Human rights are standards governments around the world have agreed to meet so that everyone can live a safe, free and dignified life. This inaugural annual assessment of Australia’s contemporary human rights record provides an evaluation of how well Australia is protecting people’s human rights. It assesses the current state of human rights protection against six key categories:

1. democratic freedoms
2. economic justice
3. racism and migration
4. First Peoples’ justice
5. safety
6. equality and fairness.

For each theme it identifies:

• recent human rights advances: where governments have positively advanced human rights
• urgent human rights issues: where serious human rights concerns exist and are not being addressed sufficiently
• other priority human rights issues: where further action is required to address known human rights challenges.

The report card is intended to be a starting point for building better dialogue about human rights in Australia. The goal is to improve the accountability of governments in relation to how they protect the rights of every person in Australia.

The report is provided with assessment fact sheets.