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Author: Castan Centre

  • 83% of Australians want tougher privacy laws. Now’s your chance to tell the government what you want

    By Associate Professor Normann Witzleb

    Federal Attorney-General Christian Porter has called for submissions to the long-awaited review of the federal Privacy Act 1988.

    This is the first wide-ranging review of privacy laws since the Australian Law Reform Commission produced a landmark report in 2008.

    Australia has in the past often hesitated to adopt a strong privacy framework. The new review, however, provides an opportunity to improve data protection rules to an internationally competitive standard.

    Here are some of the ideas proposed — and what’s at stake if we get this wrong.

    Australians care deeply about data privacy

    Personal information has never had a more central role in our society and economy, and the government has a strong mandate to update Australia’s framework for the protection of personal information.

    In the Australian Privacy Commissioner’s 2020 survey, 83% of Australians said they’d like the government to do more to protect the privacy of their data.

    The intense debate about the COVIDSafe app earlier this year also shows Australians care deeply about their private information, even in a time of crisis.

    Privacy laws and enforcement can hardly keep up with the ever-increasing digitalisation of our lives. Data-driven innovation provides valuable services that many of us use and enjoy. However, the government’s issues paper notes:

    As Australians spend more of their time online, and new technologies emerge, such as artificial intelligence, more personal information about individuals is being captured and processed, raising questions as to whether Australian privacy law is fit for purpose.

    The pandemic has accelerated the existing trend towards digitalisation and created a range of new privacy issues including working or studying at home, and the use of personal data in contact tracing.

    Australians are rightly concerned they are losing control over their personal data.

    So there’s no question the government’s review is sorely needed.

    Issues of concern for the new privacy review

    The government’s review follows the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Digital Platforms Inquiry, which found that some data practices of digital platforms are unfair and undermine consumer trust. We rely heavily on digital platforms such as Google and Facebook for information, entertainment and engagement with the world around us.

    Our interactions with these platforms leave countless digital traces that allow us to be profiled and tracked for profit. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) found that the digital platforms make it hard for consumers to resist these practices and to make free and informed decisions regarding the collection, use and disclosure of their personal data.

    The government has committed to implement most of the ACCC’s recommendations for stronger privacy laws to give us greater consumer control.

    However, the reforms must go further. The review also provides an opportunity to address some long-standing weaknesses of Australia’s privacy regime.

    The government’s issues paper, released to inform the review, identified several areas of particular concern. These include:

    • the scope of application of the Privacy Act, in particular the definition of “personal information” and current private sector exemptions
    • whether the Privacy Act provides an effective framework for promoting good privacy practices
    • whether individuals should have a direct right to sue for a breach of privacy obligations under the Privacy Act
    • whether a statutory tort for serious invasions of privacy should be introduced into Australian law, allowing Australians to go to court if their privacy is invaded
    • whether the enforcement powers of the Privacy Commissioner should be strengthened.

    While most recent attention relates to improving consumer choice and control over their personal data, the review also brings back onto the agenda some never-implemented recommendations from the Australian Law Reform Commission’s 2008 review.

    These include introducing a statutory tort for serious invasions of privacy, and extending the coverage of the Privacy Act.

    Exemptions for small business and political parties should be reviewed

    The Privacy Act currently contains several exemptions that limit its scope. The two most contentious exemptions have the effect that political parties and most business organisations need not comply with the general data protection standards under the Act.

    The small business exemption is intended to reduce red tape for small operators. However, largely unknown to the Australian public, it means the vast majority of Australian businesses are not legally obliged to comply with standards for fair and safe handling of personal information.

    Procedures for compulsory venue check-ins under COVID health regulations are just one recent illustration of why this is a problem. Some people have raised concerns that customers’ contact-tracing data, in particular collected via QR codes, may be exploited by marketing companies for targeted advertising.

    Under current privacy laws, cafe and restaurant operators are generally exempt from complying with privacy obligations to undertake due diligence checks on third-party providers used to collect customers’ data.

    The political exemption is another area of need of reform. As the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal showed, political campaigning is becoming increasingly tech-driven.

    However, Australian political parties are exempt from complying with the Privacy Act and anti-spam legislation. This means voters cannot effectively protect themselves against data harvesting for political purposes and micro-targeting in election campaigns through unsolicited text messages.

