Charter Champion seminars
Under Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities, public sector workers have obligations to act compatibly with human rights and to consider human rights in their decisions. Our Charter Champions seminar series provides engaging conversations about the role of human rights in Victoria’s public sector.
About the Charter Champion seminars
With four seminars per year, the Charter Champions seminar series brings together human rights experts from the public service, academia and advocacy to share practical strategies for embedding human rights in your work and decision-making processes.
Seminar 2: Human rights and LGBTQA+ rights
LGBTQA+ people and their families should enjoy lives free of stigma, discrimination and violence. They have the right to safety, inclusion and agency. They should experience equal outcomes through equal access to resources, opportunities and influence across the full spectrum of rights enjoyed by Victorians.
The law plays an important role in a range of areas of public life for LGBTQA+ communities, as it does for all communities. All people in Victoria have the human rights detailed in the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities, including the right to recognition and equality under the law. However, not all Victorian law treats LGBTQA+ people the same as other Victorians.
Not having equal rights or not making laws that ensure equal rights means LGBTQA+ people can’t live with confidence that they will get the same protections and opportunities as other people. For many in the LGBTQA+ community, Victorian laws and legal institutions continue to be sources of trauma. This might be due to past wrongdoings, present inequalities or through a lack of recognition and inclusion.
In the second seminar in the series, Anna Brown, CEO of Equality Australia, will examine relevant laws that public authorities can utilise to ensure their decisions are responsive to LGBTQA+ experiences. She will also discuss how these laws can help assess and mitigate potential impacts on LGBTQA+ communities, fostering more inclusive and equitable outcomes in public policy and administration.
Event details
Title: Charter Champions Seminar 2: Human rights and LGBTQA+ rights
Date and time: 12.30pm, Thursday 5 September 2024
Format: Keynote presentation with quiz and Q&A
Delivery: via Zoom
Audience: Victorian public sector workers
Cost: Free to attend, but registration required
Register: via Humanitix
Our speaker: Anna Brown
Anna Brown’s fingerprints are on nearly every major reform for LGBTIQ+ people in recent years. She played a critical role in the campaign for marriage equality co-chairing the Equality Campaign.
Anna has been instrumental in hard fought battles to secure federal LGBTI discrimination protections, remove discriminatory laws across the country and right historical wrongs by establishing schemes to erase historical homosexual offences.
Anna’s legal work has helped improve access to hormone treatment for young trans people, advance marriage equality and further recognition of gender diversity.
Previous seminars
Seminar 1: Upholding children’s rights – 10am, Thursday 9 May 2024.
In our first seminar in the series, Professor Paula Gerber, one of Australia’s preeminent human rights scholars, shared insights into the scope of children’s rights in Australia and Victoria. Professor Gerber shared her reflections on the interaction of children’s rights with the work of the Victorian public sector including:
- the child protection system and the relationship between families and children
- the collective and individual rights of First Nations children and families
- raising the age of criminal responsibility in Victoria
- children’s rights in custodial settings
- equitable access in the education space for children with disability, First Nations children, and children of all gender identities and sexual orientations.
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