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Cost of living issues are human rights issues 

Someone said to me just before election day that human rights hadn’t featured much in the federal election campaign. It’s true that the words “human rights” didn’t feature much - but human rights issues did. This was an election about the cost of living in Australia and human rights has a lot to say about that.  

Australia has promised to protect and promote our human rights to health, housing, education, social security and more. This means Australian Governments have obligations to ensure people have a decent roof over their heads, can access quality healthcare no matter where they live, can get a good education for their kids regardless of what’s in their bank balance and have a safety net if they can’t work or can’t find work.  

Unfortunately, economic and social human rights like these aren’t properly protected in Australian law and too often Australian governments, and election campaigns, don’t look at issues like health and housing from a rights perspective. This is a missed opportunity. Treating housing as a human right, rather than a commodity, to give just one example, can help to solve enduring problems of homelessness and housing affordability. It can spur action to address cost of living challenges.

It was good to see the Prime Minister in his victory speech talk about many of the values at the heart of human rights, including when he said: “so let all of us work together to build our national unity on the enduring foundations of fairness, equality and respect for one another.” We look forward to working with the new government to advance human rights in Australia.

First Nations land rights, justice and The Castle

For too long in Australia’s history, justice and Australian law have been different things for First Nations people. This gap narrowed with the High Court’s 1992 Mabo decision and it narrowed further with the High Court’s latest land rights decision in Commonwealth v Yunupingu.  

The case was brought by Dr. Yunupingu on behalf of the Gumatj clan of the Yolŋu People. Yolŋu people have lived in what Europeans called Arnhem Land for thousands of generations, exercising sovereignty over their country along with hundreds of other Aboriginal nations across the continent. In 1788, Governor Arthur Phillip declared that half of Australia, including Yolŋu land 3,000 kilometres away, was now part of the colony of New South Wales.  

The case focussed on the impact of pastoral leases and mining rights granted over Yolŋu land on the Gove Peninsula. We’ve published a new explainer on the case but in short, the High Court decided that native title is a property right and, like any other property right, if it is taken away by the Commonwealth then the native title holders are entitled to compensation on just terms. Just terms compensation when the government compulsory acquires property is one of the few express rights protected in the Australian Constitution, made famous by the movie The Castle.

It was good to join Commissioner Katie Kiss’ consultations in Yirrkala last month and meet with Yolŋu people and see their country. I’ve been reading Clare Wright’s epic book Naku Dharuk: The Bark Petitions since coming back. It tells the story of the Yolŋu’s people’s advocacy for land rights in response to the taking of their land for mining and refining bauxite. Part of that story is the Federal Court’s 1971 decision in Milirrpum v Nabalco that rejected the Yolŋu people’s arguments that they had native title over their country. This decision was overturned by Mabo.

There is a long journey to go to realise true justice for First Nations people but the High Court’s decisions in Mabo and now Yunupingu are important steps in the right direction. 
 

Hugh de Kretser

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