MATTERS OF URGENCY

Senator ALLMAN-PAYNE (Queensland) (16:51): I rise to speak in support of the motion put forward by Senator Thorpe, and I wish to associate myself with the comments made by both Senator Thorpe and Senator Shoebridge. We are one of only a handful of democracies that does not have a human rights act. It should tell us something when the major parties in this place have indicated that they are going to vote down this motion.

If a human rights act wasn't going to be effective at protecting people's rights, then they wouldn't care whether we had one or not. Senator Smith said that we have a system of rights protections, but numerous inquiries and committees have found that it is a system that is inconsistent, and it contains a patchwork of protections that are not comprehensive enough to protect the rights of everyone.

Senator Smith also talked about the relevance of not-for-profits and charities in holding up people's human rights. Yet, we know that when not-for-profits and charities want to advocate for people's rights—particularly when governments are forming policy—they're regularly asked to sign non-disclosure agreements, shutting down their ability to advocate for the rights of people and citizens.

The Human Rights Joint Committee that Senator Tyrrell referred to regularly raises issues with legislation that comes before this place, and it is regularly ignored. Sometimes legislation comes into this place before that committee has even considered it, so to assert that that is a protection that negates the need for a human rights act is false. The real value of a human rights act is that it requires governments and government departments to think about people's rights when they are designing policies and delivering services.

That matters because government decisions are rarely experienced equally. People who rely the most on public systems—people on income support, people with a disability, older people, First Nations people, refugees, children and people in detention—are often the people with the least power and the least protection to challenge those decisions when they go wrong.

We've seen what happens when governments and departments build systems around efficiency, compliance, cost cutting and punishment without putting people's human rights and their dignity at the centre. Robodebt is the clearest example of this. If we had a human rights act, it's questionable whether the systems that were put in place could have even happened.

A human rights act would actually create a different culture inside our government departments because they'd have to ask, before they designed legislation: What rights are going to be affected by it? Are limitations justified? Is there a less harmful way of achieving the same objective?

Have we properly considered the person who's actually going to have to live with the consequences of these decisions? As was alluded to by my colleague Senator Shoebridge, this is particularly important as governments increasingly rely on automated decision-making algorithms and large administrative systems. For the Greens, there is also a fundamental issue of basic equality here.

Basic rights shouldn't depend on how much money you have, whether you can afford a lawyer, how articulate you are or whether you've got enough political influence to make a minister or a department listen to you. Wealthy corporations can employ lobbyists and lawyers to defend their interests, but think about an individual Centrelink recipient, an aged-care resident, a person with a disability or a refugee who can't.

Human rights protections are important precisely because they put limits on the enormous imbalance of power between individuals and the state. Rights should not belong most strongly to the people who are best equipped to enforce them. They should provide a minimum guarantee of dignity and fair treatment for everyone, and that is why the Greens will always support a human rights act for this country.