Source: https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2012/07/09/how-most-australians-do-human-rights-without-a-human-rights-act/?like=1&_wpnonce=d19428bcb3
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July 9, 2012 by David Hart QC	How most Australians do human rights without a Human Rights Act	A sparkling, erudite and funny lecture last Thursday 5 July from the Chief Justice of Australia, exploring how the Australian system with a constitution, but without a Bill of Rights/Human Rights Act, seeks to deliver human rights protection – thanks to the Administrative Law Bar Association and the Angl0-Australasian Law Society. I shall try to summarise the differences, though, rather like the pre-HRA UK position, Australian human rights protection is a subtle one and a difficult one to explain in a short post. Particularly for a Pom. So I am in part throwing down a challenge to our Australian readers (up until this point, at least, quite a few) to comment on what follows.
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8 thoughts on “How most Australians do human rights without a Human Rights Act”	Scott |
July 9, 2012 at 11:39 pm	Two other points you may want to note:
July 10, 2012 at 7:56 am	There is another protection. Chapter 111 of the Australian Constitution ensures that the executive and the parliament cannot trespass on the judicial power. As a result, the High Court has, from time to time, constrained parliamentary overreach.
David Hart QC |
July 10, 2012 at 12:54 pm	Many thanks for both these points. They support my strong impression that the Australian courts are much more austere about statutory interpretation – Parliament should be credited with meaning what it says, rather than what the judges think it ought to have said.
Bryan Murphy |
July 10, 2012 at 3:03 pm	One can imagine Australia gives Human Rights lawyers some pause for thought. The justification we are continually given for the ever increasing human rights industry is that it is necessary to protect vital rights and freedoms, even at the expense of Parliamentary supremacy. And yet Australia manages to be one of the most stable and civilised nations on earth all by itself, without any human rights convention. Could it therefore be more to do with the culture of the country, rather than the weapons of the lawyers, that is the key to a nation enjoying rights an dfreedoms?
July 11, 2012 at 12:20 am	Agreed. Australia’s Parliaments respect human rights because Australian voters respect human rights.
July 10, 2012 at 3:25 pm	#auslaw
Aus judicial efforts to read protections into Cth Constitution are a bit of a joke. HCA justices see judges in US and UK playing human rights and civil liberties and say “Ooh, I want to do that too.” But the sad reality is that our constitution is a procedural framework for a very flexible parliamentary democracy, not a free-speech liberty-preserving equality-loving democracy. Dozens of statutes have been knocked out for technical errors (contrast Kable and Fardon if you don’t believe me) but rarely do we get a High Court case that means what people think it does. For example, the Communist Party case was about freedom of political activity and it was touted as such. But Williams, which was touted as being about secularism, was really about the technical difference between an appropriation and whatever it was they had in their budget: a technicality.
July 11, 2012 at 2:31 am	I’m no expert, but as an ex-pat Pom who’s just completed an MA in Social Policy at an Australian Uni, I’d like to make you aware of the following points:
Watilda |
July 13, 2012 at 6:45 pm	The reality is that many left/liberal Australians are sceptical of an HRA-style system, principally on democracy/separation of powers grounds. It may be strange for Brits to hear it, but many left/liberal Australians can simultaneously be appalled by aspects of Australia’s human rights record (e.g. aspects of refugee treatment and indigenous policy) without viewing a judicially-enforced charter as the solution to those aspects of the record. To put it another way: to an extent that would surprise many Brits, Australians can be politically-liberal but nonetheless wary of an HRA-type enactment. In response to Phil, I’m impressed that his evidence of Australians envying Europeans’ human rights system is an informal survey of lecturers in a social policy department! Perhaps survey methodology was not taught on the MA!
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