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From the Free Speech Symposium

Megan Mitchell National Children's Commissioner Early Childhood Australia Riverina Dinner Evening 25 August 2014 Check Against Delivery Introduction Good evening everyone and thank you for having me here. Thank you in particular to Julia Ham, Riverina Early Childhood Australia, for inviting me to attend and speak this evening. Before I begin I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of ...

Megan Mitchell National Children's Commissioner Australian Human Rights Commission Introduction to National Kidsafe Day 2014 Good morning everyone and thankyou Dr Julie Brown for the introduction. Thank you to Kathleen Clapham for the acknowledgement to country this morning. I would also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and on which children and families have ...

(Check against delivery, 24 February 2015) The Report of the Commission’s Inquiry into the impact of immigration detention on children, The Forgotten Children , has now been tabled in Parliament and is available to the public– more than three months after it was provided to the Government. The Inquiry took place from January 2013 to October 2014, covering the periods of both the former and current ...

I’d also thank the Human Rights Week Organising Committee here in Tasmania, and congratulate them on their 20th Anniversary. Human Rights Week has been successfully and continuously marked with a number of events each year over the past 20 years in Tasmania. And that in itself, is a remarkable achievement.

For those of you unfamiliar with Australia’s Human Rights Commission, it’s an independent government body that protects and promotes human rights. My role as Human Rights Commissioner is to check that human rights in Australia are being respected including the human rights of children and young people.

Homelessness has, I'm sure, been on your agendas for many years. More recently, both Parity and the Rudd federal government (if I can put you both in the same league) has given it a much increased focus. Today, I want to identify the many human rights issues raised in the context of homelessness, and suggest how a human rights framework would help address what is an ever-increasing problem in our society.

I would like to commence my brief remarks tonight by acknowledging the success of the member organizations of ACFID. Clearly any organization whose constituent members in 2004 raised $487.4 million, or around 70%, annually of their funds, from the public with only about 14% coming from the government via AusAID is a very effective one indeed. This statistic is also vitally important when one considers the ramifications of how best to engage in constructive policy dialogue with federal governments of any political persuasion.

I would like to begin by joining other speakers in acknowledging the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, the traditional owners of the land upon which we meet. I pay my respects to their elders, both past and present.

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.

Graeme Innes talks about how the NDIS could be improved today

Australian Association of Graduate Employers Conference Graeme Innes AM Disability Discrimination Commissioner Australian Human Rights Commission Friday 16 November 2012 I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today. Can you - as an employer - discriminate in favour of people with disability? The answer is a resounding yes. The race and sex discrimination acts deal with ...

Launch of Australian Federal Police Disability Action Plan Thursday 2 August, 2012 Graeme Innes AM Disability Discrimination Commissioner Australian Human Rights Commission I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today. Most of you would confidently tell me that Australians are not held in prison for five or ten years when they have not been found guilty of any crime. We ...

Red Cross, Humanitarian Forum – Conflict, Disruption and Displacement