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Good morning everyone. It’s so good to join you in Birpai country.  

I acknowledge Birpai elders and ancestors and the ancient and continuing connection of Birpai people to the beautiful lands and waters here. 

I also acknowledge all First Nations people joining the Summit today.  

Big thanks to Sarah and Community Legal Centres NSW for the invitation to speak today. 

I got my human rights education working in community legal centres, starting as a volunteer then on secondment and then a community lawyer and manager in Melbourne’s outer West. 

Community Legal Centres have been helping people doing it tough across Australia for 50 years.  

More than mere access to lawyers, your work is about true access to justice. 

It’s not access to justice to receive accurate legal advice that what’s happened to you is unfair but perfectly lawful. 

True access to justice is about working alongside people and communities affected by injustice to change unfair laws, policies and practices so they deliver true justice. 

I was keen to accept the invitation today because I wanted to talk about the human rights challenges facing people in rural, regional and remote Australia – challenges that you are working with your communities across NSW to address. 

Human rights – the blueprint for living well 

Human rights are standards that governments around the world have agreed to meet to ensure that everyone can live a safe, free and dignified life.  

Human rights belong to all of us, no matter who we are, where we come from, what we look like or what we believe.   

Human rights are the key to living well. They are about being treated fairly, treating others fairly and being able to choose how we live our lives.   

Human rights reflect values like equality, freedom, respect, dignity, kindness, thinking of others and looking out for each other.  

The reality for people living in rural, regional and remote areas of Australia face greater challenges in realising their rights than people in the cities. 

I remember when I was working at the Victorian Federation of Community Legal Centres in 2007 looking at the important “Dropping off the edge” work led by Jesuit Social Services to identify disadvantaged locations in Australia. 

I remember, in my ignorance, being surprised to see so many rural and regional locations in Victoria were experiencing deep poverty and disadvantage. 

This trend has been persistent over the 20+ years of their reports.  

The most recent report in 2021 confirmed again the higher levels of disadvantage in regional and remote areas across Australia, with only Victoria and South Australia having a proportionate number of locations classed as highly disadvantaged in their capital cities.   

Common indicators of disadvantage are low income, crime, family violence, early school leaving, a lack of post-school qualifications and a lack of internet access. 

Many of the rural communities consulted in the report raised issues around the quality of services and their accessibility, particularly for education, employment and health. And as you all know, we can add justice to that too with lesser access to legal help and specialist court services and programs outside of the cities. 

Access to healthcare 

Poor access to healthcare is a reality for many living in regional, rural and remote Australia. 

Rural Australians are not treated fairly by our health systems. 

They are more likely to face health problems yet receive less health funding and lesser access to services that people in the cities. 

It was good to meet with the National Rural Health Alliance earlier this year to talk about their research showing on average each rural person receives $848 less on health spending per year compared to someone in the city.  At the population level this equates to a $6.55 billion rural health deficit. 

Mental health services are a particular concern.  

In Australia, suicide rates increase as population density decreases. In NSW, intentional self-harm hospitalisations in very remote areas are 1.5 times that of residents in major cities.  

Yet people living outside of the cities in NSW have poorer access to mental health specialists, longer wait times for appointments and find it harder to see a GP compared to those living in metropolitan areas. 

The health challenges can be acute for First Nations people, compounded by issues like overcrowded, inadequate housing. 

Rheumatic heart disease is a disease of poverty that is entirely preventable and should be eradicated in a wealthy country like Australia.  

Yet it continues to disproportionately affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples particularly in rural and remote areas.  

It is under-detected and under-treated in First Nations communities because of under-funded healthcare systems – leading to tragic consequences. 

In 2019 and 2020, three young First Nations women living in Doomadgee, Queensland died from rheumatic heart disease.  

A coronial inquest found systemic failures in the healthcare provided to these women, including failure to provide follow-up care and failure to deliver culturally safe practices. Queensland has a limited protection of the right to health in its Human Rights Act. This played a part in the Coroner’s analysis of health care failures in the Doomagee inquest.  

Education 

Access to quality education is another challenge for people outside of the cities. 

When I started this job last year, I caught up with former Human Rights Commissioner Chris Sidoti who led a major project in the late 90’s looking at access to education in rural and remote Australia. 

The report documented the challenges for rural families in securing good education for their children, especially if they had needs outside of the mainstream schooling system – for example if they had a disability or had an Aboriginal language as their first language. 

When I met with Chris he spoke about the common concerns of parents he spoke with in consultations. Whether they were in a regional town or a remote Aboriginal community, parents wanted a quality education for their children. They worried about the similar things like transport and travel time and recruiting and retaining good teachers in the school community. 

