Welcome to the online survey for Rights & Responsibilities 2014.

Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner, Tim Wilson, is conducting a national consultation about how effectively we protect people’s human rights and freedoms in Australia. The consultation will focus on building understanding and improved protection of our fundamental human rights, freedoms and responsibilities.

Past consultations, such as the National Human Rights Consultation under the previous federal Government, have tended to focus mainly on what government should do to protect human rights. This consultation aims to go beyond this objective and identify where there are restrictions on rights and freedoms that are disproportionate to the harm to be prevented. Importantly, the consultation seeks to identify where people are advancing their rights and freedoms through community-based and voluntary programs.

Discussions will focus on some of the key rights and freedoms that have traditionally underpinned our liberal democracy in Australia. These include:

the right to freedom of opinion and expression

the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion

the right to freedom of association

property rights.

This survey includes questions about each of these rights, but there is no need to answer all of them. You can choose to skip particular sections and comment only on particular rights that you feel are relevant.

For further information about these rights and/or the national consultation, please see the Discussion Paper.

The survey should take between 15-30 minutes to complete. Please ensure you complete it by Friday 14 November 2014.

Please note that when making a submission, you are indicating that you have read and understood the Commission’s Submission Policy which can be found at https://www.humanrights.gov.au/submission-policy.

Once again, thank you for your time and feedback.