Human Rights Commissioner calls for formal review of Governments pandemic response

With Western Australia still in a state of emergency two years after the pandemic, Australian Human Rights Commissioner Lorraine Finlay, is now calling for a formal review of a potential breach of human rights throughout the pandemic. 

"I think over the last few years, Australians have dealt with some of the most significant restrictions on our human rights of any country in the world. Given we are no longer in the acute phase of the pandemic it's a really important time to look back and learn some lessons on that," Ms Finlay told Oliver Peterson on Perth Live.

"You can understand the state of emergency earlier on, when we didn't really know what we were dealing with. However they were never designed to be used on this rolling on-going basis, they were designed for short, sharp emergencies."

"This is why reviews are so important. We seem to be normalising these types of emergency responses and we are actually losing sight of how significant those restrictions have been and the impact it had on people."

Ms Finlay has written an opinion piece saying human rights cannot be left at the mercy of emergency orders.

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