The politics of kindness and fairness

Australia and a Human Rights Act

By Dr Kristine (Kris) Klugman OAM, President of Civil Liberties Australia

Aside from cheering and the long list of thank you’s that accompanied the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s 2025 election victory speech, the quote that really cut through was:

“…the Australian voters have voted for fairness, aspiration and opportunity for all, for the strength to show courage in adversity and kindness to those in need.”

A lot of people have since co-opted the Prime Minister’s language into their own claims before government, but the real issue is why the Prime Minister felt the need to include words like fairness and kindness in the statement he wanted his government to be judged by.

The Prime Minister’s 2022 victory speech was also strong on equality and opportunity, with reference to fairness and kindness. Mr Albanese reiterated these aspects in 2025 because they now resonate with voters alienated from the decision making that affects their lives. They also offer a challenge for governments.

Fairness and kindness are often mutually exclusive in the eye of the beholder. A act of kindness toward one individual can be seen as discriminatory to others, while fairness is driven by impartiality and justness, but not necessarily by kindness or compassion.

This is the petard Peter Dutton hoisted himself with in June 2018 when he warned Australia against showing compassion towards refugees, saying it could undo the government’s hard-fought success in discouraging people smugglers. By August he had intervened in the case of 27-year-old au pair Alexandra Deuwel, saying he

thought it was a “bit rough” for a woman with no criminal history to get kicked out of the country.

Optics poor

The optics of Mr Dutton’s intervention were poor, but the real issue was that he had not explained the basis on which fairness and kindness can coexist and be applied consistently. To be fair to Mr Dutton, Prime Minister Albanese hasn’t explained that either.

As modern management might put it, the issue for both of them is how does a government operationalise something as aspirational as kindness and fairness?

This opens another question of increasing concern in Australia. Fairness and kindness are not enough. The electorate needs to trust the government when it says that the reasons for and consequences of its decisions will be fair and kind.

This trust is the basis of our social capital. It is what the World Bank defines as the social norms, networks and trust that facilitate cooperation within or between groups and generate benefits to society by:

• reducing transaction costs,

• promoting cooperative behaviour,

• diffusing knowledge and innovations, and

• enhancing personal well-being and associated spillovers.

  
  

Trust is the glue that holds our institutions together and gives Australians shared values and rules for social conduct expressed in personal relationships and a common sense of civic responsibility that makes society more than just a collection of individuals.

Over the past 15 years Australians have learned not to trust their governments.

The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer says that 64% of Australians now think government leaders purposely mislead them. Some 62% have a moderate or high sense of grievance because they believe they are alienated from businesses and governments that only serve a select few and hurt the rest.

A majority 53% of Australians simply don’t trust governments. Basically, they don’t believe they’re getting a fair go.

It is no surprise Edelman found that 54% of Australians now believe the social capital that once held this country together has been devalued to the point where it can no longer serve as a foundation for unity and common purpose.

The consequences of this decline in trust have been stark.

‘Fair and kind’ decisions have not lifted trust

Prime Minister Albanese’s first term government made decisions that are arguably fair and kind, including superannuation tax reform, strengthening medicare, women’s economic empowerment, mental health reform and a ban on price gouging. None of them have done anything to lift the level of trust Australians have

in their government.

Behind these initiatives are far more substantial actions aimed at intergenerational kindness and fairness the government needs to make around climate change, taxation, the social wage and our First Nations. These actions will have winners and losers and, to be effective, Australians must either accept them or trust that their

particular circumstances will be dealt with fairly and kindly.

That government decisions continue to fall short of effective action on these issues is one of the great political failings of our time, but it is not entirely the government’s fault.

Any decision with widespread consequences made without the trust of the electorate is now political suicide.

Over the past decade, it has been far easier and more politically rewarding to either focus on “small target” politics or drive down trust still further by just telling people what to be afraid of and who to blame for it.

A society whose members no longer believe it has unity and common purpose is not sustainable, and neither of our two political models are likely to deliver the trust necessary for a society to be viable, fair and kind. Increasing that trust will need a circuit breaker, ideally something that will tie the Government’s accountability for each decision it makes directly to the people it affects.

UN gave us the right to basic human standards

This is not a new problem. The United Nations recognised it back in 1948 when its members agreed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the universal model on which a sustainable society should be based.

The UN model offered every individual State, through the rule of law, a set of rights to which individuals are entitled that are protected and promoted by the government. There would also be an independent and impartial tribunal providing a fair and public hearing holding government decision makers accountable to

individuals and providing effective remedies for breaches of the rights.

