Talk:Human rights in Australia

far fetching claims
G’day Dmol, You are making far fetching claims without providing any evidence. Either you cite the HCA judgment, where it was decided that the Constitution of Australia contains implied rights or stop posting information, which is not true. The same applies to your claim regarding “numerous laws”. I challenge you to list these laws which protect Australians against HR violations by the Commonwealth Government, including by the black robed tyrants. Your claim that “Human rights in Australia are generally respected and recognised” must stand on some facts as well. Who respects your rights? Which law recognises them? Finally, please list the rights, which you think you have and let us know how they are protected. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ozjustwik (talk • contribs) 03:01, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * If you are looking for evidence of recognition of rights by the High Court, you could look at the Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation series of decisions in relation to the implied freedom of political communication, or the more recent decision in relation to the restriction of the franchise of prisoners, whose name escapes me at the moment.VeryRusty (talk) 09:01, 2 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Australian Capital Television Pty Ltd v Commonwealth [1992 HCA 45]


 * Nationwide News Pty Ltd v Wills [1992 HCA 46]


 * Roach v Electoral Commissioner [2007 HCA 43]


 * Rowe v Electoral Commissioner [2010 HCA 46]


 * There are plenty more, if anyone else insists on being a prat.119.12.137.28 (talk) 10:17, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Expansion needed
This seems... incomplete. - Ta bu shi da yu 11:00, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Indeed it is. It's really just a shell. A serious article on this topic would (will) be quite long indeed. - Borofkin 01:19, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Aboriginal Health
The article seems good, however tables 5, 6, and 7 from the HREOC report seem unnecessary. It occupies too much space and is excessively detailed. Perhaps a more general statement would be more appropriate instead of listing statistics for individual diseases. Readers who want to view exact statistics can just follow the link to the report. Mr john luke (talk) 06:41, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I have now made the changes, people can follow the link for actual report. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr john luke (talk • contribs) 06:43, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Democrats
A press release by the Democrats about legislation by the Democrats doesn't sound like a neutral third-party source. Andjam (talk) 11:44, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

POV push.
I have tagged the intro for POV check. User Retty1 has repeatedly modified the long-standing sentence - "Human rights in Australia are generally respected by the government of Australia" and has changed it to "Human rights in Australia are generally respected by the government of Australia in respect of the white non indigenous population (Bolded for clarity).  This is clearly POV, changes the meaning of the entire introduction, and is an uncited claim not suited to an introduction.  As the user has constantly change this, I am looking for other users' input.--Dmol (talk) 08:09, 9 April 2010 (UTC) 
 * The repeated changes were introduced by Dmol in respect of an edit which had existed unchanged for some time before it came to the notice of Dmol. Dmol's edits on 9 April also included a deletion of the section on asylum (Sri Lanka and Afghanistan) - with no reason given. My subsequent edits also restored this section which had been removed without explanation. The opening sentence of the article, in proclaiming compliance with "human rights", was crudely bold - no attempt as preamble to engage with the concept of human rights, no evidence cited and no mention of the contested nature of human rights compliance. Whatever the observer's opinion on compliance the fact that it is vocally contested cannot be in dispute. Such a "fact" is not compatible with such a naive opening statement which makes no mention of the contested nature of human rights compliance. It is for example in respect of the suspension of consideration of asylum claims in respect of Sri Lanka and Afghanistan difficult to see how such a bold opening statement can be supported: "Human rights in Australia are generally respected by the government of Australia". Such a claim would, in the context of the facts, be alien to generally accepted understandings of compliance with "human rights" (both in procedural terms and in terms of outcome). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Retty1 (talk • contribs) 18:31, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I think that the introduction as it stands is not good gramatically (yes I am aware of the irony, based on my sentence structure). I think the body of the article gives a number of examples, current and historical where Australia's Human rights are not ideal. I think a more nuanced introduction is in order, replacing at least the entire first sentence. Perhaps the following would at least be an improvement:
 * "The record of the Australian Government in relation to human rights is largely positive, with a number of exceptions. Australia's indigenous population particularly have been affected by government policy and continue to trail the wider population in a number of indicators." VeryRusty (talk) 09:58, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * That is a good compromise. Can I add that I don't for one moment think that Australia's record is perfect, (it certainly wasn't in the past) but could not allow such a dramatic change to the tone of the article to go unchallenged. Feel free to change the article to this intro, or maybe we could wait a few more days for more input. As I am one of the disagreeing parties, I'll refrain from editing for the moment. Thanks for your suggestion.
 * The first sentence suggested by VeryRusty is undermined and contradicted by the intensity of the second sentence. The seond sentence is, moreover and with reservations, a more appropriate/accurate summary of the issues than the first. The most contentious sentence in the whole article would be the the first thirteeen words of the suggested opening sentence - "The record of the Australian Government in relation to human rights is largely positive..." Grammatical construction aside I do not see what is wrong with the existing content of the first sentence. It is politically tendentious and non neutral to suggest, let alone argue, that the human rights record is "positive" or "good". A modifier citing Australian Government policy initiatives attempting to redress the balance in human rights abuses might be appropriate. But it is hardly contentious or off the wall to suggest that there are serious problems with any statement that seeks to affirm the "general" human rights record of the Australian Government. Maybe a referenced summary debate on the professional legal/human rights literature would be more appropriate.
 * Having looked at some of the other countries introductions there are those that try to provide an assesment (like ours), or just provide factual information. The second option is possible, for example, our lack of a bill of rights, but not preferential to me. Are there any other views? VeryRusty (talk) 08:16, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I have amended the introduction to be entirely factual.VeryRusty (talk) 21:35, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

