'Proportionality Analysis: How to balance (and limit) human rights in Queensland'

'Proportionality Analysis: How to balance (and limit) human rights in Queensland'

‘In 2019, the Queensland Parliament took an important step on the pathway to human rights protection when it adopted the Human Rights Act 2019 (‘HRA’), which came fully into force in 2020. The HRA recognises 23 human rights, provides accountability mechanisms that impose obligations on all arms of government and creates a procedure to manage individual complaints about human rights breaches.

One such mechanism is proportionality analysis which applies a balancing process to assess whether government actions or legislation that limit human rights are proportionate to their intended purpose, and therefore whether a proposed limitation on a human right or rights does not lead to incompatibility and is justified under the HRA.

In this presentation, Nicky will talk about the HRA’s structured approach to proportionality analysis, and the range of relevant factors which may be considered and balanced before a human right can be limited, with reference to provisions of the HRA and Queensland cases which have discussed and applied them.’