All people have human rights.
In Queensland the Human Rights Act 2019 protects these rights when you come in contact with the government or use their services – including the police, public hospitals, and public schools.
The human rights are:
You have the same rights as everyone else and have a right to the same protection.
You have the right to use and receive services from the government without discrimination.
This right relates to things the government can do to protect your life, such as having laws about:
and making sure people follow them.
The right to life does not affect laws about abortion.
You have the right not to be:
However, you can be given treatment without your consent to save your life or protect you from harm.
You have the right not to be:
This right does not apply if you are required to do work as part of a court order – such as community service.
You have the right to choose where you live, and to:
This freedom can be limited in an emergency – such as the COVID pandemic – or if you have broken the law and a judge says that you are not free to move wherever you want.
You have the right to:
A dress code at school or work should not stop you wearing clothes required by your faith.
You have the right to:
While you are free to say what you want, you must respect other people – for example, you can’t use hate speech, cyberbullying, or say untrue things to attack people.
You have the right to:
For example, you can go to a peaceful rally or event – but you can’t be violent.
You have the right to:
You have the right to own things – like a phone, car, or land.
The government can’t take away your property unless the law allows it – for example, some laws ban owning certain weapons or types of animals.
You have the right to keep your life private, including your family and home.
The government can’t:
Families are important, and the government has an obligation to protect families.
Children have the right to special protection because of their age. The government must protect children, and treat children in a way that is in their best interests.
You have the right to:
with other people who share your background.
Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples have the right to enjoy their culture, including maintaining their:
If you are arrested or detained – such as in a watch house, mental health unit, or other place that you are not free to leave – you are entitled to certain minimum rights.
If your freedom is taken away – such as in a prison, watch house, secure hospital ward, or other place that you are not free to leave – you have the right to be treated with respect and dignity.
Until you are charged and found guilty of an offence, you must be kept separate from people who have been found guilty. However, overcrowding in prisons sometimes means that this does not happen.
If you have to go to court, you have the right to a fair hearing.
Sometimes people aren’t allowed to watch what happens in court – for example, if children are involved.
You are not guilty of a crime until it is proved in court.
If the judge says you are guilty, you can ask a higher court to look at your case again.
Children who have been detained – whether they have been charged or not – have the right to be:
You have the right not to be tried or punished more than once for the same crime.
This right is about changes in the law.
You cannot be found guilty of a crime, if your action was not a crime when you did it.
A number of rights mention discrimination.
Discrimination is when you are treated worse than someone else because of something about you. Discrimination can be because of things such as your race, disability, sex, colour, age, sexuality, religion, mental health condition, or other characteristics.
Sometimes your rights will conflict with someone else’s rights.
When this happens, the government may limit or restrict your rights to protect the rights of other people or the community.
This is what happened in the COVID pandemic when people couldn’t visit family in nursing homes or prisons. It was to protect the right to life of people in those places.
Sometimes one of your rights might be in conflict with another of your own rights.
This could happen if you had an accident and were unconscious. You could not agree to medical treatment – which is your right – but you also have the right to be given medical treatment in an emergency.
Finding a balance between competing rights can be tricky. The government has to think about the impact on you of limiting your human rights – and what alternatives there are to limiting them.
If you think the government has not considered your human rights in a decision or something they have done that affects you, you might be able to make a complaint.
Connect with QHRC