Australia was a key player at the UN in developing the world’s human rights declaration: three crucial contributors were H.V. Evatt, Jesse Street and ‘Hoddy’ Hodgson, a Gallipoli war hero who became DFAT’s first secretary (when it was called External Affairs).

Australia has signed up to (“ratified”) every subsequent UN instrument that elaborated on the model. Every liberal democracy on the planet, and a range of other jurisdictions including the ACT, Victoria and Queensland, has looked to guarantee the consistent implementation of that model through a human rights act.

Every liberal democracy but one.

Australia has instead relied on the good will of successive governments to muddle through making decision makers accountable for protecting and promoting our rights. But our trust in that old standard of good government has now run out.

Preliminary consultations already done

Luckily for this Labor Government, the work has already been done on the circuit breaker it needs to create a better national system which will embed greater trust. In May 2024, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights’ (PJCHR) majority report on its inquiry into Australia’s national human rights framework

recommended that Australia implement a “No Rights Without Remedy” model human rights act. The model was championed by the Australian Human Rights Commission in a 2023 report and by the overwhelming majority of submissions to the PJCHR inquiry. The same model is being implemented by the ACT Government,

which has 21 years experience in applying human rights law for its citizens.

The recommended federal model imposes a positive duty on government decision makers to protect and promote human rights.

If that doesn’t happen, there is a clear pathway to remedy by allowing individuals to take any legitimate human rights complaint to independent third party conciliation through the Australian Human Rights Commission. If conciliation is unsuccessful, the commission can refer an individual to a relevant independent judicial body, like

the Administrative Review Tribunal or to a lower court, for a mandated remedy.

The No Rights Without Remedy model treats all human rights complaints as if they were discrimination complaints. Its prime value is in creating a new external incentive for decision makers. The ramifications of its absence from Australia was classically evidenced by Robodebt, which cost the federal government $1.8 billion

in a legal settlement and untold hundreds of millions more in public chaos, concern and diminution of confidence.

The opportunities for more quickly getting public decisions right places the discipline of third-party scrutiny squarely on individual decision makers in government. By adding a powerful and consistently applied motive for getting decisions right, over time costs come down and efficiency improves along with productivity.

A Human Rights Act (HRA) for Australia is a win for the people, and a win for Australia.

Regular and annual complaint monitoring under a HRA produces continuing measures of how the Australian government’s quality control of decision making is working, and whether the nation’s human rights performance is getting better or not. Government quality control actually gets numerical measures, and overall

citizen wellbeing can be calculated in marks out of 100 every year: each department and the government as a whole can report their performance in the annual Budget.

The Australian government has yet to respond to the parliamentary human rights committee’s report, which also proposes improved parliamentary processes and much increased education of children and adults about their human rights, and of the public service about its responsibilities.

Mr Albanese is well aware that the nation’s social capital is at a low ebb, and declining, which renders our society unsustainable and potentially unstable into the future.

The Prime Minister knows – and says – that fairness and kindness are vote winners in a political environment where so many people feel alienated from the decisions that affect their lives.

But he is also aware there are no shortcuts.

The road to better intergenerational decisions achieving a fairer, kinder and more sustainable future begins with boosting trust. A government that offers public accountability to an increasingly distrusting nation through a Human Rights Act based on the No Rights Without Remedy model will be taking a big step down that road.

We await the Albanese government’s response.

About the author:

Dr Kristine (Kris) Klugman OAM has been President of Civil Liberties Australia since 2003 and is coordinator of communications for its National Human Rights Act campaign. Her PhD in Politics at ANU analysed the two-way communication flow between MPs and electors. Earlier degrees were in Community Studies, and History.

She previously served on the NSW Legal Aid Commission, was a foundation member of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, and a researcher with the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, helping to establish the Criminal Justice tertiary course for police and prison officers in NSW.

Kris's OAM in 1987 was for ‘services to education and the community’. She was the firstever female President of Australia’s oldest museum, The Australian Museum. She was the first female board member and full-time Deputy President of the Board of Fire Commissioners of NSW, running the NSW Fire Brigades (now Fire & Rescue NSW) who introduced significant change, including the option of female firefighters for the first time. She helped found the Museum of Fire at Penrith in NSW, and was on the Interim Council of the National Maritime Museum on Sydney Harbour.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristine_Klugman