A Panel Discussion with award winning thinkers and writers Carolyn Evans, Simon Evans, Klaus Neumann and Spencer Zifcak. This event coincides with the Commonwealth Consultation process on the proposed implementation of a Commonwealth Bill of Rights.

Come and have your say.

Venue: St Margaret’s Anglican Church Hall, 79-81 Pitt Street
Date: Wednesday 13th May
Time: 7.00 - 9.30pm
Entry: $12 (includes refreshments)
BOOKINGS ESSENTIAL: 03 9439 8700 or elthambookshop@bigpond.com

Download a flyer for this event (pdf 160kb)

The National Human Rights Consultation Committee is currently conducting meetings nationwide and taking submissions. This process will conclude on 15 June 2009. Please make a submission online before 15 June 2009.

Our Panellists

Associate Professor Carolyn Evans is Associate Dean (Research) of the Melbourne Law School and a Deputy Director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies. Her teaching and research are in the areas of constitutional law, human rights and religious freedom. She also qualified to practice law and is a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria.Carolyn is the author of Religious Freedom under the European Court of Human Rights and co-author of Australian Bills of Rights: The Law of the Victorian Charter and the ACT Human Rights Act. She is co-editor of Religion and International Law; Mixed Blessings: Laws, Religions and Women's Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region, and; _Law and Religion in Historical and Theoretical Perspective.

Associate Professor Simon Evans is Director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies. Dr Evans researches and teaches in constitutional law, constitutional theory, and property law at the University of Melbourne Faculty of Law. His current research focuses on parliamentary mechanisms for protecting human rights.

Klaus Neumann has held teaching and research positions in universities in Germany and Australia, and worked as an independent historian in New Zealand and Australia. Klaus has edited or written seven books, including Not the Way It Really Was (1992); Shifting Memories (2000); Refuge Australia: Australia’s Humanitarian Record (2004), winner of the 2004 Human Rights Award (Non-Fiction); and In the Interest of National Security (2006), winner of the John and Patricia Ward History Prize in the 2007 NSW Premier’s History Awards. His forthcoming book, Politics of Compassion, will be published in August 2009.

Spencer Zifcak is Professor and Director of the Institute of Legal Studies at Australian Catholic University. He has held appointments as Visiting Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, Wolfson College Oxford, the Faculty of Law at New York University and at the UNESCO Centre for Human Rights Education in Bratislava, Slovakia. Professor Zifcak researches and teaches in international law, comparative constitutional law and human rights law. His books include Mr Ruddock Goes to Geneva and Globalisation and the Rule of Law. His forthcoming book, United Nations Reform is due in August 2009. As Australian Vice-President of the International Commission of Jurists he conducted many human rights observer missions in South East Asia and the South Pacific. He was awarded the Paul Baker memorial prize for human rights by the Law Institute of Victoria for his work there. More recently, he assisted in the establishment of a process of constitutional consultation for the new nation of Timor-Leste and acted as a consultant to the nation’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He holds appointments as a Director of the public policy think-tank, the Australia Institute, and is a Director of the newly established Centre for Inter-Civilizational and Inter-Cultural Dialogue at La Trobe University. He is a legal member of the Mental Health Review Tribunal of Victoria.

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