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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.

Australia abandons our supporters in Afghanistan

3 July 2021 No Comments
Australia is helping military interpreters who helped out troops in Afghanistan. But we need to do more, more widely: there were hundreds, possibly thousands, of Afghanis employed through Australian-funded and run aid projects, as well other projects where we provided funding through the UN or other agencies. They too face retribution: we also have a responsibility to them, Dr Tony Murney writes.
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Parl committee wants human rights front and centre       

17 June 2021 No Comments
         
In what would be a revolutionary development, a parliamentary committee wants all Appropriation Bills – the legislation allowing the government, its departments and agencies to spend money – to be compatible with human rights, and to say so up front. The Human Rights Committee argues that government spending impacts either positively or negatively on Australians’ human rights, so people should be told up front what the ramifications will be. CLA welcomes the initiative, which should spread through all levels of government.
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Afghanistan: Australia cuts and runs – what about those left behind?

2 June 2021 No Comments

We must do much more for the Afghani people who worked with and helped Australia during our long deployment there, says Dr Tony Murney, who served several tours. Abandoning those who helped us would further destroy our international reputation, he says. Prime Minister Scott Morrison cannot simply walk away, leaving real people who provided real services to Australians during times of great stress and danger. Australians were once admired for courage and dependability…no longer. We should take responsibility for the consequences we have created.

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Reining in the ’national security’ secrecy claims in courts

29 April 2021 No Comments
Not very long ago, a secret prisoner was discovered quite by chance in the ACT jail (even the ACT Prisons/Justice Minister did not know he was there). The prisoner, given the pseudonym ‘Alan Johns’, was a victim of being tried in secret under “national security” legislation. The laws that enable that abuse of his rights, and the rights of all Australians to know what happens in the courts, is now under detailed scrutiny by the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, Grant Donaldson. Here is CLA’s submission (authored by VP Rajan Venkataraman) to the process, and the separate sub of CLA member Kathryn Kelly also.
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Mandatory C19 vaccination: ethical shot in the dark? 

13 March 2021 3 Comments

What are the drivers behind the Covid-a9 vaccinations, its priority delivery, the seeking of herd immunity…and whether the vaccine must be made mandatory? In a special cooperative project, CLA and its expert members helped a team of students work through the dilemmas to produce a thought-provoking paper.

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Masks inflame passionate response…’Covid is a hoax’

3 January 2021 No Comments

As a reminder that there are lots of diverse viewpoints about the dangers of Covid-19, here’s an excerpt from an email received by Civil Liberties Australia after we made a one-paragraph comment in the Sydney Morning Herald on face mask wearing during a virus pandemic. Civil liberties and human rights are always about the sometimes difficult weighing one person’s freedom with another person’s, or group’s, rights…frequently on the fulcrum of responsibility.

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Brewery party! But don’t ask ASIO to organise it

7 October 2020 No Comments

Longtime security shenanigans observer, Jack Waterford, says giving executive power to ASIO was a big mistake, and exposes the hypocrisy of its recent claim to be offended by critical comments in relation to its China briefings, which compromise our diplomatic efforts.

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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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