    There is a good case for arguing political parties and candidates should be subject to the same rules as other organisations. It’s what most Australians would like and, in fact, wrongly believe is already in place.

    Trust drives innovation

    Trust in digital technologies is undermined when data practices come across as opaque, creepy or unsafe.

    There is increasing recognition that data protection drives innovation and adoption of modern applications, rather than impedes it.

    The COVIDSafe app is a good example. When that app was debated, the government accepted that robust privacy protections were necessary to achieve a strong uptake by the community.

    We would all benefit if the government saw that this same principle applies to other areas of society where our precious data is collected.

    Information on how to make a submission to the federal government review of the Privacy Act 1988 can be found here.

    Normann Witzleb is an Associate Professor at Monash Law School, and a member of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law.

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. 

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  • Mental health, happiness of Australian children among the worst of rich countries, according to UNICEF reporT

    By Professor Paula Gerber and Sue West

    A report published by UNICEF last week examined the happiness and wellbeing of children in the world’s richest countries. The data from the report was used to also compile a “league table”, and the results are a source of shame for Australia. Not only did we rank 32 out of 38 overall, but when it comes to the mental health of our children, we’re doing even worse – 35 out of 38 countries.

    What’s going wrong?

    Why are children in “the Lucky Country” not enjoying high levels of life satisfaction? Why is suicide the highest cause of death among adolescents aged 15 to 19? Australia, we have a lot of work to do – it’s clear that wealth doesn’t buy happiness.

    The data for this report was collected before the global pandemic struck, demonstrating that Australian children were already struggling. COVID-19 will only exacerbate that. Although children don’t suffer the worst of the virus’ health impacts, they’re the group that will most acutely experience the longer-term negative impacts.

    The statistics regarding youth suicide should sound an alarm. In Australia, we experience 9.7 deaths by suicide per 100,000 adolescents aged between 15 and 19. The vast majority of wealthy countries have far lower rates than this, starting with Greece, which experiences only 1.4 deaths by suicide per 100,000 adolescents aged between 15 and 19.

    We already know that Indigenous young people are three times more likely to kill themselves than non-Indigenous youths. Concerted and targeted efforts to improve the mental health of children must be inclusive of Indigenous children, families and communities.

    The climate effect

    How children feel about their future affects their mental health, and the data reveals that our children worry a lot about the environment:

    “In Australia, 59% of young people consider climate change to be a threat to their safety (only 14% disagree). Climate change and plastic pollution top their list of environmental concerns. Almost 90% want to move to renewable energy, while only 3% want to ‘stay with fossil fuels’. Three out of four adolescents in Australia want their government to act.”

    This suggests that acting on climate change would have a direct positive impact on children’s sense of wellbeing and contribute to positive mental health outcomes.

    Australia cannot ignore this damning report. We must promise our children that we will do better, and that by 2030, all children in Australia will be thriving. This requires action on many fronts.

    Start early

    We need to get things right for children starting in early childhood, when 90% of brain development occurs. The evidence tells us that children thrive when they have strong relationships, supportive environments, and social infrastructure that supports families.

    Consult children and families

    A key factor in children’s happiness is whether they feel they have a voice. Therefore, reforms to improve their wellbeing must be made with children, not just be about them. Children and their families must be included in the design and implementation of all initiatives that concern them. This is consistent with Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which provides that children have the right to express their views, and to have those views taken into account.

    Connect policies

    Social, education, health, environmental and economic policies, programs and services all have a bearing on children’s lives. Carefully integrated policies that complement and strengthen one another and provide the environments and conditions for optimal child development are key to improving child wellbeing. These include:

    • reducing poverty, and ensuring that all children have access to the resources they need
    • improving access to affordable and high-quality early-years childcare for all children
    • improving mental health services for children and adolescents.

    Although the UNICEF report is damning, it’s not all bad news. Australia scored higher for children’s physical health (28th), and their academic and life skills (19th). And we were ranked higher than New Zealand (35th) and the United States, which came absolute last on all three measures – mental health, physical wellbeing, and academic and life skills.

    America’s ranking is not surprising, given it’s the only country in the world not to have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and we’ve all seen how the Trump administration treats children.

