{"id":568603,"date":"2022-03-22T16:30:06","date_gmt":"2022-03-22T16:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/australia-news\/2022\/mar\/23\/rights-watchdog-sees-1445-spike-in-questions-about-victorian-governments-powers-during-covid"},"modified":"2022-03-22T16:30:06","modified_gmt":"2022-03-22T16:30:06","slug":"rights-watchdog-sees-1445-spike-in-questions-about-victorian-governments-powers-during-covid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/03\/22\/rights-watchdog-sees-1445-spike-in-questions-about-victorian-governments-powers-during-covid\/","title":{"rendered":"Rights watchdog sees 1,445% spike in questions about Victorian government\u2019s powers during Covid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018Large volume\u2019 of inquiries asked whether government had power to impose restrictions<\/p><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/ng-interactive\/2018\/may\/15\/the-guardian-app?CMP=cvau_sfl\">Get our free news app<\/a>; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/guardian-australia-morning-mail\/2014\/jun\/24\/-sp-guardian-australias-morning-mail-subscribe-by-email?CMP=cvau_sfl\">get our morning email briefing<\/a><\/li><\/ul><p>Victoria\u2019s human rights watchdog was flooded with inquiries about the state government\u2019s powers during Covid, with the agency reporting a surge in queries and complaints.<\/p><p>The Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission is currently working through a backlog of complaints, with a 17% increase recorded this financial year \u2013 on top of a 1,445% spike in queries about the powers of the state government in 2020-21, compared to the previous year.<\/p><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/guardian-australia-morning-mail\/2014\/jun\/24\/-sp-guardian-australias-morning-mail-subscribe-by-email?CMP=copyembed\">Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning<\/a><\/p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/australia-news\/2022\/mar\/23\/rights-watchdog-sees-1445-spike-in-questions-about-victorian-governments-powers-during-covid\">Continue reading...<\/a>\n<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">This post was originally published on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/australia-news\/2022\/mar\/23\/rights-watchdog-sees-1445-spike-in-questions-about-victorian-governments-powers-during-covid\">Human rights | The Guardian<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018Large volume\u2019 of inquiries asked whether government had power to impose restrictionsGet our free news app; get our morning email briefingVictoria\u2019s human rights watchdog was flooded with inquiries about the state government\u2019s powers during Covid, with&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13954,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1340,338,6,1713,2841,38630],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568603"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13954"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":568604,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568603\/revisions\/568604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}