Australia does not have a 'Bill of Rights' embedded in its law. Do Australians have any formal legal protections that could be described as human rights?



Australia does not have a 'Bill of Rights' embedded in its law. Do Australians have any formal legal protections that could be described as human rights?

Introduction

The main purpose of this paper is to make an analysis on the formal legal protections of Human rights in Australia, as Australia does not have any “Bill of Rights”. The paper makes discussion on the statement that is there any formal legal protection in Australia that could be described as human rights. There are different ways which are being used in Australia for the purpose of protecting the human rights because Australia does not follow any “bill of Rights” for the purpose of protecting the human rights in a single document. These different ways are in the form of legislation, constitution, acts passed by the commonwealth parliament, common law and acts passed by the state or territory parliament. However, the main formal body in Australia is the Australian Human Rights Commission which could be described as the human rights in Australia.

Discussion

There is no such application of “Bill of Rights” in Australia; therefore, the main responsibility for the purpose of protecting the human rights falls under the commonwealth government. the main formal body in Australia is the Australian Human Rights Commission which could be described as the human rights in Australia. Australia does not have any formal legal protection for human rights; however, there are different bodies and constitutions in Australia which are being used for the proection of human rights.

Australian Human Rights Commission is mainly responsible for ensuring the internationally recognized human rights. Along with the Australian Human Rights Commission, there are also different governing bodies like the state government which has the responsibility of administrating various laws which are in some way related to the human rights. The laws which are related to the education, administration of justice, health issues and land matters are included in this. In the international law, it is not the responsibility of the federal system to provide the justification of the failure in order to observe the internationally accepted human rights. In general, it is the main responsibility of the Commonwealth Government to make discussion on the observance of the international human rights standards. However, it is not a compulsion that the standards agreed by the Commonwealth government should be enforced in Australia. Following are the main human rights treaties which are being incorporated specifically in domestic Australian law:

The history shows that Australia had been a great participant in the process of developing the international human rights standards. With the development of the new international standards Australia has always shown the positive response. It has either performed the functioning of endorsing the non-binding instruments including the Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons and Universal Declaration of Human Rights or it has performed the functioning of ratifying the binding legal instruments ...