Statement from Queensland Human Rights Commissioner Scott McDougall regarding the response to the Human Rights Act Review Report & the Queensland Government rejecting all recommendations

On Wednesday 26 March the Queensland Government tabled the Placing People at the Heart of Policy – report of the first independent review of the Human Rights Act 2019, along with the Queensland Government response, which rejected all of the report’s recommendations.

I would like to thank Professor Susan Harris Rimmer and her team for the extensive and considered review of the Queensland Human Rights Act 2019. The report was prepared because the law required that the Attorney-General ensure the operation of the Act be reviewed after four years.

Many of Queensland’s current challenges are human rights challenges, including the housing affordability and accessibility crisis, food insecurity, experience of violence, over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in youth justice and child safety systems, and climate impacts. Implementation of Professor Rimmer’s recommendations would have addressed some of these issues, including by creating new rights such as:

a right to adequate housing;
a right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment; and
a right to live free from gender-based violence.

The Queensland Government has blanketly rejected all 70 recommendations of the review on the basis that the recommendations do not have regard to the government’s focus on victim’s rights. However, Professor Rimmer’s recommendations would have strengthened protections for victims by including a right that victims of crime should be treated in a respectful and trauma-informed manner.

Protecting the human rights of each individual in Queensland makes us all safer. Government decisions that fail to properly incorporate consideration of human rights impacts, particularly on Queensland’s most marginalised people, risk unintended policy consequences and negative community outcomes.

The Human Rights Act protects against this by bolstering good governance. The recommendations from Professor Rimmer’s review would have further strengthened the impact of the Human Rights Act for vulnerable citizens and the Queensland Government through building a proactive human rights culture, with increased education, training and monitoring to measure progress.

I call on the Queensland Government to prioritise the human rights of the people they were elected to govern.

- ENDS

Media Contacts

QHRC Media

Email: comms@qhrc.qld.gov.au

Phone: 0407 657 411