If elected, Labor must reinvigorate the Australian Human Rights Commission

Various reforms to the Australian Human Rights Commission are required to better protect and realise human rights in Australia, writes Professor Ben Saul.

• IA

HUMAN RIGHTS experts have welcomed Labor’s plan to restore merit appointments to the Australian Human Rights Commission and to appoint a global ambassador for human rights.

Nine years of partisan “captain’s picks” by the Coalition Government have shredded the Commission’s impartiality and subdued its voice as a champion of the vulnerable.

Its funding has also been decimated.

Labor’s modest proposals do not go far enough. Putting aside the urgent need for a national bill of rights, the…

• If elected, Labor…