What Ministers should do – Human Rights in the election

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.

• Ben Saul
• John Menadue / Pearls and Irritations

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 1980s-era Commission is long overdue for root and branch institutional reform.

It does excellent work in handling discrimination complaints.

It has shown leadership on…

• What Ministers should…