    What is surprising is that Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has not been asked any questions about this report. He’s not been required to explain why Australia’s children are so unhappy, and what he intends to do about it. This is in stark contrast to New Zealand, Where Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been grilled about why New Zealand was ranked so poorly.

    This report gives us a baseline from which we can hopefully only go up. But COVID-19 will make that harder. Children’s wellbeing and mental health are likely to decline as a result of lockdowns, school closures, strains on family relationships, and economic uncertainty. To minimise the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis, governments must provide effective support that minimises inequalities amongschildren.

    As the report notes:

    “A child living in a well-off family, with a room of their own, a good internet connection, and parents who have the time, skills and confidence to support home learning will suffer the educational impact of school closures less than a child in a family with poorer material and human resources.”

    It’s up to governments, families and communities to all play a part in helping to ensure that children growing up in “the Lucky Country” are cushioned from the worst effects of COVID19, and grow up in a country that prioritises children having a positive childhood and future.

    Paula Gerber is a Professor in the Monash Law Faculty and an internationally renowned scholar with expertise in international human rights law generally, with a particular focus on children’s rights and LGBTI rights.

     Sue West is the Associate Director at the Centre for Community Child Health, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and Royal Children’s Hospital.

    This article is republished from Monash Lens. Read the original article here. 

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  • Data privacy: stricter European rules will have repercussions in Australia as global divisions grow

    By Associate Professor Normann Witzleb

    A big year for privacy just got bigger. On July 16, Europe’s top court ruled on the legality of two mechanisms for cross-border transfers of personal data.

    The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) struck down the “EU-US Privacy Shield”, an intergovernmental agreement on which thousands of US companies based their data processing with EU trading partners and consumers. At the same time, the CJEU generally upheld so-called “standard contractual clauses” (SCC) for data exports but imposed new requirements on their use.

    The decision has an immediate impact on data flows between the USA and the EU. But it will also create new challenges for Australian companies that engage with Europe.

    The global reach of European privacy laws

    In 2018, the EU brought into force the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), one of the world’s strongest privacy protection frameworks. This latest decision provides further evidence that the GDPR has impact far beyond the EU. It allows data about European citizens to be exported outside the bloc only if an adequate level of data protection is guaranteed.

    Adequacy can be demonstrated at country level, and some major trading partners of the EU (such as Japan, Canada and New Zealand) have been certified by the EU as having a comparable level of privacy protection. Until a fortnight ago, US companies could likewise rely on an adequacy decision for the EU-US Privacy Shield. The Privacy Shield allowed companies to self-certify their data practices against a set of minimum criteria and enhanced US regulatory oversight. The Court has now held that this is not enough.

    What does this mean for Australia?

    Australian companies and consumers need to be mindful of the new CJEU decision. Data exports are very common, particularly where companies operate multi-nationally, outsource some of their data processing or store data on overseas cloud servers.

    Australia was not a party to the EU-US Privacy Shield. It also does not have EU adequacy status. This is because our Privacy Act does not apply to small businesses, employee data, and political parties, amongst others. An EU entity that seeks to export personal data to Australia therefore needs to use other safeguards to ensure that EU personal data remains protected.

    This is commonly done in the form of standard contractual clauses, by which the sender and recipient of data agree that their data processing meets GDPR standards. The CJEU has now clarified that companies and regulators must verify in each case that the clauses stand up in light of the recipient country’s data laws.

    Governmental surveillance programs and access to effective legal remedies are a particular concern. Privacy professionals around the world now have to work out what this new requirement means.

    Deepening global divisions and the trend to data localisation

    To comply with the ruling, companies need to engage in a more detailed risk analysis than before. In some cases, data may no longer be transferred. This is likely to contribute to an international trend to house critical data locally. A recent example of this trend is the COVIDSafe app: the data it collects must remain in Australia.

    The CJEU decision comes at a time of intense public debate of privacy in Australia and many other countries. The COVID-19 pandemic has turbo-charged the digitalisation of many aspects of daily life. Every digital transaction leaves traces in the form of personal information, which could be a target for data mining and surveillance by corporate and state actors.

    It would be sensible to adopt internationally harmonised data protection standards to regulate global data streams. But the world appears currently headed in the opposite direction.

