALHR) is seeking expressions of interest from lawyers to Co-Convene our Western Australian activities and play a leading role within the Western Australia for a Human Rights Act Coalition (WA4HRA) About the roles The successful applicants will be lawyers or final year law students with a knowledge of and passion for international human rights law. ALHR WA Convenors manage ALHR’s advocacy on a wide range of human rights issues at the state level. This includes working in collaboration with ALHR’s national thematic subcommittees on areas of strategic priority ..read more

In an Australian first, an ACT Government Parliamentary Committee has recommended that the human right to a healthy environment be recognised under ACT law and protected within the Human Rights Act 2004 (ACT). The ACT Legislative Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety today released its final report into the Inquiry into Human Rights (Healthy Environment) Amendment Bill 2023. If adopted, the ACT will be the first jurisdiction in Australia to explicitly protect environmental human rights and comes less than a year after the United Nations General Assembly ad ..read more

ALHR made a submission to the ACT’s Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety (the Committee) providing feedback on the Human Rights (Healthy Environment) Amendment Bill 2023 (‘the Bill’). ALHR’s submission outlines our support for the articulation of the right to a healthy environment in the Bill, our significant concerns with the non-justiciability of that right as currently drafted, and broader comments on the need for meaningful consultation of certain groups and appropriate funding for the accessible complaints mechanism. For further information on the scope and context of t ..read more

South Australia is one step closer to a Human Rights Act, with the Social Development Committee of the South Australian Parliament committing to hold a parliamentary inquiry into how human rights across the State can be guaranteed and protected.  The announcement comes on Human Rights Day and exactly one year after a group of more than 150 organisations and experts endorsed a joint statement calling on the SA Government to inquire into a Human Rights Act for South Australia. A Human Rights Act would set certain rights in legislative stone, meaning the government would have to check its l ..read more

A major new report tabled yesterday by Commonwealth Attorney-General, the Hon Mark Dreyfus KC MP in Federal Parliament, calls for an overhaul of Australia’s Human Rights framework and a Federal Human Rights Act to better protect the rights of all Australians. Ms Kerry Weste, President, Australian Lawyers for Human Rights (ALHR), said, “We welcome the Australian Human Rights Commission’s (AHRC) Free and Equal Inquiry Report and its overarching finding that Australia can, and should, do better at protecting human rights.”  “Human rights are inalienable, universal – meaning they are for ..read more

ALHR commends the Federal Attorney-General, the Hon. Mark Dreyfus KC, on the establishment of a PJCHR Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights Inquiry to investigate Australia’s human rights framework, with a focus on whether the Federal Government should introduce a federal human rights Act.  For thirty years ALHR has called on Australia to comprehensively incorporate its international human rights law obligations into domestic legislation via a federal Human Rights Act and state-based Human Rights Acts. ALHR was a member of the Steering Committee of the Human Rights Act for Qu ..read more

The landmark High Court judgment, which ruled it is unlawful and unconstitutional for the Australian Government to detain people indefinitely in immigration detention, should mark the end of a brutal chapter in Australia’s history. Australian Lawyers for Human Rights (ALHR) NSW Co-Convenor, Ms Stephanie Lee said the decision is an historic judgment that corrects some two decades of injustice and should bolster the case for a federal Human Rights Act. “A majority of judges in our nation’s highest court found that, when there is no real prospect of a non-resident’s removal from Australia, keepin ..read more

On Friday 8 November ALHR collaborated with the University of Newcastle School of  Law Centre for Law and Social Justice and the Human Rights for NSW Alliance to host a School Student Forum on the Right to a Healthy Environment. More than 60 students from the Newcastle region came to together to talk about what the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment means to them, with help from facilitators including Associate Professor Amy Maguire, Newcastle School of Law and Justice and Legal Centre NSW, Annika Reynolds ALHR Co-Chair of Environment and Human ..read more

Leading human rights lawyers and disability justice experts are calling for an immediate end to indefinite detention laws in Australia that often see people with disabilities abused and victimised, their behaviour criminalised and often becoming victims of the criminal justice system rather than being managed through disability support services. The call follows the recent episode of Four Corners, Trapped,  which revealed claims of torture and mistreatment of people living with disabilities and mental illness who are locked up indefinitely by the state. According to reports, around Austra ..read more