Australia’s push for a federal Human Rights Act is stalled by political caution and media hostility. The path forward may depend on Coalition support – and reframing the reform as consistent with Liberal tradition.

Forget pursuing Attorney-General Michelle Rowland or Prime Minister Anthony Albanese about achieving a Human Rights Act for Australia.

The two minds we need to change – according to Labor itself - are those of Sussan Ley (and whoever will replace her in the weeks ahead) and Rupert Murdoch (and at some point, of course, his heir, Lachlan).

The Saturday Paper recently recalled a 2009 meeting between Simon Rice, now professor emeritus at the University of Sydney Law School, and then attorney-general Robert McClelland. As the paper recorded the meet, “With a national inquiry having recommended the introduction of a federal Human Rights Act, Rice asked McClelland when the [Rudd] Government might respond.

“McClelland’s answer was blunt: ‘There won’t be a Human Rights Act for as long as News Ltd is opposed to it’.”

And as the Civil Liberties Australia December 2025 newsletter reminded us, “Albo’s 2028 election game-winning strategy is: ‘Any proposal must have bipartisan support or we won’t put it to the Parliament’.”

But CLA hears whispers that a group including Independents such as David Pocock, “a batch of Teals” and the Greens would look to move by mid-2026 if Labor’s inertia is still ruling at that time.

That might be fine and good in the Senate, but any Bill would have to be steered through the House of Representatives as well, where Labor has the stranglehold.

As in 2009, there has been a favourable recent report promoting an Act, but the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, which reported a full year before the May 2025 election continues to await a formal government response.

What could possibly get Coalition minds to open up to the concept?

A Human Rights Act can be a mechanism to restore fairness and trust in government, something you might think Liberals might at least consider as giving themselves something with which to challenge the Albanese administration.

As CLA President Kristine Klugman wrote to the PM: “A Human Rights Act empowers people to have redress when they are treated unfairly or unkindly.

“Complaints of infringements can be addressed by independent arbitrators and resolved. And help restore trust …

“The consultation and groundwork for a federal HRA are done. The time and circumstances have never more opportune.”

The Coalition might think an HRA could provide a mechanism to prosecute ministerial excess, something it has recently pursued with some vim. But of course, there have been, and may again be, Coalition ministers, so …

What about saving citizens from wrongful government encroachment into their lives? That’s always been staple fare for an attacking Coalition Opposition over the years.

The Robodebt fiasco is a great example of something an HRA could have addressed, if it included provisions that such schemes’ promoters be required to sign them off as human-rights compliant before implementation.

But, hang on, who was in power when that horrible example of government overreach was brought in? Of course it was the Coalition under multi-minister Scott Morrison.

CLA chief executive Bill Rowlings, who joined the Liberal Party in the 1960s but resigned in the 1970s when the first flush of the right-wing “Uglies” hit, may have struck on the answer: go to the Liberals’ highest power, the party’s founder and the nation’s longest-serving prime minister, Sir Robert Menzies.

After the Liberal wipeout at last year’s election, Rowlings noted that “Liberal activists” such as long-time federal minister Chris Pyne and federal vice-president Fiona Scott called for a return to Menzies’s founding principles.

Rowlings wrote: “Menzies’s Australian Liberalism is, within the limits of social justice, the primacy of the family, parliament’s power over the executive, the rule of law, and particularly:

“. Freedom from government interference in an individual’s right to speak, to choose to be ambitious, industrious, to acquire skill and seek and earn reward, provided individuals accept responsibility for what they do or say; and

“. Freedom to associate with like-minded people who contribute to their community in line with their world view.

“These are the cornerstone of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document supported by successive Liberal governments.”

Rowlings noted Menzies had a fair bit more social capital than politicians of either stripe today, adding, “The Liberals will need to bring in a new social contract aimed at visibly and measurably lifting government accountability to the electorate as a first step toward rebuilding trust.”

He pointed to the No Rights Without Remedy model, developed by the Australian Human Rights Commission, incorporated in a draft Act and endorsed by the 2024 parliamentary joint committee.

The model imposes a positive duty on parliamentary and public-service decision-makers to protect and promote human rights; and allows individuals to achieve a remedy by taking any legitimate human-rights complaint to independent third-party conciliation (and, if unsuccessful, to an independent tribunal or lower court).

Rowlings noted that both the committee’s draft Bill and the No Rights Without Remedy Model “sit comfortably with Liberal doctrine because they don’t give away the power of Parliament to define and interpret rights”.

“When Menzies created the Liberal movement, there was widespread social uncertainty caused by the dislocation of a World War,” Rowlings wrote. “In 2025, society faces equal uncertainty caused by rapid technological developments, climate-change fears, distrust in the honest of leaders …

“In 70 years, centralised law-making has become the de facto means to solve problems, rather than … creating conditions to enable individuals to address issues as they find them. Menzies’s view on a Human Rights Act for Australia in 2025’s circumstances would be very interesting.”

If the Liberals could re-embrace their founder and promote an HRA as a truly Menzian ideal, you might think that even the Murdochs (and so, then, the Albaneses and Rowlands) might have to fall in line.