    Despite both the EU and US sides emphasising the need for cooperation after the CJEU ruling, the major trading powers and blocs are increasingly pitted against each other.

    Apart from the long-standing EU-US division over privacy, China, India and Russia have also begun to assert their own distinct data processing models. These powers generally give their citizens fewer privacy rights than the EU. They also make increasing use of data localisation requirements, which prohibit or impede data export, to enforce their own data protection protocols. The intensifying conflict between the US and China, most recently erupting over the new security laws for Hong Kong, also marks data governance and cybersecurity as significant battlegrounds.

    Australia’s new challenges in data protection

    Australia’s data regulation tends to be pragmatic and business-friendly. It steers a middle course between the conflicting privacy approaches of the US and the EU. However, in a world retreating from globalised regulation, it is becoming increasingly difficult not to take sides.

    Privacy is looming larger than ever in public consciousness, and Australia’s Privacy Act is due for an overhaul. More than ever, Australia needs to determine its own course in safeguarding personal information against potential overreach by corporations and governments.

    Normann Witzleb is an Associate Professor at Monash Law School, and a member of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law.

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. 

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  • Silent prayer should have no place outside abortion clinics

    By Tania Penovic and Ronli Sifris

    Introduction

    On June 3rd the Health Care (Safe Access) Amendment Bill 2020 was introduced into South Australia’s House of Assembly. The aim of this Bill is to establish “health access zones”(commonly known as “safe access zones”) around abortion clinics, prohibiting anti-abortion conduct from taking place with a 150m radius of premises at which abortions are lawfully performed. If this Bill passes, it will bring South Australia in line with all other Australian jurisdictions (except for Western Australia) with respect to the protection of women seeking to access the full range of reproductive health care. Such an initiative is to be commended and supported, particularly given that in Clubb v Edwards; Preston v Avery the High Court confirmed the constitutionality of safe access zone legislation (specifically in this case the Victorian and Tasmanian laws).

    In the past few weeks, there has been some discussion regarding whether the Bill should be amended so as to permit silent prayer within the health access zones. As human rights academics and researchers who have conducted in-depth research into this issue, we strongly oppose such an amendment for the reasons set out below.

    Silent prayer should have no place within health access zones

    Between March 2017 and December 2019, we conducted nationwide qualitative empirical research which examined the experience and impact of anti-abortion conduct outside Australian clinics and the effectiveness of safe access zone laws. As such, we are familiar with the various forms of conduct which take place outside abortion clinics and believe that silent prayer outside abortion clinics has a harmful impact on patients seeking healthcare services. It causes shame, stigmatisation and a sense of being watched which undermines privacy and dignity in the context of access to lawful medical services. Silent prayer should not be permitted within health access zones.

    Unlike other picketing activity, silent prayer is not aggressive or individually targeted. But it is clear from our research that the presence of individuals engaged in silent prayer outside clinics has the effect of shaming and stigmatising women and undermining their privacy and dignity. The presence of people praying outside clinics has been described by our interviewees as deeply judgmental and distressing for women seeking access to reproductive health care services.     

    The distress caused to patients by such conduct was described in the following terms by Victoria Dolphin, Nurse Unit Manager at Marie Stopes in the Australian Capital Territory:

    We’ve had one woman that’s come in very distressed that ‘a man was out there praying for me, I know he was praying for me.’  And I think it’s because of that self-perceived shame as well, and I think that’s the real shame about patients in this setting, is they judge themselves before they even get here.  And to have to face that they feel even more judged even if they’re not approached, just from that visual. 

    Ms Dolphin observed that persons engaged in prayer were ‘not aggressive’ and were ‘older men’ who were ‘reading their bibles with their rosary beads.’ Their presence heightened the shame and stigmatisation experienced by women accessing abortion services. 

    The shaming and stigmatisation associated with such conduct was a common theme in our interviews. A general practitioner working in regional Victoria spoke of the sense of being judged and shamed in the following terms:

    You only need five people, or even three people, standing there … they’re men of a particular age and I think my gosh we know that men are a symbol in many cases… of authority in our society. I think that having an older man standing there, I think they do to a degree feel that’s the whole of society that’s judging them. Especially the young ones are not so good at making those rational assessments of the true situation.