There are rural communities like Walgett where there are persistent problems in delivering quality education for children.  

Failure to provide quality education entrenches disadvantage in rural communities and limits future opportunities. 

Climate change and disaster mitigation 

The challenges faced by rural, regional and remote communities become more acute when communities are having to respond to and recover from natural disasters on a regular basis. 

It has been clear for a long time now that rural, regional and remote areas are on the front lines of climate change and extreme weather events.  

In just the past 5 years, NSW has been impacted by the Black Summer Bushfires, Northern Rivers flooding, East Coast flooding, Tropical Cyclone Alfred and Far West NSW flooding - among many other localised disaster events. 

Regional, rural and remote areas of NSW are being disproportionately impacted by extreme weather and natural disasters. 

Communities like Lismore, Bega, Cessnock, as well as here in Port-Macquarie, do not have time to catch their breath before the next disaster is upon them.  

Legal services have a critical role to play in responding to these events, providing information and advice on issues from insurance, property, tenancy, social security, family law and more. 

When I was at the Federation of Community Legal Centres we set up Bushfire Legal Help to give free legal support to people affected by the devastating Black Saturday bushfires. This later evolved into Disaster Legal Help. 

At the Human Rights Commission we published a report earlier this year the treatment of people’s rights during the COVID-19 pandemic report. We had a huge response to our consultation. 

Many rural people told us they felt like critical pandemic decisions were made by officials in capital cities and then applied indiscriminately to an entire state.  

Failures to adequately consider the needs and circumstances of rural residents led to: 

• lockdowns of towns without any recorded cases of COVID-19,
• travel restrictions that did not make sense in rural areas, and
• regional border communities like Mildura, Albury-Wodonga and Tweed Heads being unreasonably separated by border closures and restrictions.  

The COVID-19 pandemic showed why we need to embed human rights at the heart of decision-making.  

We are now building on this working investigating human rights issues for people and communities impacted by major floods, storms and bushfires. 

This work is exposing gaps in emergency response capability, access to insurance and recovery support and demonstrating the connection between climate change, natural disasters and human rights. 

People’s right to housing is not achieved if they are spending years living in caravans because of delayed insurance claims and rebuilding processes. 

Women’s right to safety is not upheld if they are forced to share an evacuation centre with their abusive partner. 

�����鱨վ’s right to education is not achieved if their schooling is disrupted for months, leading to student’s falling behind academically and dropping out of school. 

For rural communities, there is the additional challenge of climate change and disasters impacting the livelihoods of farmers and related industries.  

Human rights are key tools to be able to prompt government action to address the very real impacts of climate change that are becoming part of rural life. 

In the next few months we’ll be publishing a report outlining the human rights impacts of climate change and the need for stronger action to address climate change and protect people’s rights. 

First Nations Justice 

In Australia, almost 60% of First Nations people live in regional or remote areas.  

NSW has the largest First Nations population in Australia and it was so good to see the dedicated focus on these issues in your program yesterday.  

First Nations people and communities are disproportionately affected by issues such as lack of access to healthcare, education, housing and employment – compounded by racism and the underlying disadvantage caused by the ongoing impact of former unjust policies like the stolen generations.  

The work of bodies like the Productivity Commission and Victoria’s Yoorrook Justice Commission points the way forward here – shifting power to First Nations communities so that they have more control over how to ensure their families can live good lives with decent and appropriate housing, education and healthcare. 

Truth telling is important – and it was good learn about the work done by the Birpai community with the University of Newcastle to recognise the massacre of First Nations people that happened up the river at Blackmans Point. 

Promoting culture is a critical part of the solution. Research like the landmark Mayi Kuwayu Study confirms that when First Nations people are strong in culture and identity, they are strong in health and wellbeing. 

We need a Human Rights Act 

I want to end by talking about the need for a Human Rights Act, in NSW and nationally. 

The issues I’ve just talked about are covered by major human rights treaties and resolutions which Australia has supported. 

Australia has promised under international law to protect people’s right to life, to security of person, to health, housing, education and more. 

Australia has recognised the right to a healthy environment at the international level. 

The right of children to protection in their best interests. 

The right of First Nations people to culture and language. 

But while Australia has promised to protect human rights set out in the major international treaties, these treaties are not directly enforceable in Australia. 

It is left to Australian governments and parliaments to protect human rights in our domestic laws. 

Unfortunately, as confirmed by repeated inquires, we haven’t done a good enough job on this. 

Our human rights protections are patchy. 

