Safety

Rates of family violence and sexual assault remain too high.

Violence motivated by hatred and prejudice is a major national problem.

Children experience mistreatment at rates that are far too high.

Australia still hasn’t met obligations to prevent mistreatment in detention.

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

• Successive Australian Governments have implemented the Commission’s Respect@Work reforms to address sexual harassment and sex discrimination in Australian workplaces. This includes the introduction of a positive duty on employers to eliminate, as far as possible, work-related sexual harassment, sex discrimination, sexist conduct and related victimisation.
• The National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032 seeks to end gender-based violence. A specific action plan addressing violence against First Peoples’ women has also been established.
• Australian governments have taken steps to improve safety in childcare following a series of crimes against children being exposed. Improvements include better staffing ratios, training and worker registration requirements.
• Australia has improved protections against modern slavery and people trafficking, including through establishing the Modern Slavery Commissioner as an oversight mechanism. Further reforms are required to improve the effectiveness and comprehensiveness of these protections, as identified by the McMillan Review.
• Reforms to the aged care sector, following the Royal Commission into Aged care quality and safety, are coming into effect, with improved monitoring and standards, but limited legal enforceability of the rights of people in aged care.
• The National Plan to End the Abuse and Mistreatment of Older People 2026-2036 was launched in March 2026 to prevent and respond to elder abuse, covering physical, financial, psychological, and neglect issues. Enduring powers of attorney laws still need to be harmonised across all Australian jurisdictions to help prevent elder abuse.
  

Urgent human rights issues

• Gendered violence remains endemic, especially for First Nations women and children, culturally and linguistically diverse women and children, people with disability and LGBTIQA+ people.
• Australia’s first child maltreatment study in 2023 found disturbingly high rates of maltreatment experienced in childhood. The response has been inadequate, with limited protection of children’s rights nationally. Various national plans and strategies relating to violence and abuse experienced by children are uncoordinated, inadequately funded and do not focus sufficiently on protecting the rights of children. Significant concerns exist about safety in early childhood education and care following recent scandals.
• There has been limited progress in raising the age of criminal responsibility nationally. Most jurisdictions, including the Commonwealth, allow children as young as 10 to be arrested, prosecuted and locked up. Victoria has raised the age to 12 and ACT has moved to 14 with some exemptions. The Northern Territory lowered the age from 12 to 10.
  There has been inadequate progress in introducing guardianship and other adult safeguarding laws across all Australian governments, despite longstanding commitments to do so. This puts older people at higher risk of violence and abuse.
• It has been almost 9 years since Australia ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture yet some states and territories still have not established compliant systems to monitor and prevent mistreatment in places of detention.

Other priority human rights issues

• Australian government responses to the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability have resulted in limited outcomes to date. A range of recommendations remain unimplemented.
• There has been inadequate progress in introducing a nationally-consistent system of working with children checks and reportable conduct schemes aimed at ensuring child safety in institutional contexts, long after the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. National child safety standards are now embedded in all service contracts with the government, requiring a more preventive approach from organisations providing services and care to children.

Find out more

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