The Human Rights Act 2004 is an Act of the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly that recognises the fundamental human rights of individuals. It was the first of its kind in Australia, however Victoria has since passed the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities and the Human Rights Consultation is currently deliberating on whether the federal government should adopt a human rights act.
The Act established an Australian Capital Territory Human Rights Commissioner. It also empowers the ACT Supreme Court to declare on compliance of legislation.
The Act was amended in 2005 by the Human Rights Commission Legislation Amendment Act 2005
Famous quotes containing the words human, rights and/or act:
“Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A Republic is a government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting actions. Accordingly, so long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, Royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to the understanding.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“If the veil were withdrawn from the sanctuary of domestic life, and man could look upon the fear, the loathing, the detestations which his tyranny and reckless gratification of self has caused to take the place of confiding love, which placed a woman in his power, he would shudder at the hideous wrong of the present regulations of the domestic abode.”
—Lydia Jane Pierson, U.S. women’s rights activist and corresponding editor of The Woman’s Advocate. The Woman’s Advocate, represented in The Lily, pp. 117-8 (1855-1858 or 1860)
“Each victim of suicide gives his act a personal stamp which expresses his temperament, the special conditions in which he is involved, and which, consequently, cannot be explained by the social and general causes of the phenomenon.”
—Emile Durkheim (1858–1917)