Lucy Geddes on 50 Human Rights Cases that Changed Australia

PIAC Senior Solicitor Lucy Geddes is a human rights lawyer with international and Australian experience, particularly focused on gender justice. At PIAC, she leads our Asylum Seeker Rights project and also contributes to our Equality and Discrimination work, including advocating for the rights of people with disability.?

Lucy has co-authored?50 Human Rights Cases that Changed Australia, with Hamish McLachlan, Co-Manager, Public Law at the Department of Premier and Cabinet in Victoria. The book summarises significant cases that have influenced Australian human rights law and provides commentary on their impact.

What did you learn while writing about human rights case law in Australia?

It is undeniable that Australia needs a federal bill of rights, and that its overall human rights record is poor.?

Nevertheless, researching and writing the book highlighted that Australia does have a rich history of impactful human rights cases that deserve to be more widely known and appreciated. These cases are scattered across various legal forums (such as commissions, tribunals, state and federal courts, and international bodies) and areas of law (including the common law, anti-discrimination law, industrial law, tort law, administrative law, constitutional law and criminal law).

Is there a case that stands out for you?

It is very difficult to choose just one! And of course, everyone should read the landmark cases that fundamentally changed our nation such as?Mabo?and the Australian Communist Party case where the High Court struck down a law that banned the Communist party.?

However, a more recent judgment that is very significant is the case of?Wotton?which relates to racist police conduct on Palm Island. All First Nations residents of Palm Island brought a joint racial discrimination claim against Queensland Police as a result of police conduct in the aftermath of the death of a First Nations man in police custody in 2004. As a result of the judgment, the Queensland government agreed to pay the community $30 million – unprecedented compensation for race discrimination.

The judgment is particularly important because it is a rare example of an Australian court taking into account the enduring impact, both interpersonal and structural, of the violence of colonisation and dispossession. The judgment also heavily relies on international human rights law and is a notable example of how Australian judges can incorporate human rights law into their judgments if they are minded to do so!

Who is the book for?

We hope the book will be a helpful resource for lawyers, law students and people working in the human rights sector more broadly. We also wrote the book with a certain section of the general public in mind - those people who are a bit law-curious and would like to know how the law, and in particular litigation, has advanced human rights in Australia. Ultimately, we hope the book will contribute to cultivating a richer human rights culture in Australia.

Do you see any trends from the cases that signal where human rights law in Australia is headed?

As we discuss in the book, there is a growing movement of climate change litigation in Australia and across the globe. First Nations activists are leading the charge. For example, last year, the United Nations Human Rights Committee ruled that Australia's failure to adequately protect Torres Strait Islander peoples from the adverse impacts of climate change violated their human rights.?

Given the increasingly urgent nature of the various environment crises we face, and the success of these human rights cases, we expect to see many more similar cases in the near future. Other areas of law to keep a watch on include the right to privacy, which is likely to develop in response to intrusions by invasive technologies. Similarly, given the sudden explosion in utilisation of artificial intelligence tools (particularly by governments), the right against discrimination is likely to be deployed to respond to biases that have been proven to be inherent in AI tools.

50 Human Rights Cases that Changed Australia was recently launched at the Sydney office of Gilbert + Tobin . The authors were joined by GetUp’s? Larissa Baldwin-Roberts , Emeritus Professor Andrea Durbach, Justine Nolan ?from the?UNSW Australian Human Rights Institute,? Michelle Hannon from G+T and PIAC CEO Jonathon Hunyor .