The world marks Human Rights Day this Wednesday 10 December. But a comprehensive parliamentary report calling for a national Human Rights Act remains unanswered. Its silence speaks volumes about the gap between rhetoric and action in Australia’s human rights commitments.

In Trump’s America a state senate candidate recently brandished a flamethrower at a campaign event, vowing to burn ‘woke pornographic books’ if elected. This year, a Christian nationalist group in Ohio organised the public burning of books on matters related to human rights and sexual identity. 

In Australia, we don’t yet set fire to books, or indeed to parliamentary reports. Perhaps we are less forthright. Instead, governments often ‘burn’ reports deemed embarrassing or subversive to conventional thinking or vested interests. Sometimes they do worse – they ensure they are kept from public attention.

As we come up to the UN Human Rights Day 2025, it is timely to note that one of the most egregious ‘burnings’ is that of the recent Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights (JPCHR) report on the I__nquiry into Australia’s Human Rights Framework.

On 30 May 2024, the JPCHR tabled its formidable 486-page inquiry report regarding Australia’s Human Rights Framework. The committee made 17 detailed recommendations, including that the government protect human rights in legislation, through the establishment of a Human Rights Act. The report also recommended:

• • a significant and ongoing commitment to national human rights education;
    • requirements for public servants to fully consider human rights in the development of legislation and policies; 
    • enhancements to human rights parliamentary scrutiny; and
    • enhancements to the role of the Australian Human Rights Commission.

To make the case, the committee prepared an example draft Human Rights Bill to promote understanding of its practical model for federal legislation. In the course of the inquiry, the JPCHR received 335 public submissions, over 4,000 campaign letters, and held six public hearings, during which it heard evidence from a wide range of community groups, religious organisations, government bodies and experts. The committee reported overwhelming public support for legislating a national Human Rights Act.

Under the Senate rules, which apply to joint parliamentary committees, the government of the day is obliged to publicly respond to the report within three months of its tabling in the Parliament. Eighteen months later, no such response has been forthcoming from the Albanese government.

Prime Minister Albanese and his ministers must now answer for their inaction on human rights law reform.

The inquiry was commissioned by Mark Dreyfus, attorney-general in the first Albanese government. He was the minister responsible for reviewing and responding to the final report. Dreyfus was unfairly and unceremoniously dumped from the ministry by the Richard Marles faction after the re-election of the Labor government. Regardless, Dreyfus allowed a full 12 months to elapse without meeting his obligation to the Parliament.

Dreyfus gave the Geoffrey Sawer Lecture at the Australian National University on 20 November, identifying Labor’s “nation-building ambitions”. He talked about the Whitlam dismissal, the need for fixed four-year terms and the elusive dream of a Republic. But there was no mention of his 2023 referral to the Human Rights Committee which produced an important report he did nothing with. He killed it by ignoring its existence.

To add insult to injury, Dreyfus has just been appointed by the government as Australia’s Special Envoy for International Human Rights.  The media release spruiked “Australia’s tradition as a global champion for human rights”. Dreyfus will now have a special advocacy role for the abolition of the death penalty, as well as for the rights and protections of children, older persons people living with a disability and LGBTIQ+ individuals.

Apparently his reward for losing his ministry and failing to champion human rights at home is his elevation to the ranks of international hobnobbery. 

The current attorney-general is Michelle Rowland, reputedly a conservative Catholic who is on record as opposing same-sex marriage in the original 2012 vote. Encouragingly, she changed her mind on that issue in 2017.  After the Australian Marriage Law postal survey returned strong positive support for the change, Rowland explained her change of heart: “Personally, a conversation I had with a mother in Seven Hills provided me with an important perspective. Her son is on active service in the Australian Navy and he wants to marry his partner. This man is putting his life on the line in service to Australia. Who am I, and who is any person, to say that this man should not be entitled to marry the person he loves?”

Bravo! Interestingly, Rowland says she was convinced to change her mind on a matter of human rights principle. Perhaps she can be convinced that the excellent human rights report languishing in solitary confinement in her department deserves the attention required by the Australian Parliament. Let this call be the prompt to enliven the interest of her policy advisors and senior officials in the Attorney-General’s Department.

The official theme for the United Nations Human Rights Day 2025 is ‘Human Rights: Our Everyday Essentials’. According to the the UN this theme highlights how human rights are often overlooked and yet fundamental to daily life and to to dignity, equality, and justice.

Writing in Pearls and Irritations recently, Michael Keating pointed to the Albanese government’s need to adopt a bolder productivity agenda in this second term. 

To be sure, the economic debate Keating promotes is central to the nation’s prosperity and wellbeing. But there is much that can be done to materially improve the lives of Australians by building an authentic culture of respect for human rights. 

The JPCHR Chair, Josh Burns, summarised the case for a Human Rights Act in his Forward to the report: 

”We need a comprehensive and effective national human rights framework to tackle some of the difficult challenges facing Australia. Our current piecemeal approach to human rights protection is inadequate to ensure rights and freedoms are properly respected, protected and promoted. We need human rights to be made real in everyday decision-making – not considered, at most, as an afterthought. Numerous royal commissions have shown us what happens when officials, both elected and unelected, fail to properly consider the effect of government action on the rights of vulnerable people”.

The searing experience of those who suffered in the Robodebt scandal is a case in point. 

Burns made special mention of the contribution made by the late Peta Murphy MP, who, he noted, was a “passionate advocate for an Australian Human Rights Act”. He referenced her maiden speech, recognising human rights as crucial to national policy development. 

Ironically, the ‘Murphy Report’, the most significant Federal inquiry into online gambling and the harm it does to Australian communities, is another ‘burnt’ parliamentary finding. It is a lamentable fact that the Albanese government has failed to act on any of that inquiry’s 31 unanimously supported recommendations.

Labor supporters expect high standards of public policy from their governments. Many are increasingly concerned that the Albanese ministry is paying lip service to transparency, accountability and human rights. Instead we have been force-fed a stream of ‘national security’ obsessions and a bizarre tangle of lectures about ‘social cohesion’. We don’t need partisan Special Envoys appointed to muzzle political debate and legitimate dissent. We want our Parliament to consider genuine priorities by applying wisdom and rationality. 

To signal that Australians’ human rights need to be protected in law would be a good outcome from this year’s Human Rights Day.