Australia’s 10 Failed Human Rights Acts: Labor’s Chance to Reshape Legal Landscape

For Australia’s legal community, the absence of a federal human rights instrument forces courts into ad hoc common law protections, creates jurisdictional inconsistencies between states, and complicates interpretive tasks under treaties like the ICCPR. Labor’s opportunity to legislate could deliver the clarity and coherence that practitioners have long sought, provided it navigates the political risks Hull describes.

Crispin Hull’s syndicated opinion piece, published across Australian regional outlets like The Canberra Times, argues that the Albanese Labor government has a ripe opportunity to introduce a federal Human Rights Act—a reform that has eluded Australia for over a century. Hull characterizes the government’s approach as ‘do nothing for as long as possible, then as little as possible,’ drawing parallels with its handling of gambling advertising reform and gas resource taxation. But the absence of a national bill of rights is a persistent constitutional anomaly that the upcoming ALP National Conference could address, despite formidable political headwinds.

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As early as 1890, Samuel Griffiths—who would become Australia’s first Chief Justice—introduced a private member’s bill in Queensland to enshrine human rights, but it failed.

The historical context Hull provides underscores the durability of this legislative gap. When Australia’s constitution was drafted in the 1890s, the founders deliberately omitted a bill of rights, unlike the United States which ratified the first ten amendments within five years. As early as 1890, Samuel Griffiths—who would become Australia’s first Chief Justice—introduced a private member’s bill in Queensland to enshrine human rights, but it failed. Since the end of World War II, there have been ten formal attempts at a federal Human Rights Act, all unsuccessful. This leaves Australia as the only Western democracy without a comprehensive national instrument protecting civil and political rights, relying instead on a patchwork of common law, anti-discrimination statutes, and implied constitutional rights.

At the sub-national level, the Australian Capital Territory (2004) and Victoria (2006) have enacted their own charters, providing a dialogue model that requires public authorities to consider human rights but reserves ultimate legislative supremacy. The UK’s Human Rights Act 1998, which incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law, further demonstrates how such instruments can transform judicial reasoning without displacing parliamentary sovereignty. These models offer a template that could be adapted federally, yet successive governments—Labor and Coalition alike—have baulked at the political cost.

Hull identifies the core obstacle: powerful corporate interests that would resist any expansion of rights that threatens their commercial prerogatives. He argues that just as the gambling and gas lobbies have stymied reform in those sectors, a well-funded media campaign—fuelled by a ‘relatively small amount of money’—could raise ‘merry hell’ for any government proposing a human rights charter. The spectre of a politicized judiciary, judicial overreach, and a charter of ‘rights for criminals’ are perennial scare campaigns that have sunk past attempts. Yet the political calculus may be shifting; with growing public awareness of privacy rights, freedom of speech tensions, and the treatment of whistleblowers, a human rights act could garner popular support if framed correctly.