Our human rights safety net has holes in it.  

To give one example, the NSW Education Act has some lofty principles at the start of the Act in section 4 which reads: 

(a)  every child has the right to receive an education… 

(c)  it is the duty of the State to ensure that every child receives an education of the highest quality, 

(d)  the principal responsibility of the State in the education of children is the provision of public education. 

Unfortunately, at the back of the Act, buried in section 127 it says that nothing in section 4 gives rise to any legally enforceable right. 

In other words, the NSW Government and Parliament is happy to talk the language of rights in the legislation but not to hold itself legally accountable to the people of NSW in actually delivering on those commitments. And we know this affects people in the bush more than others. 

Human Rights Acts are a way to properly protect our rights in law and help to address the challenges that are too familiar to regional, rural and remote communities. 

We currently have Human Rights Acts in the ACT (2004), Victoria (2006) and Queensland (2019) operating successfully. 

Human Rights Acts do two key things. They require governments and public servants to properly consider and act compatibly with human rights when developing laws and policies, making decisions and delivering services.   

This in turn fosters better understanding of rights and a culture of considering people’s rights.  

The experience from Victoria, the ACT, Queensland and places like the UK and NZ is that Human Rights Acts have the biggest impact in preventing rights violations from happening in the first place – by developing better human focussed laws, policies and services.   

Most of this work is done quietly, as part of the normal business of government by requiring governments to ask:  

• What’s the goal we’re seeking to achieve with this law?  
• Will it restrict rights?  
• If so, is it justified?  
• Is there are less restrictive way to achieve that goal?  

These questions, known as the proportionality test, are a powerful way of focussing government attention on people and communities.  

It is of course critical that people have the power to take action to protect their rights.  

Otherwise governments won’t take people’s rights seriously.  

Rights without remedies are not rights at all.  

But again, most of the good work here happens efficiently through raising complaints with agencies directly or through the Ombudsman in Victoria, or the Human Rights Commissions in Queensland and the ACT.  

I encourage you to take a look at the Human Rights Law Centre’s online publication  showing the benefits of a Human Rights Act.  

It helpfully highlights the many ways, big and small, that a Human Rights Act can help make people’s lives better.  

To give three quick examples. 

In Victoria, the Human Rights Charter protects people’s freedom of movement and allows people to complain to the Victorian Ombudsman if their rights are breached. A woman living in Wodonga with a heart condition needed to travel from her home in Wodonga to her cardiologist in Albury for an upcoming appointment. Due to COVID, there were cross border travel restrictions. She was meeting a bureaucratic brick wall from Victoria to get the necessary permission because she had a NSW drivers licence which Victoria incorrectly thought was suspended. She was able to complain to the Ombudsman which investigated and resolved the issue for her allowing to her to travel for her healthcare. 

In Queensland a woman’s application to home school her child with a learning disability was refused by the Department of Education because she didn’t provide a residential address. The woman had provided a town name, mobile phone number and postal address. She wanted to keep her home address private as she and her children had moved to escape domestic violence. She wanted to keep her family safe from her former partner who had successfully located her in the past. With help from the Cairns Community Legal Centre, the woman asked the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal to review the Department’s refusal decision. The Tribunal approved her home schooling application, relying heavily on the Queensland Human Rights Act. The Tribunal referred to relevant rights including the child’s right to protection in their best interests, to access education appropriate to their needs, and the family’s right to privacy. The Tribunal interpreted the education legislation in a way that was compatible with these rights as required by the Human Rights Act – allowing her to home school her child without revealing their home address. 

Finally in Victoria, an Aboriginal man was able to use cultural rights protection in the Victorian Charter to access the Koori Court sentencing program. He had committed a crime closer to the town of Echuca which didn’t have a Koori Court program. The magistrate refused his request to transfer the case to the nearby town of Shepparton which had a Koori Court program where Elders play a part in sentencing people who plead guilty. The man challenged the refusal in court using the Victorian Human Rights Charter and won. 

These are just three small but important ways showing how a Human Rights Act can help make people’s lives better in rural Australia. 

There is growing momentum for an Australian Human Rights Act, and for Human Rights Acts in every state and territory. 

We have the Commission’s Free and Equal Report and the recommendations of the Australian Parliament’s Human Rights Committee for a Human Rights Act. We have the community campaigns for an Australian and NSW Human Rights Act.  

There is so much that people in the cities can learn from rural communities. As we’ve seen time and time again, rural communities come together in times of need to take care of one another.  

These are human rights values. 

A Human Rights Act nationally and in NSW would help to embed these values in our law.