Ms O’CONNOR – Mr President, I warmly thank the member for Nelson for bringing this motion forward again to the Council’s attention or a very similarly worded motion, but also for being a champion for human rights and consistent on that.
There might not be an excuse for government delay on working through and enacting a human rights act for Tasmania but there are reasons that are reasonably easy to understand. A human rights act or human rights frameworks are a check or a curb on the excesses of governments and corporations. That is why, invariably, conservative governments are resistant to enacting human rights legislation. We have also seen it recently at a federal level where federal Labor had made a clear statement of principle in support of a human rights act for Australia and then just forgot about it.
The thing about political capital, of course, is that it is there to be spent. We have seen no movement on a federal human rights act in this term of the Albanese government. Tasmania and Australia do not have human rights acts. If you look around the world, Australia joins countries like Malaysia and Brunei in not having any human rights act in place. Places like Belize, Ghana, India, Kenya, Bhutan, Cyprus, Fiji, Singapore, New Zealand, the United States and Trinidad and Tobago all either have a human rights charter embedded in their constitutions or they have a standalone act. Here we are, in Australia and in Tasmania, with the rights of our citizens inadequately protected.
I am not going to speak for too long on this very good motion, but offer a brief and potted history of how we got here. The excellent Labor attorney-general, Judy Jackson, in 2006 first asked the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute to have a look at how the fundamental rights which we as Tasmanians hold to be significant and inalienable might be further enhanced and legally secured. Subsequent to that we had the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute report in 2007, which found that our current human rights protection back in 2007 and, arguably not much better today, is partial, disconnected and inaccessible, and it made a strong recommendation for the introduction of a human rights act for Tasmania.
During the Labor-Green government, then premier and attorney-general Lara Giddings worked with Greens leader Nick McKim on further consultation on the need for a human rights act. Submissions were called for and of the 111 submissions, 75 came back in support of human rights legislation. In 2016, the Tasmanian Human Rights Act Campaign launched a petition calling for the model of human rights legislation recommended by the TLRI to be implemented in the next term of the parliament. In 2018, two of the parties contesting the election, the Tasmanian Labor Party and the Greens, committed to progressing a human rights act in the 2018‑22 parliamentary term. We advocated where we could, but not long after that, Labor lost its appetite for working through a Tasmanian human rights act.
In 2021 the Greens took this policy, a human rights act for Tasmania, as we have in previous elections, to the people. The Tasmanian Human Rights Act Campaign, a number of members of which are still very active in this space, and I hope they rev up the campaign again, set out a few key benefits of having a Tasmanian human rights act. At the individual level, Tasmanians will have legally enforceable rights. At the community level, the same basic guarantees will be available to all sections of society, regardless of where you live or what you earn. At the political level, changes to legislation or policy will have to be demonstrated to be compliant with human rights. At the organisational level, the Tasmanian government and organisations providing services on its behalf are obliged to act in a way consistent with human rights.
Our history here is replete with tragic and sorry examples of governments wilfully or in ignorance enacting policies or undertakings that breach the human rights of people. This act would be for the benefit of people, not corporations. I will just close with those elements that are in the UN declaration that were put forward by the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute as the rights that this parliament should be enacting protections for:
The right to life; the protection of the family and children; the right to liberty and security of the person; the right to humane treatment when detained; the right to a fair hearing; the right of children to special treatment in the criminal justice process; the right to compensation for wrongful conviction; the right not to be tried or punished for conduct that was not a criminal offence when it was engaged in; the right not to be imprisoned for a contractual debt; the right to privacy and reputation; freedom of movement; freedom of conscience, thought, religion and belief; freedom of expression; freedom of association and peaceful assembly and the right to form and join trade unions; the right to vote and to participate in public life; the right to self-determination; the right to recognition as a person before the law; the right to equality before the law and to equal protection of the law; freedom from discrimination; the right of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities to enjoy their own culture; the right of indigenous Tasmanians to maintain their distinctive identity, culture, kinship ties and spiritual, material and economic relationship with the land; the right not to be subject to torture, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment; freedom from slavery and forced work; the right to work and just conditions of work; the right of children not to be exploited economically or socially; the right to adequate food, clothing and housing; the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; the right to education; the right not to be deprived of property, except on just terms; the right to a safe environment and to the protection of the environment from pollution and ecological degradation; and freedom from genocide.
They are all rights that human beings are entitled to expect being upheld. They are rights that government should be working to protect and uphold. It is the work of parliament to see this legislation through. First, as the motion calls for, the Tasmanian government should start this work and commence drafting a bill in line with the 2007 report and this year’s update and commit to introducing it in this term of the parliament. I hope they do, but if they do not, the pressure and the will of civil society here to see human rights protected by statute in this state will not go away. There will be a human rights act for Tasmania, whether it is in this term of the parliament or the next. There will be, and we will join the rest of the evolved world that has these rights protected. Hopefully by then, Australia will join the club of countries that has made a commitment to protect the human rights of its citizens.
