A human rights act for Australia

This is hugely import­ant. It’s the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Declar­a­tion of Human Rights.

The Aus­tralian Attor­ney-Gen­eral has just announced a con­sulta­tion panel to invest­ig­ate the pos­sib­il­ity of a Human Rights Act for Aus­tralia. We are one of the only demo­cratic coun­tries in the world without one.

The panel will be headed by Jesuit priest Father Bren­nan and will take writ­ten sub­mis­sions until May next year. 

Need­less to say, GetUp has cre­ated a public sub­mis­sion page with some talk­ing points to make con­trib­ut­ing really, really easy. Go on, try it!

If you’d prefer to go to the source, read the terms of ref­er­ence and write a full sub­mis­sion (as I will prob­ably be doing in between feed­ing a baby! Yay! A pro­ject!), head on over to the offi­cial web­site. You can also get more inform­a­tion from the Aus­tralian Human RightsCom­mis­sion.

Ima­gine being able to say to your chil­dren that you helped draft our national charter of human rights. Now ima­gine telling them you were alive at the time but didn’t get around to it or could­n’t be bothered. This is one you don’t want to miss.