Promoting people's rights and civil liberties. It is non-party political and independent of other organisations.
Category: <span>Human Rights</span>

Category: Human Rights

CLA’s Human Rights Campaign

FOR THREE YEARS, CLA has been lobbying for a new Human Rights Act (HRA) for Australia.

We also want to improve the HRA in the ACT, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2024, and the Acts in Victoria and Queensland.

Here are background documents which outline the core campaign facts.

Swastika is an image, misuse is the problem

Jurisdictions throughout Australia are hell-bent on banning symbols they don’t like, when it is way the symbol or sign is used rather than the image itself that is the problem. CLA made this point in a submission to a parliamentary process in the ACT, pointing out that there are thousands of signs, symbols, gestures, chants that could – and do, at times – give offence when misused.

What are human rights? Where from? Why?

‘Human rights’ is a simple concept: the rights let you do what you reasonably want to do…without preventing someone else doing what they want to do. But they can get bound up in formal ‘legalese’. Here, CLA explains our understanding of what ‘human rights’ means as applied to Australia, and why we should have a national, or federal, Human Rights Act or bill of rights like NZ, Canada, the UK and the USA.

Tas Police: secret, illegal keepers of the dark arts

Recent revelations of secret recordings of lawyers and their clients at Risdon Prison by Tasmanian Police over two months raised major alarm bells. The Commonwealth Ombudsman has been consistently calling out TasPol for its recording devices and surveillance warrant failures for years. TasPol's “compliance culture” is lacking, the Ombudsman says. In other words, TasPol does not obey the law. SPECIAL ANALYSIS reveals how extensive the TasPol problem is: nothing less than a full inquiry into TasPol will get to the root causes of its problems.

Warrants: how Tas compares; why reform needed

Police can self-authorise some warrants, or get a magistrate or judge to issue others. But whatever method is mandated, warrants are frequently incorrectly issued in Australia on false, dodgy or incomplete information containing wrong details and not meeting legal requirements, or by unauthorised people. The Commonwealth monitors warrant processes, and its Ombudsman has singled out one state in particular, Tasmania, for compliance and culture criticism over the past few years

NSW expands unexplained wealth seizures using secret surveillance

Election in the offing: law ’n order pollies get desperate. Both major parties want new ‘frighten the citizens laws’, reducing people’s rights, increasing secret surveillance, giving police yet more powers. Pollies pretend the ill-thought-through laws will reduce crime. More likely crime will increase. Stand by for other ghastly laws from the skeleton hands of Premier Perrottet and Pals of the NSW parliamentary ghost train, where scare the punters trumps care for the citizens.

Why Oz needs HR protection here and now

Throughout the world, people are losing the human rights protection they thought they had. The loss of a layer of personal protection is happening at the stroke of the pen of judges, presidents and ministers. In Australia, we don’t have a layer to lose: that’s why it’s even more urgent fo the new government, the Greens and Independents to require the Albanese government to bring in a national Human Rights Act, much sooner than later.

Labor govt must deliver human rights protections

In this excellent article, social justice journalist Paul Gregoire outlines – with the help of CLA’s CEO Bill Rowlings – how bringing in a Human Rights Act to accompany a new National Integrity Commission will help complete Australia’s ethical infrastructure. Doing so would also go a long way towards fulfilling PM Albanese’s commitment on election night to ‘looking after the disadvantaged and vulnerable’ and to ‘shard values of fairness’.

New Labor govt: what chance a Human Rights Act?

The federal Labor Party’s election platform for 2022 promises a ‘Review of the Human Rights Framework’ for Australia.The new government has also promised to create an international Human Rights Ambassador. CLA is campaigning for a review in the first 100 days, alongside developing a National Integrity Commission. In 2009 the Brennan Inquiryundertook had the biggest consultation in Australia’s history on the subject of human rights, with an overwhelming positive response by Australians. Now is time to introduce a Human Rights Act, or Bill of Rights, for Australia. Read the latest news.

Better Rights – Report Soon

‘No Rights Without Remedies’? CLA’s Human Rights Acts campaign is gathering momentum as we await a report after public submissions and hearings before the ACT Legislative Assembly.

Medical treatment is child abuse, says Texas

The chair of Republican Governors of the USA, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, has ordered his Family and Protective Services Department to investigate parents who get medical treatment for their children, and told other state agencies to pry into health facilities who provide the services. His target: children and their parents facing gender identity health issues. The fascist order is a foretaste of what a future American society might look like if an extremist is elected President in 2024.


For three years, CLA has been working to promote a new Human Rights Act for Australia.
Here, you can read all about it.

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