Meet Hugh de Kretser - president of the Australian Human Rights Commission

In this episode, we talk to Hugh de Kretser. The president of the Australian Human Rights Commission has quite the job. Never has society been more polarised, with distressing displays of religious and ethnic hatred bursting onto our streets - while at the same time the relevance of the commission itself has been called into question. De Kretser, who gave up a promising corporate legal career to work in community law, is up for the challenge of defending the institution. But he’s also got to protect the rights of people caught up in the most contentious conflict of our time, the war in the Middle East and how it affects communities in Australia. He’s the topic of our cover story this week - Man in the Middle - and hosting our conversation is the writer of that profile, James Button.

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:10):
Hi, I'm Konrad Marshall and from the Sydney Morning Herald
and The Age. Welcome to Good Weekend Talks, a magazine
for your ears, featuring in-depth conversations with fascinating people from
sport and politics, science and culture, business and beyond. Every week,
you can download new episodes in which top journalists from
across our newsrooms talk to compelling people about the definitive

(00:30):
stories of the day. In this episode, we talk to
Hugh de Kretser, the president of the Australian Human Rights
Commission has quite the job. Never has society been more polarised,
with distressing displays of religious and ethnic hatred bursting onto
our streets, while at the very same time the relevance
of the commission itself has been called into question. De Kretser,

(00:52):
who gave up a promising corporate legal career to work
in community law, is up for the challenge of defending
the institution. But he's also got to protect the rights
of the people caught up in the most contentious conflict
of our time, the war in the Middle East, and
how it affects communities in Australia. He's the topic of
our cover story this week. Man in the middle. And

(01:13):
hosting our conversation today is the writer of that profile,
James Button.

S2 (01:18):
Thanks, Conrad, and welcome, Hugh.

S3 (01:21):
Thanks for having me.

S2 (01:22):
It's another conversation we're having. We've had quite a few,
haven't we, in the last six months?

S3 (01:25):
We have. It's been good.

S2 (01:27):
It's been great. We've we've talked about, um, human rights.
We've talked about Australian politics, about your life. And I
might start there. Hugh. Tell us a bit about yourself.
Who are you and how did you get into the
human rights world?

S3 (01:43):
So I was born in Melbourne, um, to a very happy, stable,
loving family, a privileged family. Uh, my dad, uh, was
a Sri Lankan migrant. Came to Australia in 1949. He's
from a small part of the Sri Lankan community called
the Dutch Burghers, who are the descendants of Dutch and
Portuguese colonists in in Sri Lanka. It was the British

(02:05):
who took over and let them stay, and they intermarried
with Sinhalese and Tamil and formed a Eurasian race. A
very interesting part of world history and a real melting pot.
And so the Dutch burghers, uh, were Christian, spoke English. Um,
had uh, some had very fair skin, some had very
dark skin. And so, uh, dad's family emigrated to Australia

(02:27):
during the White Australia Policy in 1949 and managed to
dodge the racial boundaries by, um, pointing to their European heritage.
Um and mum's side of the family is Anglo-Irish. Um,
I think the earliest, uh, descendant was Irish in about
the 1840s. Um, you know, when I was at the
York Justice Commission, I got into this a bit and

(02:49):
looking looking back at it and, uh, yeah. So they
met and married, had four boys, um, uh, lived in
the sort of outer near Monash University in Clayton South
and then moved to Surry Hills, where I grew up.
And yeah, had a privileged upbringing. And then, um, yeah, myself.
I'm married. Got two kids and a dog. Uh, and, uh, tell.

S2 (03:12):
Us about the dog. The dog's got an interesting name. Well,
not the name, but the history.

S3 (03:16):
Yeah. We, uh, the dog's called Taco. And, uh, as
we were, Taco was born in Broken Hill. Um. Uh, one.
I think the male dog got into the female dog
enclosure at a farm and had, uh, you know, a
10 or 11 pups. And, uh, then they had a
farm in Benalla as well, and we somehow knew someone
who knew them. And as we were leaving, we said, oh,
when's when was the dog's birthday? And they said, oh,

(03:37):
10th of December. And I'm like, oh, International Human Rights Day,
which is also my daughter's birthday as well.

S2 (03:43):
So amazing. Yes. And I think that's the first thing
you told me when we first met. And I thought, gee,
this guy really does care about human rights. I do. So, okay,
so you had this privileged upbringing. Just before we leave
your family, just say a bit more about your dad,
because obviously that interesting migration story you went on to become.
He was a very well known, um, endocrinologist, I believe. Yeah.

(04:03):
And then he went on to become governor of Victoria.
So give us a sense of his life arc.

S3 (04:10):
Sure. So he was about nine years old when he
moved to Australia. Uh, he he studied medicine. Um, decided
that research was his passion. Um, got into reproductive health medicine, um, endocrinology, uh,
male infertility, um, worked on IVF, worked on, uh, the
male pill, um, was an idea that, uh, never really

(04:33):
took off, but was, uh, always quite a few headlines. And, uh, yeah,
he met my mum, and I sort of asked mum,
what was it like dating a Sri Lankan boy and in.

S2 (04:44):
An older Australia, right.

