Page 1499 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 March 2012
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That this bill be agreed to in principle.
Today I am honoured to introduce groundbreaking human rights legislation into the Assembly. This bill, the Human Rights Amendment Bill 2012, introduces the right to education into the Human Rights Act—a right that we know is highly valued in our community.
This bill reflects the government’s responses to the five-year review of the Human Rights Act and the Australian Capital Territory economic, social and cultural rights research project report. It also gives effect to the government’s support for many of the carefully considered recommendations in both documents.
Before I speak to the bill, I would again like to express my thanks to all of those involved in preparing the high quality reports that inform these amendments.
The five-year review was positive about the first five years of operation of the Human Rights Act, noting that the act “has operated in subtle ways to enhance the standing of human rights in the ACT”. The review made 30 recommendations, intended to “assist the process of strengthening the operation of the Human Rights Act to enhance the operation of the Human Rights Act as a dialogue model”. The government fully supports three of those recommendations and supports in part or in principle another 13.
The majority of the agreed recommendations are of a general, administrative nature. These recommendations will inform and shape the policies and operations of public authorities, but it was not considered necessary or appropriate to legislate for these in this bill, given their administrative nature.
The major substantive change to the Human Rights Act deriving from recommendation 4 of the five-year review is that the act will be amended to omit the word “Territory” from section 28(1). Section 28(1) will now read: “Human rights may be subject only to reasonable limits set by laws that can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
This means that the human rights in the act may potentially be limited by the operation of not only laws passed by the Assembly but also any relevant common law and federal and international laws applicable to the territory, if that limitation can be justified after an analysis of all the relevant factors. As a result, this provision will be more analogous to and consistent with similar limitation provisions in the Victorian Charter of Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006.
The second major amendment in the Human Rights Amendment Bill 2012 arises out of the government’s response to the ACT economic, social and cultural rights research project report. This amendment is the inclusion of the right to education, limited to the two immediately realisable aspects we have identified in the bill.
In making this amendment, the ACT will again lead the way on human rights in Australia, being the first and only Australian jurisdiction to recognise an economic,
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