Page 1502 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 March 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Part 5A, which imposes obligations on public authorities to act consistently with human rights and provides a power to take action, will not apply to the right to education at this point in time. This means that individuals will be not be entitled to start legal proceedings in the Supreme Court if they believe that a public authority has acted inconsistently with their rights.
The rationale for this distinction and the absence of obligations on public authorities has been arrived at after much deliberation and broad consultation across the community. The government’s view is that to impose obligations on public authorities at this stage would not allow adequate opportunity for public authorities to fully understand the scope of the right and its implications, or plan for any policy or budgetary changes which may be required.
ACT government agencies work hard to stay abreast of developments in best practice, improve service delivery and meet the needs of the Canberra community. However, in the interests of consistency in service delivery and coherent policy development, it is sometimes the case, as it is here, that to rush the imposition of significant new obligations for public authorities could compromise current operations and long-term resource allocation plans of those authorities. It also reduces the prospects of non-compliance with the reform by allowing more time for officials to become familiar with the right.
For this same reason, in relation to significantly affecting current operations and long-term resource allocation, the international law doctrine of progressive realisation will not apply to the right to education at this time. In order to establish and foster the right to education within the ACT, all relevant public officials at every level and in every directorate must be appropriately informed and trained about the implications of the new right.
The human rights unit is in the process of developing an updated plain English toolkit for public authorities aimed at providing information about the Human Rights Act across the territory government. This toolkit will be a publicly available document, so all ACT residents can access information about their rights.
A review of the operation of the right to education and other reforms will be conducted after two years of its operation. The review will assess the operational impact of the reforms and determine the next steps forward to continue to foster the human rights culture within the territory. This review will consider not only the operation of the right to education, but also whether it would be appropriate to include further rights.
Given our progress since the Human Rights Act was first introduced in 2004, we can be confident that the hard work of the territory’s officials, the passion of our community sector and academics and the values of Canberrans will further protect our inherent human rights.
There were people who criticised the government’s decision to introduce the first Human Rights Act in 2004 and predicted the sky would fall in. Some of our
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video