General Compliance
For general compliance with human rights:
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In 2007, the Howard Government stated that the Intervention was enacted to address 'the national emergency confronting the welfare of Aboriginal children', adding that 'all action at the national level is designed to ensure the protection of Aboriginal children'. The government argued that the legislative measures were in fact in accordance with Australia's human rights obligations, in particular to protect children from abuse and exploitation in accordance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRoC).
Despite the government’s insistence that the Intervention was upholding CRoC,
the 2007 Intervention legislation was widely regarded as incompatible with international human rights law standards and practices. For example, The Law Council of Australia argued that the suspension of the RDA in relation to the NTER was ‘utterly unacceptable’. Amnesty International has argued that many of the intervention policies did not protect children, or were not related to achieving this goal and chided the policies as ‘paternalism’ by trying to get Indigenous Australians to assimilate and conform to mainstream Australian lifestyle and values.
It was also noted that many of the policies offered, such as anti-violence programs, could have been provided without breaching human rights. In 2009, Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan visited communities of the Northern Territory, saying: 'that Indigenous peoples experience human rights violations on a continent of such privilege is not merely disheartening, it is morally outrageous'.
The Intervention involved measures that contravened several of the most fundamental human rights standards, including the right to self-determination. In order to implement most of the measures of the Intervention, the former Howard Government and all successive governments suspended or did not meet the requirements of the Racial Discrimination Act, the legislation that would ordinarily protect racial minorities from policies that negatively discriminate and disadvantage them.
The Stronger Futures legislation has been criticised on many of the same grounds.
In 2012, the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) identified a number of human rights issues raised by the Stronger Futures legislation. These included the right to equality before the law, the right to freedom from racial discrimination, the scope of 'special measures' under racial discrimination legislation, the right to self-determination, and the right to be consulted in decisions. It was argued that the intervention measures undermine the rule of law and do not guarantee Aboriginal citizens equal treatment to other Australians. It criticised the limited consultation and the lack of provision for independent review. The government justified the removal of such democratic safeguards as they may 'slow the ability to introduce the (intervention) measures'. In 2010, the Special Rapporteur to the Human Rights Council criticised the intervention for breaches of human rights, racially discriminatory policies, and a failure to respect the right to self determination.
In 2013, the Joint Committee on Human Rights' 11th report examined the compatibility of the Stronger Futures legislative package with human rights. The committee argued that the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, while not incorporated into domestic law, was part of customary international law and was therefore relevant in considering human rights implications posed by the Stronger Futures legislation. The committee also considered other rights enshrined in treaties such as the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
In September 2017, the Special Rapporteur to the Human Rights Council reported on the rights of Indigenous peoples as a result of her visit to Australia. The report found that the policies of the Government do not respect the right to self determination and participation, contribute to the failure to improve targets in health, education and employment, and exacerbate the incarceration and child removal rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. The Special Rapporteur called for a complete revision of those policies as a national priority for Australia.
The report also criticised the Indigenous Advancement Strategy, which was introduced in 2014, for the centralisation of various programmes to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and saw a $534 million cut to spending. According to the Special Rapporteur, the strategy has had a ‘devastating impact’ on Indigenous organisations.
The 2017-2018 annual report from the Australian Human Rights Commission noted the significance of the Wiyi Yani U Thangani (Women’s Voices) Project in terms of its commencement of a series of national consultations with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander females regarding their rights and freedoms. Facilitated by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, June Oscar, and having provided the first platform for such discussions in 30 years, the project has begun to reaffirm the importance of the role of women in both Indigenous communities and the wider Australian society.