S3 (04:45):
In a very, you know, 1950s and 60s Australia, white
Australia and, uh, you know, she said her mum, my grandmother, uh,
when I think they were dating, warned about the risk
of throwbacks. Mhm. So, you know, this is for those
who don't know, throwbacks. This is the idea that, uh,
you know, that you will have a black child or

(05:05):
a dark child, dark skinned child and that's a bad thing.

S2 (05:08):
And has it shaped you at all, Hugh, that um,
coming from on one side of your family, a migrant,
non-white family, is that shape your thinking?

S3 (05:18):
Yeah. For sure. I think it's a gift, uh, for
the kind of work that I do. Um, it's it's
sort of, you know, growing up mixed race, I thought
about it a lot when we were doing Aboriginal justice
issues and looking at the way, um, law tried to
categorize race. It's it's impossible. Race is a social construct,
and you're trying to impose laws and rules around it.

(05:40):
And for me, growing up mixed race, uh, you know,
I always felt different from the mainstream is, is how
I'd describe it. And you don't know this until you
get older and so, you know, had lots of conversations
with my colleague at the commission, Gary Sivaraman, about race
and growing up outside of the mainstream. And for me,
it was difficult because some people, you know, look at

(06:01):
me and think, oh, you're European, or some people think you're.
I get mistaken for everything, basically. So, um, but yeah,
that's a, that's a gift for the kind of work
that I do because, you know, I've had some experience of, um,
sitting on the outside and you and I talked about
this in one of our conversations. I didn't really experience
racism when I was a kid. I felt very different. Um, but,

(06:22):
you know, I remember traveling overseas and in Europe. Um,
and there were particular times when I was one, I
particularly remember when, uh, police got on a train, I
was with three very fair skinned friends from Australia. We
were backpacking, and the police got on a carriage. There
were maybe, uh, you know, 20 people in the carriage.
They asked for one person's passport, and that was mine.

S2 (06:42):
Yeah. Interesting. So you've had this privileged upbringing. You're quite
upfront about that. Um, you know, private school did a
very good degree at Melbourne University. Went to the United
Nations on a prized internship. Tell us about your first
human rights job. Um, you probably didn't think of it
in those terms initially, but you started as a corporate lawyer.

(07:06):
But then something happened in your life. Take us through that.
That moment and that change for you.

S3 (07:11):
Yeah. I'm sort of looking at what to do for
your career as you do. I wanted to be a journalist. Originally.
I studied law and art and loved the study of law. Um,
there's lots of lawyers who don't like being a lawyer.
I'm not one of those. I love, love being a lawyer.
And I love the idea of the law and how
it can create a better society. And that's been a
passion of mine. Uh, I did that time at the UN,

(07:33):
which was incredible time of my life, but also taught
me that I didn't want to be a diplomat. Um, and, uh,
had the opportunity to be trained in one of the
top corporate law firms. So I did that and, uh,
got excellent training. Um, I've had a long, um, long
good relationship with that firm. Um, they continued to. I've
worked with them over the past sort of 20, 25 years. Uh,

(07:56):
but that's never where I wanted to be long term.
And so I was looking for other opportunities. I was
doing some pro bono work, which is work that lawyers
do for free for people who can't afford a lawyer.
I was doing some volunteering in human rights organizations at
a community legal center, and the opportunity came up to, um,
the attorney general in Victoria at the time, Rob hulls,
had set up a scheme to where big law firms

(08:18):
loaned lawyers for free to community legal centres. And I
put my hand up. I learnt more in those first
six months at that Community Legal Service, a six month
secondment about, uh, justice and human rights and the law
than I had in all of my legal training in,
in the sort of four and a half years I've
been working in corporate law at Mallesons and, um.

S2 (08:40):
And that's you. If I can just butt in there,
it's because you were dealing with people who were really
up against it, weren't they? People who'd had been prisoners who, um,
you know, families of prisoners who had died in custody,
people who had been bashed by police. Um, yeah. All
sorts of very.

S3 (08:58):
Uh, people who. Yeah, women who had experienced childhood sexual assault, um,
people who were deeply mentally unwell, people who, uh, were, uh,
poor and being chased by debt collectors. Um, so.

S2 (09:13):
What was it that I've always, you know, when I'm
in these interviews with you, I've really wanted to understand,
you know, what was it about those experiences, those encounters
with people, really in tough circumstances that shifted things for you?

S3 (09:27):
Uh, well, like, I was fortunate to work in that
community legal centre. Amanda George was a fantastic advocate. Uh,
she taught me a lot about community development, social justice,
about media, and how laws are like like lawyers. The
law schools are teaching people about what the law is
and theories about the law, and not enough about how
laws are made and how laws are changed. And she

(09:50):
was a she understood that well and sort of introduced
me to law reform. And one of my colleagues there
was a an advocate called Dev Singh, who was a
brilliant paralegal. It doesn't have a law degree, but knows
more about death and custody law than probably anyone in
the country. And so I remember having he invited me

(10:10):
to his house. We were doing some cases together, deaths
and custody and assaults in prison. And he gave me
a talking to and basically over a cup of tea
in reservoir, said, you you need to use your privilege
for good. And for me, that really resonated with me.
And I thought have thought a lot about it over

(10:32):
the years. Um, some people are driven to pursue a
career in human rights because of because of religion, because
of politics or because of personal, um, you know, lived
experience of human rights abuses. I, we talked about mixed
race background. That was probably part of the picture. I
was raised a best family. Friends were from South Africa,

