MARK DREYFUS MP

I will speak to you this evening about our shared challenges, our different approaches to tackling those challenges, and how our collaboration strengthens a crucial value that underpins democracy in both our nations - the rule of law. The rule of law is the foundational framework for a society where power is wielded - not arbitrarily, but with accountability and predictability.

For a society and a nation to be free, prosperous and successful, there must be respect for the rule of law.

Today’s meeting of the Police Ministers’ Council comes at a time when the nation is united in demanding that political leaders act to protect women from violence. Violence overwhelmingly committed by men.

Privacy is critical to the functioning of our free and democratic society. It underpins freedom of association, expression and belief, and is of upmost importance to promoting trust in government and industry.

We have a crisis of male violence in Australia.

It is a scourge in our society and it must end.

To create lasting change, women cannot be expected to solve violence against women alone.

It’s time for men to step up.

What Port Arthur taught us in 1996, what the landmark agreement on the National Firearms Register in 2023 has demonstrated, and what the ongoing commitment of gun safety advocates and responsible gun owners show, is that Australians are committed to doing everything we can to keep our communities and police safe from gun violence.

We must continue to look forward to opportunities to strengthen and protect Australia’s human rights framework. As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and consider our achievements since 1948, we must also look forward to how we can continue to make improvements.

It is ninety years since the Law Council of Australia was formed in 1933 in the wake of the Great Depression to speak on behalf of the entire Australian legal profession.

But the Council is now so much more than a peak body and has evolved to play an important role in policy making and advocating for a fair and just legal system.

There is no place in Australia for symbols that glorify the horrors of the Holocaust. And there is no place in Australia for evil and offensive acts that celebrate Nazi ideology. Today, the Albanese Labor government is strengthening our legislation to ensure that never again will anyone in this country be allowed to celebrate or profit from acts and symbols of the Nazis and terrorist organisations.

Health justice partnerships and integrated service models are playing an increasingly critical role in the delivery of legal assistance. Legal need is often connected to other needs, in particular healthcare, and these models recognise and reflect that. This important work that you do reaffirms my view that legal assistance cannot and should not exist in a vacuum. Health justice partnerships foster unique pathways designed to better facilitate access to justice for vulnerable and disadvantaged people

So much of what I have done – and hope to do as Attorney-General – concerns transparency and accountability.

Not as an end in itself.

A bad government that is transparent is not better than a bad government that is not.

But transparency has a tendency to make governments and institutions be better, if only out of a sense of self-preservation.