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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-11-26 Daily Xml
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Human Rights Legislation

The Hon. S.L. GAME (15:40): I rise to speak on the recently tabled report by the South Australian parliament's Social Development Committee, recommending the enactment of human rights legislation in South Australia, and acknowledge the Hon. Robert Simms' follow-up question to the Deputy Premier regarding the government's response to this report.

According to the report, South Australia is now considered an outlier where human rights are concerned, where the various laws of our state only offer citizens partial protection and limited enforceability. Given that Australia is the only Western democracy without a national human rights charter, and given that Queensland, Victoria and the ACT have enacted their own human rights legislation, it is incumbent on our government and this parliament to commit to genuine consultation with the people of South Australia to improve this state's human rights framework.

With public trust in government reaching an all-time low and people suffering under significant health and financial pressures, there is an increasing need for governments and parliaments to take clear and explicit actions to restore faith in our Westminster system of responsible and representative democracy. It is my contention, along with 131 of the submissions received by the committee, that a human rights act for South Australia will be a fundamental step towards the restoration of trust between the people of this state and their public institutions.

It is often stated that a successful society is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens: the children, the sick and the elderly. While there is much for us to be grateful for in this state and we should celebrate the achievements of our health and education systems, we must also work to maintain the quality of our services to our most vulnerable, and this requires active participation of citizens in the decisions and laws made by our government and parliament. It also requires citizens who understand their rights and what to expect from public authorities, plus appropriate remedies and courses of action when a person's human rights are breached.

In the absence of one single, clear, unified and consistent human rights framework, our most vulnerable citizens are at risk of having their rights and freedoms infringed upon by public institutions and departments, which often make decisions based on management and procedural protections rather than the dignity of individual citizens.

There are numerous reports of people living with disability or of the elderly in our community who are often denied simple freedoms and deprived of appropriate consultation or consideration. Plus, there are others suffering from poor levels of care, mistreatment and neglect. Such vulnerable individuals are rarely in a position to enforce their rights, and, in the unlikely event that they do seek some recourse against their perpetrator, the complaints process is often unlimited or ineffective.

It was only this week in this chamber that amendments to the guardianship act and Advance Care Directive Act were passed, despite considerable opposition from aged-care advocacy groups regarding legitimate concerns about the lack of government consultation, especially around the rights of elderly hospital patients being discharged into nursing home facilities. At the very least, the elderly in our community deserve the right to be heard.

In addition to this, many of our most vulnerable children, quite often victims of child abuse or neglect, are then placed in state care or detention. While there, they are further victimised by a system which has been described by the Guardian for Children and Young People, Shona Reid, as 'consistently and alarmingly unresponsive towards protecting, respecting and fulfilling the human rights of the child or young person'.

It is important to note that any proposed charter of human rights would not override parliamentary sovereignty but would still require any proposed laws to consider compatibility and alignment with the charter. Such a charter would provide the South Australian people with an important reference point against proposed laws that expand executive power at the expense of fundamental rights and freedoms, laws like the South Australian government's recent Emergency Management Act, which extended the government's emergency powers to include a predicted or potential emergency, where authorised officers are given the special power to infringe on a person's property rights, freedom of movement and bodily autonomy.

If South Australia had a charter such legislation would have been subjected to the scrutiny it deserved and not so easily disregarded and rejected, as was my own attempt to insert some safeguards to curtail some of the government excesses within the emergency powers. In addition to this, government departments could also be required to give proper consideration to the charter before making executive decisions.

The significance of this was most apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic in Queensland, where government directives required members of police and ambulance services to receive the COVID vaccine. Ultimately, the Queensland Supreme Court declared this directive and policy unlawful because of the government's failure to consider the Queensland Human Rights Act before making its decision. The rights and freedoms of the people of South Australia deserve the same consideration.

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