(10:55):
white South Africans who were involved in, uh, progressive anti-apartheid
politics there. So I had that upbringing and that understanding
that probably influenced me. But for me, what really resonated was,
you know, um, that that idea of using these skills
I had, which I've been applying in a corporate law
context for companies that could afford the best lawyers money

(11:15):
could buy. I worked hard in corporate law. I worked
much harder in community law and and got a lot
out of it and, uh, and learnt a lot and
felt a sense of, uh, purpose if you like to, um,
to do that and to help people. And it was
frustrating and challenging. I went from winning most of the
cases to losing most. It was much harder to get justice,

(11:36):
for sure. Uh, but, uh, yeah, it was very rewarding.
And then. And then after a time, I got sick
of seeing, uh, people, um, experience injustice in a system that, um,
because laws weren't drafted properly, because policies weren't applied, because
practices were being done in an unjust way. And because

(11:56):
of that work with Amanda and others, I got involved
in law reform and policy work, and that's become a
passion of mine.

S2 (12:04):
Then you rose from there to head the Federation of
Community Legal Centres in Victoria. You ran the Human Rights
Law Centre, and then you shifted a little bit sideways
and took a job at the Yurok Justice Commission. Yeah.
And you had a deep personal experience at York, didn't you?
You've described it in the article as, uh, the hardest

(12:25):
job you've ever done and the most rewarding. Um, what
was that personal connection for you?

S3 (12:30):
Yeah. Uh, I loved my colleagues. Uh, Arnie, Eleanor Burke is, uh,
the chair. It was a chair. Incredible Aboriginal leader. Like,
she's seen so much in her life. And I learned
so much incredible strength. You know, I've done lots of
Aboriginal justice work before then. Um, you know where I
grew up in Surry Hills. There were no Aboriginal people

(12:50):
or visible Aboriginal people or people that I knew were Aboriginal.
There were huge missed opportunities in my education to, um,
to better educate me and people like me about Aboriginal
history and culture and strength and resilience and the injustice
and how to fix it. I worked on Aboriginal justice
issues at Human Rights Law Centre and Federation, but I

(13:13):
have described it as knowing them intellectually, but not in
my heart. And the work at Yoorrook gave me a
much deeper understanding. You know that it was led by
four Aboriginal commissioners. Half of the barrister team were Aboriginal, um, about, uh,
at its top. Almost half of the staff were First Nations, 60%
of the executive team, First Nations. And so, um, it

(13:37):
was an absolute privilege going to work and working in
that environment. And most Australians don't get that opportunity. And
so I learnt it's I just described it as putting
on a different pair of glasses, like it changed my worldview.
And I see Australia very, very differently because of that experience.

S2 (13:54):
And now you've gone in 2024, you moved from New
York Justice Commission to take what is the highest human
rights job in the country, the president of the Australian
Human Rights Commission.

S3 (14:06):
Yeah.

S2 (14:06):
Before we get to the commission, though, I probably.

S3 (14:09):
Should prime ministers probably the highest human rights job in
the country, but that's most formal, highest formal human rights job.

S2 (14:16):
Well said, well said. Give us. Before we get to
the commission, though, let's talk about the term human rights.
It's a term that I've always struggled with a bit
because on one level, we're all for human rights, aren't we?
What does human rights mean to you, Hugh? What is
what does that term you've said a number. You say
it all the time. I'm passionate about human rights. Yeah.

(14:39):
How do we. What does the term mean to you,
and how do we make it a term that's meaningful
and not just a kind of expression of sort of
motherhood statements of treating each other well?

S3 (14:49):
Yeah, well, I want people to have a good life.
I want people to be able to live well. There
is so much injustice on this planet. And what happened
after World War two was the world got together and said,
how do we make sure this never happens again? Of
course it has has happened. And, um, conflict and violence
is still happening. Human rights abuses has is still happening.

(15:12):
But they came up with a document, a Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, which I firmly believe is one of
the greatest achievements in human history. And what they did
was say, what are the essential ingredients that we all
need to lead a decent, dignified, safe life? And they
listed 30 rights. Um, that and governments around the world

(15:37):
are was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948
and Australian was present in the UN General Assembly 10th
of December Taco's birthday.

S2 (15:44):
Um and that Australian was.

S3 (15:46):
And Doc Evatt. Yeah. So so really.

S2 (15:48):
Great.

S3 (15:48):
Labor leader. Um, uh, Deputy Prime Minister, I think. And, uh,
I know him more for his contributions to the international
human rights. Um, we're just I was at an event
last night celebrating 80 years of the UN. Australia played
an absolute critical role in setting up the UN, um,
during World War two. We were one of the first
signatories to the UN declaration. Helped to draft the UN charter. Um,

(16:10):
one of 8 or 9 drafters for the Universal Declaration
led by Eleanor Roosevelt, um, with representatives from all around
the world. Um, and and we're a strong supporter of
the Universal Declaration. And Doc Evatt was arguing for it
to go further, said there should be stronger enforcement. Powers
said there should be an international human rights court. Um, yeah.

(16:31):
It was was a very strong voice bringing smaller middle
or middle nations together to say this is important if
we want prosperity, security, stability, peace in the world, these
are the things that we need to uphold as as nations.