World law?
Under Mandatory Detention there is the mention of "world law," whatever that is. Quote (as of the time of edit): "Under world law, it is illegal for a country to return an asylum seeker to a country or place where their life is at risk. Australia is currently breaching this law and agencies in Australia are taking matters into their hands to show the world." Is this supposed to be international law, and if yes, a reference would be good. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:2615:A701:F90E:75AD:1205:759 (talk) 09:29, 5 February 2015 (UTC)


 * International law? หมีขั้วโลก (talk) 08:47, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

External links modified
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Assessment comment
Substituted at 18:27, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Aborigines
The fact is Australia did not respect the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 till 1967. Out of 550 Aboriginal tribes survived only 40. Others were wiped out through killing and the spread of introduced diseases. The Aborigines were not even a part of any government statistics until 1967.--94.68.78.151 (talk) 06:05, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Colonial conflict and dispossession (1790s-1930s)
The whole section is written in a politically correct fashion and it shall be rewritten. The colonial conflict is actually a bad word for the brutal extermination of the indigeneous Australian people through killing and introduced diseases. The Aborigines were completely helpless in their attempts to protect their land and culture whose weapons were wooden or made of stone. The dispossession lasted until the end of 20ieth century.

To get a better insigth into te Aboriginal human rights in Australia in 1997 see Australia accused of genocide against aborigines--94.68.78.151 (talk) 16:23, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

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Too much focus on legislation, not enough unbiased reporting of historical and on-going HR violations.
Supposedly a neutral encyclopedia, but doesn't include full disclosure of the serious human rights abuses perpetrated throughout history and still on-going in Australia. This doesn't compare equally with Human Rights articles about many other nations on Wikipedia (eg. China, Pakistan, etc). หมีขั้วโลก (talk) 08:44, 2 February 2022 (UTC)


 * There is a section on Treatment of particular groups and minorities which contains quite a bit of info and many links to other articles. Did you have any particular topics you'd like to see addressed? Feel free to add sourced content. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 12:00, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
 * This comment was posted a while ago, so I don't remember the full context or the content of the article, but a good example would be the forced vaccinations of Aboriginals in the Northern Territory, where there were reports and apparently video evidence of elderly and disabled people being aggressively handled, if not outright assaulted, by the police (or army, not sure). Regardless of whether or not you think they should have been vaccinated, or if you think it was good for them, that does not detract from the fact that it is a human rights violation. And there's all the genocide stuff, etc. Yellow Peril, White Australia Policy, systemic abuse directed at immigrants for a long portion of the nation's history (especially from 1950s through to 1980s), Stolen Generation, Catholics vs Protestants (systemic discrimination at many different levels of society). I am sure many people could expand on these topics, and I feel that I have barely scratched the surface. We could also go into systemic abuse in the justice system against prisoners, and especially in the juvenile justice system (bad enough that the ABC 'Four Corners' did a documentary on it. And so on and on and on... Just doing a puff piece on all the laws is not really describing the actual situation of Human Rights, just the official position on the topic. หมีขั้วโลก (talk) 15:28, 28 March 2022 (UTC)