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The former and current ministers for immigration and border security, Chris Bowen and Scott Morrison, agree on one thing: that asylum seeker children are not detained to deter people smuggling. Rather, it appears that patrol boats and naval frigates, commanded by a three star general, and a refusal to allow refugees to settle here, have reduced the number of boats reaching Australia. Why…

Nationwide regulations are urgently needed to cover situations when Australians are engaging surrogates to have children for them. The range of assisted reproductive technologies available today presents many legal, moral and ethical challenges. These are challenges we can no longer ignore and require national, state and international leadership. In Australia, altruistic surrogacy is…

A uniting, not dividing, approach is needed to reform restrictions on free speech, writes Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson, in an opinion piece first published in The Australian on 9 August 2014. View the news story from the Commission's website.

In an opinion piece for the Sydney Morning Herald, Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson says this week's Free Speech Symposium, together with the Prime Minister's decision not to proceed with changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, marks the beginning of a national conversation about free speech. View the news story from the Commission's website.

By Gillian Triggs Posted 24 Jul 2014, 3:48pm Photo: A drawing by a child in the Christmas Island detention centre in 2014. (Supplied: �����鱨վ)Asylum seeker children and their families in detention on Christmas Island are plagued by despair and helplessness - and the situation is only deteriorating, writes Gillian Triggs. A team from the Australian Human Rights…

The legacy of Ian Thorpe’s “coming out” is whether corporate Australia will dispel the myth that it won’t support gay and lesbian Australians reaching their full potential, says Human Rights Commissioner, Tim Wilson, in an opinion piece first published in The Australian. Ian Thorpe won the �����鱨վ's Human Rights Medal in 2012. View the news story from the…

Storms on social media demonstrate we don't need laws to regulate free speech – social norms are enough Internet outrage tells us more about how we ensure civil conduct face-to-face, than how we behave online. People behave in strange ways online. But social media provides the clearest evidence of people behaving on their first instinct. All that the internet has demonstrated is there were…

Opinion by Human Rights Commissioner, Tim Wilson. First published in The Australian on 17 May 2014. Reform is not the end of debating free speech in Australia, it is the beginning The “forgotten freedoms” provide the foundations of our liberal democracy, and we have to reconnect with them. There are competing views about how human rights and freedoms should be approached. After all, human…

Before anyone screams "free speech", they should actually know what they are talking about. Earlier this week the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet released new social media protocols. The protocols limit the capacity of public servants to make statements that are "harsh or extreme in their criticism of the government, government policies, a member of Parliament from another political…

Arguing that old rich white men have too much power is just a backdoor attempt at censorship, writes Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson, in an opinion piece first published on 5 April 2014 in The Australian.