S2 (16:57):
In the article that I've written for Good Weekend, I
advance her an argument that human rights went after World
War Two was not designed to lean left or right.
It was designed to be a set of principles that
all people could embrace. But over time, the changes in
the political landscape have seen human rights come to be

(17:18):
embraced more as a left wing issue than as a
conservative or right wing issue. And I'm going to ask.

S3 (17:24):
I'm not sure I agree with that.

S2 (17:25):
But no, that's what I'm going to. I'm I want
to hear your your response to that. What are your
what are your thoughts on that.

S3 (17:32):
You can look at, uh, Churchill, you know, great conservative leader.

S2 (17:36):
Churchill's back in the post-war period.

S3 (17:37):
Sure. But he was one of the greatest proponents for
the European Convention on Human Rights. You can fast forward to, uh,
so after the Universal Declaration, the two key treaties, um,
with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and
the International Covenant on Social, economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
So for reasons of the Cold War, they split it
into civil and political and economic and social, unhelpfully. I

(18:00):
wish that hadn't happened. Uh, it was successive, um, governments,
Labour and then Liberal, who signed and ratified those two treaties. Uh,
Whitlam and then Fraser. Uh, there is bipartisan support for
the Universal Declaration and, and, uh, all the key human
rights treaties. And so, for me, if you look at, uh,
something like the citizenship booklet, so take the Howard government.

(18:23):
So they said we're going to, um, define what it
means to be Australian, if you like. And they came
up with this idea of citizenship booklet. It was controversial
for some reasons. Um, and, and, uh, you know, I've
been thinking a lot in this job and previously about
what it means to be Australian. What do we stand
for as a nation? And I went back to the
citizenship booklet and, you know, do we stand as, uh,

(18:47):
a British or Irish identity? Do we stand as Aboriginal
or Torres Strait Islander identity, or we stand as a
multicultural nation? So you can you can see the sort
of changing identity over time, um, what the citizenship booklet
does when it when it seeks to define Australian values,
it defines them in terms that are human rights terms, uh,
equal opportunity, um, fairness, uh, freedom of religion, freedom of association,

(19:10):
freedom of speech. Uh, if you look at the Liberal
Party constitution, it is uh, it might be described as
a human rights lawyers dream. It talks about, um, you know,
civil and political rights, much more so than economic and
social rights. Uh, so, so.

S2 (19:25):
Both civil and political rights. Tell us what you mean.
That's freedom of speech.

S3 (19:28):
Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Freedom of speech. Right to vote.

S2 (19:30):
Religious expression.

S3 (19:31):
Religious freedom of religion. Freedom from arbitrary detention. Not to
be locked up unfairly. Safety, liberty and security of person. Um.
And so economic, social, social rights. These are the ones that.
By the way, when you ask Australians what what, uh,
what what are human rights? And, um, they tend to
jump to health, housing, education, food, water, um, things like that. So, um,

(19:55):
this unhelpful divide, um, you know, because of Cold War
historic reasons, um, they're all human rights. They're all in
the Universal Declaration in 1948. Um, but yeah, there tends
to be, um, you know, one party will, um, talk
more about one side of rights and maybe the other
or the other, but the, um, it's in our national interest,

(20:17):
regardless of politics, to support this. Because if you look at, um,
how do we how do we promote a rules based
world order. And why do we promote that? It's because
in 1948, the world got together of 45 with the
UN charter and said, if we want to have to
say never again to war and conflict hasn't succeeded, but

(20:40):
it's it's diminished over time. And human rights movement has
has had huge positive benefits, some failures over time. Um,
the keys to international peace, security, prosperity, stability, human rights.
And if we look at how we have stronger, healthier, safer,
more prosperous communities, human rights. And so, um, yeah, human

(21:02):
rights should absolutely transcend politics. And there should be a common, um,
national interest in, um, stronger support for these standards and
application of the principles.

S2 (21:13):
So let's come to the commission. The Australian Human Rights Commission,
established permanently in 1986, first established, as you say, under
a coalition government in 1981 on a temporary basis. From 1986.

S3 (21:23):
The government set aside the Hawke Hawke government made us permanent.

S2 (21:26):
That's right. So, so very much honouring Australia's requirements under
one of those treaties set out in the 1966 treaties
to deliver human rights in in Australia. But the commission
has changed over time, hasn't it? And the Commission's focus
obviously not all the commission, but it seems to me

(21:46):
that the Commission has focused more in recent years on
issues of particular interest to the left side of politics,
issues around identity.

S3 (22:00):
I don't agree.

S2 (22:01):
But yeah, I know, and I'm going to ask for
your response in a second. Um, issues around race. Um, uh,
what are your. Is that do you disagree? And tell
me why you disagree?