    Susan Fahey, the former CEO of Women’s Legal Service Tasmania, described prayer activity occurring outside clinics as being intended to shame and stigmatise women. She elaborated as follows:

    I respect people’s right to religion and other things but I reject quite strongly anyone who says praying is not intended to shame and not intended to whatever-it’s highly judgemental and it’s highly upsetting to the people who have to pass that.   

    Prayer and stigmatisation in the United Kingdom

    Our conclusions with respect to shaming and stigmatisation are consistent with research undertaken in a number of cities in the United Kingdom: see Pam Lowe and Graeme Hayes, ‘Anti-Abortion Clinic Activism, Civil Inattention and the Problem of Gendered Harassment’, 53(2) 2019 Sociology 330-346.

    Lowe and Hayes concluded that those engaged in silent prayer understand their own actions to be supportive and empathic but that their conduct undermines women’s privacy and has a stigmatising effect. They observe that ‘[w]hile their stated objective might be praying to end abortion’ their conduct outside clinics constitutes a ‘deliberate attempt to deter women from exercising their reproductive rights, further contributing to the stigmatisation of abortion’. Such conduct was experienced by women seeking abortions as harassment and was found to undermine women’s expectations of privacy in accessing lawful medical services. Lowe and Hayes observe as follows:

    While it is the case that anyone could see people entering and exiting a building, anti-abortion activists who stand outside clinics are expressly there to draw attention to the building as part of their mission to bear witness. The harassment that women feel, we argue, stems from the presence of activists at clinic sites, rather than from their precise conduct…The failure by anti-abortion activists to civilly disattend directly challenges women’s expectations of privacy and confidentiality, and makes their access of a specific reproductive healthcare service material and public. Moreover, the context of abortion stigma heightens the discrediting that some women feel when seeking services. 

    What about freedom of religion?

    The freedom to manifest one’s religion is not absolute. Under international human rights law, the freedom to manifest one’s religion may be subject to limitations prescribed by law which are necessary to pursue a legitimate aim, including the protection of the fundamental rights and freedoms of others. The presence of individuals praying outside abortion clinics undermines women’s fundamental rights. It undermines the right to privacy and dignity. It undermines their right of access to healthcare services and to the highest attainable standard of health. It sends a message of shame and stigmatisation to women accessing lawful medical services.

    If South Australia is serious about protecting women’s privacy, well-being and dignity in the context of access to the full range of reproductive healthcare services, it should prohibit all forms of anti-abortion conduct outside of clinics, including silent prayer. 

    Both Dr Tania Penovic and Dr Ronli Sifris are Senior Lecturers at Monash Law School and members of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law.

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  • Was there slavery in Australia? Yes. It shouldn’t even be up for debate

    By Stephen Gray and Thalia Anthony

    Prime Minister Scott Morrison asserted in a radio interview that “there was no slavery in Australia”.

    This is a common misunderstanding which often obscures our nation’s history of exploitation of First Nations people and Pacific Islanders.

    Morrison followed up with “I’ve always said we’ve got to be honest about our history”. Unfortunately, his statement is at odds with the historical record.

    This history was widely and publicly documented, among other sources, in the 2006 Australian Senate report Unfinished Business: Indigenous Stolen Wages.

    What is slavery?

    Australia was not a “slave state” like the American South. However, slavery is a broader concept. As Article 1 of the United Nations Slavery Convention says:

    Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised.

    These powers might include non-payment of wages, physical or sexual abuse, controls over freedom of movement, or selling a person like a piece of property. In the words of slavery historian Orlando Patterson, slavery is a form of “social death”.

    Slavery has been illegal in the (former) British Empire since the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade of 1807, and certainly since 1833.

    Slavery practices emerged in Australia in the 19th century and in some places endured until the 1950s.

    Early coverage of slavery in Australia

    As early as the 1860s, anti-slavery campaigners began to invoke “charges of chattel bondage and slavery” to describe north Australian conditions for Aboriginal labour.

    In 1891 a “Slave Map of Modern Australia” was printed in the British Anti-Slavery Reporter, a journal that documented slavery around the world and campaigned against it.

