I now offer my assessment of Australia s human rights performance over the past five years and of the human rights challenges we face over the next few. My assessment must be based in large part on the experiences and impressions of my term as Human Rights Commissioner and on the law rather than on statistics alone. We seem to collect data regularly, even monthly, on every conceivable economic indicator but only irregularly and incompletely on social and civil indicators. Without doubt the most outstanding improvement in human rights in Australia over the past five years has been in relation to the right to work. There is a human right to work, recognised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which Australia has ratified.
Work builds self esteem.
It provides personal fulfilment. It enables an individual to participate in and contribute to society. It can lift workers and their families out of poverty. So the extension of the enjoyment of the right to work has to be seen as an important human rights achievement. First and foremost, the extra jobs have provided higher income, and so less poverty, for those who otherwise would be dependent on social security.