S3 (22:12):
Yeah. You can take, uh, the respect at work agenda.
So this is work led by a former sex discrimination commissioner,
Kate Jenkins. Uh, and, uh, off the back of, work
the commission has done for about 20 years measuring the
prevalence of sexual harassment. And and I think people understand
and particularly women understand it is extremely widespread. 1 in

(22:35):
3 workers in the last five years report experiencing sexual harassment.
So Kate Jenkins and the commission led work around what
to do about that. And the last those recommendations were
implemented firstly by the Morrison government and then by the
Albanese government. And every single one of those recommendations has

(22:55):
been implemented. You can go back over time to the
probably our most prominent or well recognised work is the
Bringing Them Home report. So this is a report that
built on the incredible advocacy and strength of survivors of
the Stolen Generations policies that removed children unjustly from families
and communities and placed them with non-Aboriginal families as part

(23:18):
of an explicit elimination assimilation Agenda, which changed over time. Um,
the commission documented that and made recommendations to, um, uh,
to reform that. And I think the report was initially
rejected by the opposed by the Howard government and, uh,
that that report and that that advocacy by survivors and

(23:41):
then amplified by the commission led to the apology to
the Stolen Generations by um, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. And
then you can fast forward to, uh, I think it
was 2020, 2020, 2021, and the Morrison government implemented the
a key recommendation to create to have a redress scheme,
compensation scheme for for people who had suffered injustice as

(24:04):
a result of these policies. So this is law reform, right?
This is what I was talking about. What is it
that creates the conditions? That means that something is rejected.
One year might be implemented by another government, you know,
5 or 10 years later. And yes, that might be
rejected by one side of politics and implemented by another.
It might be the other way around. But, you know,
I would argue that what we need to do is

(24:25):
build a stronger understanding in Australia of why we have
these human rights principles, why it's in, or why everyone
benefits when we have human rights, um, protected and upheld.
And what we what we've seen over time is, is
there's certain communities who experience human rights abuse. If your
First Nations community, you you you understand there are far more, um,

(24:47):
educated about their human rights were that than I ever
was as a child because, you know, I didn't have
that that the lived experience of being close to child
removal or criminal justice, uh, policies or, you know, economic disadvantage,
you look at the, the Jewish community. I've done a
lot of work with the Jewish community over, over, over
the years where through philanthropy and otherwise, and they have

(25:09):
an acute experience of the Holocaust, that is, and prejudice
since then. So, you know, Muslim community, we can talk
more about this, but particulars Killers, LGBTI community marriage equality.
These are communities who have experienced acute injustice. Understand the
importance of human rights. What we need to do is

(25:30):
broaden that understanding. To say, for, um, people who might
have not had to think we're lucky in Australia we
have a strong, prosperous, you know, relatively very successful democracy
on a world standard. And that means there can be
this complacency around human rights. And as fascinating for me
during Covid, that what you saw was people who have

(25:50):
never thought about their human rights are suddenly saying, what
gives the government the right to tell me that I
can't move from my home, or that I can't work,
or I can't run my business, or I can't leave
the country, or I can't return to the country if
I'm a citizen. So, um, we saw an uptick and
a greater awareness of human rights and the need for

(26:11):
stronger human rights principles during Covid.

S2 (26:13):
The Commission has done a report recently on the Covid, um,
experience of Covid. I think what's interesting about Covid you've
just mentioned is, as you said, it's one of the
first times that across the Australian society, people would be
aware of human rights issues and potential breaches. Yeah, but
let's focus. You mentioned the Jewish community and Muslim community.
So let's go to the most contentious issue of our time.

(26:37):
You and I spent a lot of time discussing this.
So we have the impact of the Hamas attack and
then the subsequent war in Gaza playing out in Australia.
Tell me about how does the commission, the commission has
been criticised, I think most probably most prominently by the
Jewish community, for they have criticised the Commission for not

(26:57):
standing up enough for, for the Jewish community when they
have experienced, um, uh, anti-Semitism in Australia. But tell me
your thoughts about how the Commission plays a role in
this extremely contentious conflict domestically. What is the role of
the Commission? How can it be seen as a trusted

(27:19):
interpreter and respondent to all communities involved in this conflict?

S3 (27:26):
We've got feedback from lots of communities about things we
need to do better. So not just the Jewish community.
The Palestinian community would say, you know, there's been media
about this saying that we're not doing enough to speak
out about the injustice in, um, in Gaza and Palestine
and the impact on Palestinian Muslim Arab communities in Australia,
Jewish community saying you're not doing enough to stand up

(27:49):
to about anti-Semitism and and anti-Israeli sentiment as well.

S2 (27:53):
So can I just ask, can I interrupt you there
for a second and say, this is an important point?
You mentioned injustice in Palestine and Gaza. What is the
role of the Commission there? Can the commission is the
commission charged with speaking out on international issues, or is
it really should be focused on human rights?

S3 (28:10):
Yeah, this is important to understand. So we are an
Australian government independent statutory agency. Our job is set out
by our legislation and that is strongly focused on Australia.
So and the actions of the Australian government. So, um,
we don't, um, have a role in judging or commenting

(28:32):
on international events and human rights abuses overseas. We are
part of a network of national human rights institutions. So
we are, uh, sort of allied to the UN system,
if you like. Um, there's about 120 national human rights
institutions globally, and we collaborate on shared goals with them.
But yeah, our primary focus is on Australia. And I

(28:52):
should have said our primary focus is on discrimination law complaints.
So we receive and investigate and conciliate about 3000 complaints
of discrimination every year. Um, race, sex, age, um, disability,
disability is the number one. And um, and we we
seek to find common ground to to conciliate them. And

(29:14):
if people if it can't be settled, then people can
take that to court.

S2 (29:17):
So let's just stay on the, um, the, um, the
Israel-Palestine issue if we can, for a bit longer.

