Democratic freedoms

Global and local trends are eroding democracy.

The absence of comprehensive human rights protections in Australian law means we lack adequate safeguards to address these challenges.

In particular, we need stronger protection of protest rights and press freedom.

New technologies are being deployed with limited safeguards, requiring legal protections to be built after harms have arisen rather than being proactively addressed.

In relation to this assessment:

• Recent human rights advances = where governments have positively advanced human rights
• Urgent human rights issues = where serious human rights concerns exist and are not being addressed sufficiently
• Other priority human rights issues = where further action is required to address known human rights challenges.

Recent human rights advances

• The Australian Government established a National Anti-Corruption Commission and created Administrative Review Tribunal with mechanisms to help prevent a repeat of Robodebt or other systemic maladministration.
• The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights (PJCHR) inquiry into Australia’s Human Rights Framework and Commission’s Free and Equal report identified actions to fully protect human rights in Australia, with a focus on strengthening institutional protections.
• Australia, alongside other middle powers, continues to make important contributions supporting the international multilateral system which promotes human rights, peace and development.
• The Australian Government has improved whistleblower protections and recently introduced a bill to remove unnecessary secrecy offences from federal laws to better balance confidentiality and open government.
• In 2025 the Australian Government released voluntary guidelines for safe and responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI) governance and a National AI plan, with a goal of keeping Australians safe through existing and evolving legislative and regulatory frameworks to mitigate AI harms.
• The Australian Government has introduced the Online Safety Act, stage 1 privacy reforms that include a statutory tort for serious invasion of privacy and a Children's Privacy Code. It has committed to introduce a digital duty of care as part of the Online Safety Act to incentivise harm prevention.
  

Urgent human rights issues

• Australia continues to lack comprehensive human rights protections. Reforms proposed by the PJCHR report and the Commission’s Free and Equal report have not been implemented. Priority actions include introducing a federal Human Rights Act, improving federal discrimination laws, strengthening the role of Parliament in considering and protecting human rights and introducing a rights tracker to measure progress on human rights.

Other priority human rights 

• State and territory governments continue to introduce laws which unreasonably restrict Australians’ protest rights.
• National security laws on metadata retention and encryption do not provide appropriate protection for whistleblowers and the media, unduly restricting press freedom.
• Support for public broadcasting and an independent media sector remain critical in an environment of declining information integrity, particularly in online environments.
• There are limited safeguards to protect human rights, including privacy, in the development of emerging new technologies such as neurotechnology.
• Monitoring the efficacy and impact of the ban on social media for children under 16 is required, to ensure it is effective in its goal of preventing online harm without unduly impacting on children’s rights to freedom of expression and association.
• Concern remains that the use of AI in government decision making lacks appropriate legislative safeguards and undermines procedural fairness for Australians.
• There is a pressing need to strengthen civics and democracy education including for children, particularly as information integrity declines online.
• There is a pressing need for human rights education, especially for public servants and to build understanding of human rights among the community.
  

Find out more

For information about the purpose and methodology of this assessment, please visit our Australian Human Rights Assessment 2026 page.