Australia Civic Space Legal Framework Report

The Law Library recently published on its website a new, substantial report on the civic space legal framework in Australia. This report accompanies several others on the legal frameworks in different countries around the world, including combined reports on Brazil, Finland, Morocco, and Tunisia; Portugal and Romania; and reports on Spain, Peru, and Indonesia.

As with the previous reports, the report on Australia outlines the legal protection of various rights and freedoms, including access to government information, freedom of expression and of the press, freedom of assembly and association, freedom of religion, and freedom from discrimination. However, the Australian system has distinct differences in its approach compared to the other countries, as the Australian Constitution does not contain a bill of rights, and there is no core human rights legislation or a charter of fundamental rights at the federal level. Three of the country’s eight states and self-governing territories have passed such legislation, with wording derived from international instruments such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

While few rights are protected directly by the Constitution, rights are protected through the common law, the application of international human rights instruments, detailed anti-discrimination laws at the federal and state level, and through processes and entities established under the Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986 (Cth) and the Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny Act) 2011 (Cth), as well as through various statutes covering different areas of law.

The report covers aspects of the legal framework across the federal and state levels. Issues that have been discussed and addressed through legislative changes across the country in recent years include hate speech or “anti-vilification” laws and hate crimes or “serious vilification” offenses related to advocating or threatening violence against people due to their membership in particular groups. This has included bans on publicly displaying prohibited Nazi symbols and terrorist organization symbols, and on giving a Nazi salute. There have also been various new restrictions in some jurisdictions related to protests or public assemblies, including in relation to activities near places of worship, the use of face coverings, and the use of “dangerous attachment devices” to disrupt lawful activities. Aspects of these laws have been challenged in court.

Another topic that has seen considerable debate is the protection of religious freedom. There have been studies and reports on this issue, and various bills have been drafted regarding religious discrimination. In 2025, the Australian government established two special envoys, one on combatting Islamophobia and one on combatting antisemitism. Both have issued reports and recommendations, and the envoys have been involved in discussions about possible responses to the issues following the terrorist attack on a Jewish gathering at Bondi Beach in December 2025. Outside of the timeframe of the Law Library’s report, in January 2026, the government established the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

The Law Library’s report also covers open internet and civic space in the digital age, privacy and data protection, laws governing civil society organizations, and citizen participation in public governance. It pulls together many laws and issues I have researched and written about over the past 16 years as a foreign law specialist at the Law Library. One thing to note is that the report provides a snapshot of the framework at the start of 2026 – new legal and policy reports and new amendments or laws are frequently published in the different Australian jurisdictions, and new court cases emerge in response to different laws. Luckily, information about these matters are readily available online through government and parliamentary websites, in free legislation and court databases, and are reported on by various media outlets.

For more, read our full report, Australia: Civic Space Legal Framework.

The report is an addition to the Law Library’s Legal Reports (Publications of the Law Library of Congress) collection, which includes over 4,000 historical and contemporary legal reports covering a variety of jurisdictions, researched and written by foreign law specialists with expertise in each area. To receive alerts when new reports are published, you can subscribe to email updates and the RSS feed for Law Library Reports (click the “ subscribe ” button on the Law Library’s website).

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