When it comes to their rights and freedoms, many Australians seem confused and complacent. These findings come from a benchmark Australian Human Rights Barometer study conducted by Pragmatic Research and Ipsos on behalf of Amnesty International Australia into Australians' perceptions of human rights and their support for a Human Rights Act. The online study was conducted in February/March 2021 amongst n=1,601 adult Australians.
The importance of rights
Let's start with the bigger picture. Australians consider most rights important to them personally, as well as for others. When given a list of rights to comment on (derived from the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights), upward of 80% deem rights such as privacy, access to healthcare; the right to work and receive equal pay; the rights of children; the right to vote; and freedom from discrimination as important. Unlike our gun-toting US brothers and sisters, only 9% think the right to bear arms is something important to them.
A seemingly strong endorsement of the central role rights play in our day-to-day-lives.
Confusion and lack of knowledge
However, when it comes to our actual knowledge of the level of protections we are afforded around these rights, things become a little blurrier. So, for example, while two thirds of our nationally representative sample believe the right to vote is protected, another third either don’t think it is or don’t know . There is a similar split for things such as freedom from discrimination and the rights of children. Of course the issue of discrimination and what is and isn't protected can be a grey area, requiring a knowledge of the law most of us don't have. But in a country where voting is compulsory, knowing one in three people don't know if there are protections around their right to democratic expression is at the least a little surprising and at worst quite concerning. Also knowing that one in three people don't think there are rights protecting children does make you wonder.
Patriotic complacency
So how do we explain it? On a general level the idea of a 'right' is quite simple. Something you are allowed (or not allowed) to do. A law that protects you if someone tries to take that right away.
However, the results from the Human Rights Barometer show that when looked at in more detail, the concept of human rights and the level of protections we are afforded becomes more abstract. Things we perhaps don't really think about unless we feel they are being compromised or denied. Something, especially pre-COVID, the majority of Australians rarely face on a day-to-day basis.
This patriotic complacency is partly explained when we ask Australians whether we currently have a Human Rights Act (a set of laws that protects all Australians’ human rights). Nearly six in 10 Australians from our survey (58%) currently think we do have a Human Rights Act (spoiler alert: we don't). Only 12% got the answer correct. It's cliched to invoke the Australian 'she'll be right, mate' ethos, but these results do tend to confirm it for many. "Yes, rights are important, we've got it pretty good in this country, so I assume we are protected but I'm not really sure."
This is also borne out when we ask how our human rights protections compare with other countries. When compared with New Zealand, Canada, the UK, USA and European countries (all of which have some kind of Human Rights Act in place), a strong majority of Australians feel our protections are the same or better. But in the true legal definition of the term, this is not necessarily the case.
Activating passive support
So what do we do next? It's easy to say that all we need is to better inform and educate Australians about human rights. However, we know from how other complex issues are dealt with in the public sphere (see: climate change, COVID responses, refugee settlement, immigration and many others), that simple facts often don't cut through, when more emotive discussions can grab attention. In the case of human rights, though, there is an opportunity. When Australians are informed that we currently don't have a Human Rights Act, three quarters (76%) become supportive of its introduction (one of the most conclusive results from the Human Rights Barometer). When informed, they see such an Act as a fundamental responsibility of a democratic society to protect vulnerable people and wonder why we don't have one already. Just as important, they see it providing an agreed set of standards that can simplify the range of existing laws (laws we know many are unaware of or confused about).
And when told Australia is the only Western democracy in the world that doesn’t have some kind of Human Rights Act? Six in 10 Australians become even more supportive of its introduction. We want keep up with The Joneses.
Simple, right? Well, maybe. Like many issues, the real challenge will be how to activate this support to bring about change. But unlike other issues where division, emotion and misinformation constantly hamper progress, when it comes to human rights we are more united. We just don't know it yet.