The very idea that all human beings have inalienable rights, and that humanity is distinctive and precious, is under serious assault.
This year threatens to be the one that makes or breaks the unique moral commitment to human rights that has underpinned, even when flawed, the global order for the past 80 years.
Instead, the message sent around the world by bombastic leaders, acted out by mobs, armies and militias and embedded into the technology that shapes daily life, is that some people are less than human, deserve less empathy, compassion, opportunity or even physical safety.
This is potentially even more dangerous than the implosion of the “international rules-based order”. It normalises heinous behaviour towards other human beings in a world that has never had greater capacity for self-destruction.
You hear it everywhere. The tone is set when the US president declares some people are scum or a Cameroonian “freedom fighter” succinctly says his opponents “don’t see us as human. Likewise we don’t see them as [human].”
Australia, thanks to the work of Labor party leader Doc Evatt, was one of the midwives of the UN declaration of human rights. But Australia remains the only liberal democracy not to have adopted its own constitutional or statutory bill of rights. Instead there is a patchwork of local laws and international agreements.
For all the talk about Australian values this absence is a telling reminder of the fragility of our rights as citizens and human beings.
This has come into sharp focus in the debate after the Bondi attack, and the implosion of the Adelaide writers’ week.
In the rush to blame, the principle is lost. When the threat feels existential, pluralism is attacked and tolerance as a virtue derided.
The Australian commitment to human rights is always subject to political whim. Legislation protecting rights has been voided to allow racially charged laws to pass, including the Northern Territory intervention. States that have legislated to recognise rights, readily vacate the legislation to remove them from some groups – most frequently First Nations people.
After years of work, legislation asserting the rights of artists – something that had been promised in the last South Australian election campaign – was introduced in 2025. But the parliament ran out of time to pass it. Among the principles outlined in the bill was that “all artists, makers and creatives in South Australia have the right to freedom of artistic and creative expression.” If this had been enacted, would it have changed the ground rules, and meant the conundrum played out differently?
Last year, in recognition of the increasing fragility of the international commitment to human rights, the government appointed former attorney general and sitting MP Mark Dreyfus as an international human rights envoy.
It would be good if he started his advocacy at home.
Given the consensus is that Australian constitutional change is just too hard, a statutory bill of rights could have symbolic as well as practical impact. It would also strengthen Australian advocacy in a world where human rights are increasingly derided.
This is not just a legal debate: human rights and empathy touch everything.
In the tick-box world mediated by AI, it is likely to become even more pervasive. We know that the selection biases of technology are increasingly excluding people, ensuring the world order as it exists in the minds of technocrats is imposed on us all. They generally don’t do empathy or pay attention to people not like them.
Much of the time we can work around this, but sometimes it is accentuated.
Over the summer break I had two experiences that threw this into stark relief. Not the grand infringements of human rights that capture the headlines, but mundane encounters that point to the banal cruelty of a data-driven world in which empathy has evaporated and shades of grey no longer exist.
In response to one of those slightly threatening robodebt-inflected Centrelink letters, I waited until I had the time to sit on a call (last time it took three hours) and was pleasantly surprised that after 38 minutes a human answered.
I provided the required case number and then said, “But the person has died.”
The operator proceeded: “Can you spell his name again … and the birth date … the reference number.” I did this, and then added: “I know you are working to a script, but when someone tells you the client has died, it would be appropriate to pass on your condolences.”
“Oh yes,” he replied, “You are right. I am working to a script, we don’t have that option.”
“Well in the interests of training and quality control I hope this call is recorded and that is fixed,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” the operator replied, and without missing a beat we continued to populate the form with the details the script required.
A few weeks earlier a brilliant young colleague, educated to the highest level in the Stem disciplines, said with unnerving clarity when discussing whether to appeal a questionable driving fine: “I don’t like to rely on human intervention.”
If we give up on human intervention, the technocrats have won. There will be even less room for human rights in the world they are crafting in the name of efficiency and profit, under a cover of bombastic rhetoric. It’s not a fight we can afford to lose.