    Reprinted from English journalist Arthur Vogan’s account of frontier relations in Queensland, it showed large areas where:

    … the traffic in Aboriginal labour, both children and adults, had descended into slavery conditions.

    Seeds of slavery in Australia

    Some 62,000 Melanesian people were brought to Australia and enslaved to work in Queensland’s sugar plantations between 1863 and 1904. First Nations Australians had a more enduring experience of slavery, especially in the cattle industry.

    In the pastoral industry, employers exercised a high degree of control over “their” Aboriginal workers, who were bought and sold as chattels, particularly where they “went with” the property upon sale. There were restrictions on their freedom of choice and movement. There was cruel treatment and abuse, control of sexuality, and forced labour.

    A stock worker at Meda Station in the Kimberley, Jimmy Bird, recalled:

    … whitefellas would pull their gun out and kill any Aborigines who stood up to them. And there was none of this taking your time to pull up your boots either. No fear!

    Aboriginal woman Ruby de Satge, who worked on a Queensland station, described the Queensland Protection Act as meaning:

    if you are sitting down minding your own business, a station manager can come up to you and say, “I want a couple of blackfellows” … Just like picking up a cat or a dog.

    Through their roles under the legislation, police, Aboriginal protectors and pastoral managers were complicit in this force.

    Slavery was sanctioned by Australian law

    Legislation facilitated the enslavement of Aboriginal people across the Northern Territory, Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland. Under the South Australian Aborigines Act 1911, the government empowered police to “inspect workers and their conditions” but not to uphold basic working conditions or enforce payment. The Aboriginals Ordinance 1918 (Cth) allowed the forced recruitment of Indigenous workers in the Northern Territory, and legalised the non-payment of wages.

    In Queensland, the licence system was effectively a blank cheque to recruit Aboriginal people into employment without their consent. Amendments to the Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 gave powers to the Protector or police officer to “expend” their wages or invest them in a trust fund – which was never paid out.

    Officials were well aware that “slavery” was a public relations problem. The Chief Protector in the Northern Territory noted in 1927 that pastoral workers:

    … are kept in a servitude that is nothing short of slavery.

    In the early 1930s, Chief Protector Dr Cecil Cook pointed out Australia was in breach of its obligations under the League of Nations Slavery Convention.

    ‘… it certainly exists here in its worst form’

    Accusations of slavery continued into the 1930s, including through the British Commonwealth League.

    In 1932 the North Australian Workers’ Union (NAWU) characterised Aboriginal workers as “slaves”. Unionist Owen Rowe argued:

    If there is no slavery in the British Empire then the NT is not part of the British Empire; for it certainly exists here in its worst form.

    In the 1940s, anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Berndt surveyed conditions on cattle stations owned by Lord Vestey, commenting that Aboriginal people:

    … owned neither the huts in which they lived nor the land on which these were built, they had no rights of tenure, and in some cases have been sold or transferred with the property.

    In 1958, counsel for the well-known Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira argued that the Welfare Ordinance 1953 (Cth) was unconstitutional, because the enacting legislation was:

    … a law for the enslavement of part of the population of the Northern Territory.

    Profits from slaves

    Australia has unfinished business in repaying wages to Aboriginal and South Sea Islander slaves. First Nations slave work allowed big businesses to reap substantial profits, and helped maintain the Australian economy through the Great Depression. Aboriginal people are proud of their work on stations even though the historical narrative is enshrined in silence and denial.

    As Bundjalung woman Valerie Linow has said of her experiences of slavery in the 1950s:

    What if your wages got stolen? Honestly, wouldn’t you like to have your wages back? Honestly. I think it should be owed to the ones who were slave labour. We got up and worked from dawn to dusk … We lost everything – family, everything. You cannot go stealing our lousy little sixpence. We have got to have money back. You have got to give something back after all this country did to the Aboriginal people. You cannot keep stealing off us.

    Thalia Anthony is associate professor of law at UTS, and a Core Member, SIC – Strengthening Indigenous Communities. Stephen Gray is Senior Lecturer at Monash Law School, and a member of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law.

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. This article was one out of 50 chosen for the Conversation’s yearbook from over 4000 articles. It was Monash University’s top article for June 2020, with over 219,000 reads.

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