S3 (29:23):
Yeah. So our primary role is, um, race discrimination. So
we are receiving and investigating and conciliating complaints around race,
hate speech and racial discrimination. And so, um, that that's
our primary access to justice role, if you like. And,
you know, those are all confidential, but some of these
where there's a settlement and, and, um, people talk about

(29:44):
their settlement and their process through the Australian Human Rights Commission.
Some of them can't be settled and some of them
go to court. So there's been a recent example where
Peter Wertheim from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, um,
brought a successful case under section 18 C of the
Racial Discrimination Act for race hate speech by an Islamic preacher.
And so, um, so there's a primary role in terms

(30:07):
of access to justice. And then there's a role in
terms of, better laws, policies and practices, and promoting understanding
and acceptance of human rights in Australia. And um, we, uh,
so we're running a prevalence survey around racism at universities.

(30:27):
This is not just, um, anti-palestinian or anti-Semitism. It's it's racism.
First Nations international students from a range of backgrounds, um,
anti-Asian sentiment, uh, but obviously in universities in Australia, um,
the impact of the war in the Middle East has
been acute in terms of the distress felt by, um,

(30:49):
and anti-Semitism experienced by Jewish students. And also for those
who are speaking up, um, about the injustice happening in Palestine,
their experiences that they feel that they're being silenced and, and, um,
mistreated because of their advocacy. And so the commission is
doing this, uh, national prevalence Survey. But more than that,

(31:11):
we'll be making recommendations to help address and to help
universities to make the right decisions about how to respond
to this and how to. And the most acute area
is where the balance is between protest rights and freedom
of expression, and the rights of people to safety and

(31:31):
the rights of people to be free from discrimination and
hate speech.

S2 (31:35):
It's extremely sensitive, isn't it? Because if you the Fivet Alliance,
which is a alliance of academics, has recently published a
report with a lot of kind of narrative stories in
it about the experience of Jewish students and, um, those
students who are alleging having experienced anti-Semitism. When asked, where

(32:00):
is that anti-Semitism coming from? They've alleged it's coming more
from the left side of politics than from the the
right side of politics. And so, um, those people on
the left who, um, are supporting the Palestinian cause would
often they would the idea that they are racist, they

(32:21):
call themselves anti-racists. So my question is, if you have this,
you know, Jewish students saying they're having this experience and
they are saying it's coming more from the left of politics.
How does this, the racism at Uni report that the
commission is working on? I know it's not out yet.
It's coming out in October, but how does it address

(32:43):
that question in a way that isn't just saying one
group says they've experienced racism, another group says they've experienced racism.
That's where the interim report does. And of course, it's
just an interim report. So how do you find some
way of making, you know, building some? Can you is

(33:03):
it possible even to find some way of building Getting
some sense of the rights and responsibilities. I mean, we're
talking about students here, students who go to university to
learn to hear other points of view, who we hope
are not, you know, on any side voicing, um, voicing,
you know, racism or hate. How do we get all

(33:25):
those students to. And is this a role of the
racism at uni report to to build common ground. Because
you talk a lot about this here. And I'm just
wondering if there's a role for the commission and a
role for this particular report.

S3 (33:38):
We have an allied project called Seen and Heard, and
those words are chosen very carefully because part of the
answer is seeing and hearing and listening and acknowledging and
talking about those experience goes some of the way because, uh,
the different communities affected by the war in the Middle
East are saying people aren't. People don't understand. People don't hear.

(34:01):
People don't understand that if I'm a Jewish student or
if I'm the parent of a Jewish Jewish student, I
don't feel safe on campus. I'm not turning up to
lectures when I lodge a complaint. I don't have faith
in the complaint process that it's going to be fair.
Why am I being told to stay away from campus when,
instead of the university addressing the cause, that I feel unsafe?

(34:22):
Why I don't feel safe wearing a kippah or a
Star of David. Um, students from Muslim Palestinian backgrounds are saying, um,
we can't speak up about the injustice. Our free speech
rights are being denied. We're not able to protest. Um,
we're suffering reprisals when we do speak up. And so
part of the part of the project is about, um,

(34:46):
acknowledging those experiences and talking about them and recognizing them.
But we need to do more than that. And the commission,
I think, is the best placed organization in the country
to do this, to actually make Practical recommend. It's hard. Hard?
Some of it's easy, by the way. Hate speech. The

(35:09):
the firebombing of a synagogue. That's that's that's horrific. No
one's arguing that that should be tolerated. There needs to
be a hard criminal justice response on that. And then
we can have a debate about, you know, protest laws
and things like that. Um, the, the, the hardest issues
are the ones where you have the intersecting, intersecting, um,

(35:31):
laws and responsibilities around freedom of speech, freedom of political opinion, um,
freedom from discrimination, um, freedom from hate speech, um, workplace
health and safety laws. So a university administrator is looking
at this. You've got, you know, arts organization, philanthropic organizations,
social justice organizations, all of them are navigating this landscape

(35:53):
right now. Some of it's playing out in court the
Lattouf case, ABC and Lattouf. Some of it's playing out
in court in the race. Hate speeches. Uh, we don't.
We want to try and prevent that. To say, how
can we create the best environment possible that respects people's
rights to speak up about injustice? Um, while doing so
in a way that also respect people's rights to be

(36:16):
safe when they're accessing their right to an education as well.
Talking in the university setting. But this plays out across,
across society.

