David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I indicated that the Greens will be supporting but seeking to amend the Australian Human Rights Commission Legislation Amendment (Selection and Appointment) Bill. This bill adds new criteria for the process of appointing members of the Australian Human Rights Commission, including a requirement for at least some merit based processes and public advertising. It applies to the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, under the Human Rights Commission Act 1986, and each of the commissioners under the Age Discrimination Act, the Disability Discrimination Act, the Racial Discrimination Act and the Sex Discrimination Act.

It retains the existing requirements that commissioners need to have appropriate qualifications, knowledge or experience—and, in the case of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, that the person have significant experience in community life of Aboriginal persons or Torres Strait Islanders. It further amends those acts to clarify that the total term of appointments for presidents and commissioners cannot exceed seven years.

We're here because the politicisation of these positions by the former government was disgraceful, and it has tarnished the global reputation of Australia and the Human Rights Commission. The defence that we just heard, the defence that other countries have engaged in significant breaches and are being called to account, is a defence that's unworthy of any government that should care about human rights. The fact that other countries have failed—and to give the list of other countries that have failed, as the coalition did, and say, 'We're in a class of defaulters'—is no defence for the disgraceful efforts that the previous Morrison government made to tarnish Australia's human rights reputation.

This bill only partially delivers on an election promise by the ALP. It was in response to what is likely to be, without this and other measures, the downgrading of the Human Rights Commission by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions. They had clearly threatened to downgrade it from an A-status institution to a B-status institution. In doing that, they identified two particular appointments, and the lack of due diligence and process in those appointments, that clearly did not meet accreditation standards. They were the appointment of Ben Gauntlett as Disability Discrimination Commissioner in 2019, a political appointment by the government, and then the appointment of Lorraine Finlay as the Human Rights Commissioner in 2021, another clearly political appointment, without any due process, by the Morrison government.

The Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions has called for far broader reform than what Labor is offering with this bill. They are pressing for it, and their report says:

The SCA encourages the AHRC to continue to advocate for a selection process in law and practice that includes explicit requirements to:

a) Publicize vacancies broadly;

b) Maximize the number of potential candidates from a wide range of societal groups;

c) Promote broad consultation and/or participation in the application, screening, selection and appointment process;

d) Assess applicants on the basis of pre-determined, objective and publicly available criteria; and

e) Select members to serve in their own individual capacity rather than on behalf of the organization they represent.

Apart from the first point, pretty much none of the rest of that is implemented in this bill.

What this bill doesn't do is provide a pathway for identified positions for any of these senior appointments, a position that is increasingly out of step with global best practice and public expectations. The bill also fails to implement the requirements of the Paris Principles, particularly clause 1 of part 2, 'Composition and guarantees of independence and pluralism'.    That's important because in the Attorney's second reading speech he relied heavily on the Paris Principles as justification for these measures.

Clause 1 of part 2 of the Paris Principles provides that the composition of a National Human Rights Institution and the appointment of its members must 'ensure the pluralist representation' of civilian society through the presence of representatives of:

(a) Non-governmental organizations responsible for human rights and efforts to combat racial discrimination, trade unions, concerned social and professional organizations, for example, associations of lawyers, doctors, journalists and eminent scientists;

(b) Trends in philosophical or religious thought;

(c) Universities and qualified experts;

None of that is implemented in this bill. The Greens strongly support increasing rigour in the appointment process. But that is only the first step in creating a Human Rights Commission that meets minimal international standards and is up to the job of upholding human rights in Australia.

I pause here to note that one of the critical failures in the Australian Human Rights Commission is a woeful lack of budget—a woeful lack of resources that was in no way remedied in the most recent budget that we've just seen passed. I particularly want to draw the Senate's attention to the lack of identified positions as a particular concern and a breach of the Paris Principles and a non-response to UN criticism. It's just one element that needs to be addressed, but for that reason, the Greens in committee will be seeking to amend this bill to explicitly provide for an LGBTIQA+ human rights commissioner. I want to commend here the work of my colleague Stephen Bates, the member for Brisbane, who has been a powerful advocate for the addition of this commissioner, a powerful advocate for his community and a powerful advocate for the LGBTIQA+ community. We have seen in the last few years attack after attack on that community, often coming from the right of politics. These have been ugly, divisive attacks from the right of politics.

It's about time that the LGBTIQA+ community had a commissioner on their side, someone to go to who is unambiguously on their side, so that when the next set of attacks come—and they almost certainly will come from some ugly part of the political right in this country—they are guaranteed to have a commissioner on their side who is fully resourced to go in to bat for them. I'll speak further about that in committee.