Human Rights Protection In Australia

Introduction

Human rights, the inalienable rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled[1] need constant protection. The human rights protection in the Australian law is not offered by either a constitutional or statutory Bill of Rights, but a collection of various legislation and court judgments. Thus, the role of the judiciary or the court systems in the human rights protection in individual cases becomes especially vital. This paper will begin with briefly discussing Australia’s human rights status and suggesting that the executive and legislative responses are inadequate and a greater role of the judiciary is needed. Then the paper suggests the judiciary must protect its independence to “dispense justice without fear or favour”[2], laying down the foundation for the rule of law and thus human rights protection. Secondly, because of the lack of explicit laws protecting human rights, the judiciary should infuse international human rights principles in judicial interpretation process to directly engage in the individual rights protection. Thirdly, the paper proposes that limited
For example, the ICCPR in which Australia is member clearly declares the fundamental human rights such as “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression”.[25] Some proposed human rights violations such as “defamation of religion”[26]not recognised internationally cannot be imported by the Australian judiciary but only by the representative government. This is because the role of the judiciary should be “filling the gaps” in Australian law instead of creating completely new provisions that will certainly breach the separation of powers and provoke controversies. Therefore, the judiciary should only refer to the established definitions in the international