Justice Mordy Bromberg, the President of the Australian Law Reform Commission, delivered the 2024 Higinbotham Lecture, focusing on the recent ALRC inquiry into anti-discrimination laws.
Bromberg emphasised the enduring equality of human rights, despite what sometimes seems to be a conflict between different human rights.
"All human rights are equal," he said. "There is no hierarchy. There is no ranking."
"One human right does not overrule another when they seemingly intersect. That is because all human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated."
Bromberg also explained that most human rights have limitations, caused in part by the need for one right to respect and tolerate the other.
"Each human right tolerates a legitimate limitation upon that right imposed by the need to respect the substance of each other human right," he said.
"And by every human right so accommodating the next, although human rights may sometimes seem to be in conflict, in truth they never are."
"Respect and tolerance provide the tonic for human rights to maintain an enduring equilibrium, and for the holders of human rights to harmoniously enjoy the freedom, justice and peace that the human rights system aims to provide."
