Commission – General
When I first entered the law 'benchbooks' were closely guarded, leather bound books into which judges carefully entered notes as a case progressed - usually I thought adverse comments and exclamation marks about one's arguments or less than flattering remarks about one's principal witness. These books seemed to be some kind of secret code to the outcome of cases and never saw the light of day.
Commission – General
I was invited to pick my own topic for discussion. As an ex-judge being invited to speak to students of the law, I assumed that I was expected to speak on something related to the administration of the law from a judge's perspective. And as President of Australia's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), I assumed I was expected to mention the role of human rights promotion in our legal system.
Commission – General
As the world awaits the birth of the new millenium with a level of anxiety we come to associate with expecting parents, I am pleased to note that the United Nations, in nominating 1999 the International Year of Older Persons, has not, at the last, forgotten the grandparents.
Commission – General
Marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Fraser Oration Emeritus Professor Rosalind Croucher AM FAAL FRSA FACLM(Hon) Introduction Vice-Chancellor, Duncan Maskell, Dean Matthew Harding, Mrs Tamie Fraser and the Fraser family, Melbourne Law School staff, distinguished...
Commission – General
I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and to pay my respects to their elders both past and present.
Commission – General
We meet today on the lands of the Gadigal peoples of the Eora nation. On behalf of the ºÚÁÏÇ鱨վ I pay my respect to their elders past and present.
Commission – General
I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Kaurna people, and pay my respects to their elders past and present.
Commission – General
A little over a month ago, I started as the new President of the ºÚÁÏÇ鱨վ, ending my time as a judge of the Federal Court of Australia.
Commission – General
The topic for discussion is the role of human rights in good governance. Along the way I will touch on HREOC’s perceptions of cultural change at DIMA, legal roadblocks to cultural change, and the importance of human rights principles in the law and policy making process.
Commission – General
In the second century AD, Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, thanked one of his brothers for teaching him to value "the conception of the state with one law for all, based upon individual equality and freedom of speech, and of a sovereignty which prizes above all things the liberty of the subject."1
Commission – General
Set against the wreckage and the unthinkable horror of the Second World War, the Declaration was something of a phoenix rising from the ashes, a document which sought to rekindle a human dignity which had been gravely debased in the preceding ten years.
Commission – General
To be honest, this is a rare occasion for me. Much of my career has been spent in the monastic cells of academic institutions teaching the young about different legal systems; their origins and growth, their strengths and weaknesses. Your world - the world of business and industry, finances, profit and loss, sales and marketing - is largely foreign to me in a practical sense.
Commission – General
Just over a year ago the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission launched the Same-Sex: Same Entitlements National Inquiry into discrimination against people in same-sex relationships in the area of financial and work-related entitlements.
Commission – General
I am honoured to have been invited to address you this evening on this beautiful campus of the Flinders University of South Australia. Let me begin my address by recalling that, long before the establishment of this prestigious place of learning in the European tradition, there was learning of another tradition here; the learning of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains.I would like to acknowledge the Kaurna people, the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, and pay my respect to their elders, past and present.
Commission – General
My role today is to talk about what a Human Rights Act for Australia might look like and to address some of the arguments that have been made against an Act of this kind being adopted.
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