Govt cuts funding to human rights bodies
Just days after the federal government reaffirmed its commitment to a UN human rights convention, it cut funding to the body responsible for coordinating it.
The federal government has slashed the funding of the organisation it has made responsible for coordinating Australia’s obligations under a UN convention aimed at preventing human rights abuses in places of detention.
Buried in the federal budget this week was a cut of about $6 million to the Commonwealth Ombudsman, the body nominated by the government to oversee Australia’s implementation of the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT) and conduct independent inspections of immigration detention centres and other places of detention.
Australia has already failed to meet its deadline to implement OPCAT, which it ratified in late 2017. The government has now written to the UN to request a further 12-month extension but this is yet to be granted, making Australia currently in breach of the UN convention.
Less funding and more responsibilities
OPCAT requires signatory nations to grant a group of UN experts unrestricted access to all places of detention, including prisons and immigration detention centres. It also requires the establishment of independent oversight bodies - known as national preventive mechanisms (NPMs) - to conduct proactive inspections of these places.
NPMs must be wholly independent from the government, with adequate resourcing and funding.
The federal government has appointed the Commonwealth Ombudsman as its NPM, and to play a coordinating role for the states and territories. This means the Ombudsman will be required to conduct proactive inspections of places of immigration detention, Australian Defence Force places of detention and Australian Federal Police holding cells.
The Ombudsman was appointed in 2018, and OPCAT was due to come into force in Australia in January this year.
While it has handed the Commonwealth Ombudsman significant new duties under OPCAT, the federal government will also be slashing its funding over the coming years, as revealed in this week’s budget.
The Ombudsman will be allocated $47.75 million in 2022-23, but this number will drop to $42.8 million in the following year and $41.3 million in 2024-25, equating to a cut of nearly 15 per cent.
The Victorian Ombudsman has estimated that the state’s NPM would require an annual operating budget of $2.5 million.
The funding cut comes just days after the Attorney-General’s Department said it was still committed to implementing OPCAT in a practical and effective way.
Australia OPCAT Network coordinator Steven Caruana says the funding cut is disappointing and is in contrast to a commitment to implement the obligations.
“The rhetoric is hard to believe when a mere four days later it announced a budget cut to the Office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman,” Caruana tells me.
“The Commonwealth Ombudsman has repeatedly stated that ‘in order to have an effective and regular preventive inspection regime, bodies will require new or expanded methods of operation. These will need a commensurate increase in resourcing over time’.”
The Coalition is also planning to cut the funding of the Human Rights Commission, which will receive $29.9 million in 2022-23 but only $20.2 million by 2025-26, a cut of more than 30 per cent.
A funding deadlock
Despite a January deadline to have NPMs up and running, Australia’s two biggest states - New South Wales and Victoria - are still yet to even nominate which bodies will be responsible for this or release legislation facilitating this.
This is due to a funding deadlock with the federal government which is still yet to be resolved.
Buried in the budget was funding over two years for each state and territory listed as “not for publication” due to the fact it hasn’t been decided yet as negotiations are ongoing.
This is despite governments having well over four years to prepare the launch of OPCAT.
The Commonwealth is offering a one-off funding package for each jurisdiction to assist with the launch of OPCAT responsibilities, conditional on this funding being matched and performance milestones being met.
The federal government is also negotiating with the states on creating an intergovernmental agreement, months after the deadline, but has opted not to introduce legislation covering the convention.
“The government has taken the view that federal legislation for OPCAT is not necessary, despite the Subcommittee’s unequivocal view that an NPM must be underpinned by a clear legislative basis,” Caruana says.
“It clearly needs to set an example that states and territories can follow if we hope to be compliant with our voluntary commitment.”
The Attorney-General’s Department has confirmed that it wrote to the relevant UN subcommittee on 21 December last year requesting a one-year extension to the deadline, saying the additional time is needed “due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has made progress difficult”.
Despite this excuse, Australian governments had more than two years before the pandemic to prepare for these obligations.
The implementation of OPCAT has been heralded as an opportunity for Australia to address human rights abuses in prisons and other places of detention and reduce the number of Indigenous deaths in custody.