Inquiry update

Review of the Native Title Act

The Native Title Inquiry team has just released a Discussion Paper – the second consultation document for this Inquiry. It is available in HTML, PDF, and as an ebook.

The ALRC is calling for submissions in response to the Discussion Paper. Submissions are due on 18 December  2014.

The legal team will embark on a national round of consultations over the next month or so.

Serious Invasions of Privacy

The Final Report for this Inquiry was tabled in Parliament and made publicly available on 3 September 2014.

The Report and a Summary Report are available to freely download, or can be purchased in hard copy from the ALRC. The Report is also freely available as an ebook.

See media release >>

Since the release of the report there have been interesting cases emerging in the news that will test the current law on privacy, such as, for example, Spurr vs New Matilda.

Equality, Capacity and Disability

The Final Report for the Disability Inquiry has been delivered to the Attorney-General and is now awaiting tabling in Parliament, when it will be made publicly available. We will notify subscribers to the Disability enews as soon as this happens

Freedoms

The Freedoms team is working towards its first consultation document for the Inquiry into Commonwealth laws that unreasonably encroach upon traditional rights, freedoms and privileges. We anticipate the release of an Issues Paper at the end of November. We will at that time call for submissions in response to the questions raised in the Paper.

In the meantime, the ALRC has established a  public wiki—a set of collaborative online documents that ALRC staff and external participants can contribute to—to create a catalogue of Commonwealth laws that encroach, justifiably or not, on traditional rights, freedoms and privileges.

We note that Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Tim Wilson, is leading a separate AHRC consultation about how well Australian’s rights and freedoms are protected, Rights and Responsibilities 2014.