Rights and Freedoms
First, it's great to celebrate our national day with such a large, diverse and - as we've seen - talented group of Australians. And may I particularly congratulate those who've chosen to join us as Australians today.
Rights and Freedoms
I would like to welcome everybody to the launch of Rights of Passage: A Dialogue with Young Australians about Human Rights. I thank you all for coming.
Rights and Freedoms
Let me start by saying that Australia is a culturally diverse society with 23% of Australians being born overseas. Amongst others, there is a sizeable Japanese community and, as you may hear from my accent, I myself was born in Poland.
Rights and Freedoms
Despite its rather grand title, this presentation will be a relatively modest attempt to set out the key challenges for human rights in Australia as I see them at the outset of my term as Human Rights Commissioner. Let us begin with a quick survey of the state of human rights internationally and in Australia today.
Commission – General
I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Wurundjeri people, and I pay my respects to their elders past and present.
Commission – General
I would like to begin by acknowledging the Gadigal peoples of the Eora nation, the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today, and pay my respects to their elders past and present.
Commission – General
A little over a month ago, I started as the new President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, ending my time as a judge of the Federal Court of Australia.
Commission – General
As many of you know, for over a decade Dr Kidd has been a tenacious and dedicated advocate for the rights of Indigenous people. She has focused especially on the gross inequities that occurred through and under the various 'Protection Acts' that operated in Queensland from the 1890s to the 1980s.
Commission – General
I would like to begin by thanking the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) for inviting me to address you today, and to thank you for your attendance.
Legal
It would clearly test to destruction the tolerance of the ordinary red-blooded Australian to have a Pom getting off the plane from London and telling them how to run their country. So I shall not presume to say how the current human rights debate in this country should be resolved. But perhaps I may contribute some thoughts, prompted by our own experience in the United Kingdom, acknowledging as I do so that the Australian context, while in some ways similar, is in others significantly different.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice
I begin by paying my respects to the Gadigal peoples of the Eora nation, the traditional owners of the land where we gather today. pay my respects to your elders, to the ancestors and to those who have come before us. And thank you, Allen Madden, for your generous welcome to country for all of us.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice
In his introduction to the announcement of the 2020 summit the Prime Minister was succinct in his diagnosis of the challenges we face as a nation in today’s global community. He says and I quote
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice
I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land where we meet today, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and I pay my respects to your elders and to the ancestors. On behalf of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission can I welcome everyone here today and thank you for participating in this launch. Thank you to Rob Welsh, the Chairperson of the Metro Local Aboriginal Land Council for welcoming us all to Gadigal country.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice
I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of Cairns, the land where we meet today, and to pay my respects to their elders. I would also like to thank the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists and Professor Ernest Hunter for organising this event and inviting me to open this very important conference.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice
It is very fitting that we discuss native title in the context of a treaty just one month after a very significant native title decision, the Miriuwung Gajerrong decision [1], has been handed down by the High Court. 406 pages of honed legal reasoning cut through almost the entire history of non-Indigenous land law in Western Australia to decide the final shape that native title would take for the Miriuwung Gajerrong people.
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