Voting is compulsory in Australia, but only possible if you are enrolled to vote. You don't automatically go on the roll when you turn 18 or acquire citizenship. You have to enrol by filling out a simple form and sending it to the Australian Electoral Commission. Although a national election is imminent, an estimated 1.4 […]
To further the debate over whether Australia should have laws protecting human rights, the Castan Centre is engaging in a spot of myth-busting: Myth 1: The proposed Human Rights Act would shift decision making to unelected judges who should not have the power to decide what constitutes a breach of human rights. The reality: Australian […]
Expatriate Australian journalist John Pilger (right), in accepting the Sydney Peace Prize last week, was very critical of silence and lies in Australian polity and complicit bystanders among the Australian press and public. He calls us from slumber to form a 'Fifth Estate' of citizen monitoring — that eternal vigilance that is the price of […]
To quote a press release issued today on behalf of those presently involved in this anti-war protest in northern Australia: Christian Activists enter restricted military area during live-fire exercises Four nonviolent Christian activists have entered the Shoalwater Bay Training Area this morning to stop the Talisman Saber exercises. Calling themselves 'the Bonhoeffer 4' after Kevin […]
Australia has a human rights defender on a par with Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler for his stance against Nazi Germany, yet William Cooper is little known in Australia today. Appalled by the vicious carnage of Kristallnacht, the watershed pogrom of November 1938, Aboriginal leader Bill Cooper (right) led a protest walk from his home […]
Dear National Human Rights Consultation Committee, I would like to submit to the Committee Geoffrey Robertson's Statute of Liberty: How Australians can Take Back their Rights (Vintage, Sydney 2009) in its entirety. I hope he has done so already. I'm sure you have it. I work in human rights, and I thought I had heard […]
When people like Desmond Tutu describe the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories as apartheid, it's not mere hyperbole. Israel's self-proclaimed 'policy of separation' seeks to segregate Palestinians and Jews in the West Bank, writes Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard. Apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning literally, separateness. It's hard to see how Israel's policy […]
The Australian Government today gave its formal support to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Tom Calma (pictured right), called it a "giant step": "another milestone in the new partnership forged between Indigenous peoples and governments in February last year with the National Apology […]
While she was inside, prison authorities refused to allow indigenous activist Vicki Roach to give media interviews about her remarkable 2007 High Court Constitutional challenge. Instead, she wrote a letter to Anita Barraud of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation outlining some of her arguments: "Excluding us from the democratic process while we are in prison, however […]
The Rudd government appears to be delivering on a key election promise: to reform freedom of information (FOI) law in Australia, currently ranked 28th in the world for press freedom. Special Minister for State, John Faulkner (pictured), last week released draft legislation slated to improve Australians' right to seek and receive information from their government. […]
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