S2 (36:23):
So the the, um, Segal report that came out this
week mentions universities. What are your thoughts as president of
the Human Rights Commission about now? The Segal report is
the report from the special envoy. Special envoy into anti-Semitism,
Jillian Segal. She's produced a report, um, has gone to
government and was launched this week by the Prime minister
and her. What what are your thoughts about the recommendations?

S3 (36:47):
I haven't read the report. Probably. It just came out
yesterday afternoon, I think. Um, but I've read the media
about the report and it'll be an important contribution to
the to the debate. And what struck me when I
looked at the media reporting on, On, um. Her report
was a lot of what she's saying is what we've said.
Under the national anti-racism framework, which we, um, released last year.

(37:09):
So we released, after years of consultation, a broad based, um,
national anti-racism framework, ambitious in scope to say, how do
we eliminate racism in this country? And there's recommendations around media, education, um, law, regulation, um, etc..
And when I looked at Gillian Segal's report, she's talking

(37:29):
about anti education, about anti-Semitism. Furiously agree. Um, there is
a lack of understanding about the impact of anti-Semitism, about
the history of the Holocaust, the long and enduring hatred
towards Jews that goes back a long time and that
is manifesting now and often manifests when the social unrest
or and Jews get blamed for particular things that are happening. Um,

(37:51):
completely agree. She talks about, uh, the sewer of online hatred, um,
and how to get better regulation when, um, there's limits
to what an Australian government can do for, um, overseas
tech companies. Furiously agree about that. We need much better
regulation online, not just to regulate anti-Semitism, but to regulate all,

(38:12):
all forms of, um, racist hate speech online.

S2 (38:16):
Sorry interrupt you, but in a way, the hard bit
about The Seagull and it goes to the anti-racism framework.
I mean, both the anti-racism framework and the Seagull, um, report,
talk about regulating media. And, um, Segal goes further and
says universities should be, um, defunded. Defunded if they don't.

S3 (38:37):
Um, yeah.

S2 (38:39):
These are very, um, sweeping recommendations, both the Segal report
and the national Anti-Racism framework calling on media to be regulated.
How do you do that? And isn't it that we
have to We've got to change minds, don't we? Like,

(38:59):
is regulation the answer either on racism or on anti-Semitism?

S3 (39:04):
It depends. It's part of the answer. Often. Um, but
it's by no means the sole answer. And so, uh, we,
we released work with Media Diversity Australia to say, how
can we get better reporting on race? How can we
get more diverse newsrooms? Uh, how do how do, um,
what's the experience for journalists, um, from diverse backgrounds coming

(39:27):
through mainstream media? And if you look at the mainstream
media in Australia, it's it's not diverse. It's changing. It's
slowly changing. Too slow. Um, but how can we improve that?
So this isn't about regulation. This is about initiatives that
media organisations can take to improve the way that they, um,
do their public interest reporting and journalism. Um, the, uh,

(39:50):
but yeah, under changing hearts and minds, I mean, this
is the education part of it. But but simply telling
people facts is not enough. It's it's this is this
is what came up at York. We thought so much
about this. And, uh, it's not enough to say that
this massacre happened and, uh, that's bad. Therefore, you understand

(40:11):
contemporary injustice against Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people and understand why, um,
rates of unemployment are higher or but there is a
there is a connection between historic disadvantage and the contemporary disadvantage. Again,
it's not enough just to say that. How do you
make this emotionally relatable to to someone? And how do you, uh,

(40:32):
how do you understand the experience of a mother who
loses a son, um, in, uh, you know, a death
in custody incident.

S2 (40:41):
And just on the Euro commission? You've raised a good point,
because in our conversations, you talked about that moment when
the voice referendum was defeated and obviously despair at a
place like the Royal commission. And people feeling like, um.
I imagine that, you know, Australia had Australia had rejected, um,
a modest claim from Aboriginal people. Um, but that's you

(41:07):
didn't tell us about your immediate response because I was
struck by it. It seemed to say something about you.
You didn't give way to despair. What happened?

S3 (41:14):
No, I had I had the luxury of not being
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, not being from that community.
So I felt I felt the despair. I spoke to
Aunty Eleanor that morning and said, I'm so, so sorry. She, uh,
in her wisdom has seen it all before. And she
helped me process that because she'd seen the injustice, she'd

(41:35):
seen the steps back, she'd seen the rejection from non-Aboriginal Australia,
of the modest demands of, um, of First Nations communities.
But more than that for me, I, I looked at
the there were survey results about why people voted in
a particular way. And there was one there's one particular
question that was asked. It wasn't directly on the referendum.
And it was, um, do you think colonization has been

(41:59):
good or bad or mixed, unsure for First Nations people.
And I just spent, you know, a lot of time
at York looking and reading and receiving evidence about all
the impact of all the intergenerational trauma, stolen generations, child removal,
criminal justice, um, you know, excluded from employment, from housing,

(42:20):
from education. And then I saw this result, and twice
as many people thought colonization had been good for First
Nations people who thought it had been bad. And there
was a big chunk who were mixed, unsure about 40%.
And for me, that struck me. And it was like,
we can make the best recommendations about reform and what

(42:41):
needs to change, and they will not be successful until
we change that understanding, until we build understanding of the
impact of language and culture being suppressed, the impact of
land being taken away, the deep connection Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander people have to country and and why when

(43:01):
country is healthy, they're healthy. When when culture and language
is thriving, their their wellbeing is thriving. Um, and so I,
I was lucky, I was energised. I'm doing a job
where I can do something about it. And so yeah,
I was I was fired up to work harder to
and but it changed my, changed my focus. And we

(43:24):
talked a lot about it at work internally about should
we be focusing on crafting the best possible recommendations based
on the best evidence, or should we be, um, trying
to tell the truth about what has happened and how
it's still happening today, and what it means for Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander people, and tell it in a
way that is emotionally relatable to mainstream Australia, who's who's,

(43:45):
you know, upbringing or privilege, like me growing up, you know,
is removed from that. And I think that's changing when
I look at my kids and what they're learning and
their understanding is far, far different from from mine. So
I'm optimistic that things are in the right direction. And
if you read the final report from York, this is
the the official public record. There's reports about reform that

(44:07):
are very important that will feed into the treaty process.
For me, the greatest achievement is the report written by, um,
First Nations people about the history of Victoria. And and
it I encourage all the listeners to read it because
it is uh, really it's it's Aboriginal people saying for

(44:28):
the first time in an official document, it's a Royal
Commission report. This is what happened. This is our perspective
on what happened, and this is how we saw it
through our eyes. And it's it's powerful and tragic.

S2 (44:40):
Let's hope they get that gets read. We should wrap up,
but let's stay on this, um, point I've got a
strong sense of you. In our conversations that and you
say in the piece, we need to build common ground.
We need to build empathy. And and I feel that
that's a consistent theme in your work and in your priorities.

(45:02):
But how do you do that? How how do we,
in this conversation, you and me here make that something
that's not just a motherhood statement, but how how do
we make it something? That is because it's both potentially
just anodyne and meaningless. And yet there is no other way, surely,
is to find ways where we are. There's there's some.
You directed me to wonderful podcast by Michael Ignatieff, a

(45:26):
Canadian political scientist, in which he talks about the challenge
of human rights as recognizing people unlike us and recognizing
their full humanity. Tell us, let's finish this conversation by
you telling us how we best do that.

S3 (45:40):
It's hard. Bryan Stevenson, who's an amazing advocate from the Um, us, uh,
talks about proximity. How do you bring people proximate to
to the injustice? And I believe that when people have
that proximity and that emotional connection.

S2 (45:59):
Marriage equality. We talked about.

S3 (46:00):
Marriage, marriage equality, the you know, the, uh, there's one
particular video of someone ringing her grandmother who's, uh, I
think Christian conservative, um, and she says, would you vote for. Yes,
for me and my lesbian partner and, and she says, oh, look,
I it's it's not, it's not part of my belief system,

(46:24):
but I'll do it because I see how much you
love each other, and love is the most important thing.
And that that emotion is critical and that respect and
that dignity. That's this is what the heart of human rights.
It's respect, dignity, equality, uh, it's looking out for. It's
kindness looking out for each other. And It's, it's there's

(46:45):
a client we worked with who was, uh, we worked
with his family. He was detained on Nauru for 6
or 7 years, and his family had arrived a few
weeks before him on a different boat. And so they
were living in the community in Sydney with with visas.
And he there's his son would hold up a Father's
Day card to him across a crappy internet connection on

(47:06):
Skype and with, uh, with Nick McKenzie from The Age.
We told that story. And you can't not watch that, um,
that footage and not be emotionally removed. We're human beings,
we're in families, we're parents. We're it's it's it's deeply moving.
And we we were able to reunite him with his
family through through advocacy and and things like that. So

(47:28):
it's that connection. We have to tell the story and
the injustice of what's happening and provide, you know, solutions
as to how to how to fix it and that that's. Yeah.

S2 (47:38):
And you say it's hard and it's harder than ever
right now, isn't it, because of the way our Society
is going the polarization retreat to tribes. Um, a sense.

S3 (47:48):
Social media amplifies this. It's monetized. It's it's it's, um. Yeah,
it drives people to the extremes. And through through the
work that particularly over the last year, looking at the
war in the Middle East and its impact in Australia,
it's there is a whole lot of people who are
not whose words are not being represented in the mainstream

(48:09):
media who have. And it's there is lots of scope
for common ground. There is lots of scope for conversation,
for these issues are hard, but there is a there's
a pathway forward.

S2 (48:22):
Great to chat with you again. You've got big ambitions.
I'll just say this because we're out of time. But
you have an aspiration to create a human.

S3 (48:29):
Rights act for Australia.

S2 (48:31):
And.

S3 (48:32):
A missing part of our democracy. And, uh, yeah, we
need to get there.

S2 (48:36):
Great to chat to you again. Thanks. Thank you.

S1 (48:40):
That was Australian Human Rights Commission President Hugh de Kretser
in conversation with freelance writer James Button for the latest
Good Weekend talks. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember
to subscribe, rate and comment wherever you get your podcasts
and keep tuning in for more compelling conversations. Coming soon.
Good weekend. Senior writer Gay Alcorn interviews Sarah Wilson, the journalist, author, presenter,

(49:04):
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