By Bill Mason
BRISBANE — The joint office of the federal and state Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission here is to close on December 9, following a funding dispute between the Howard and Borbidge governments.
HREOC offices in Rockhampton and Cairns are to shut down also, while the Queensland government is to establish a separate state-based Anti-Discrimination Commission. Human rights complaints under federal legislation, some 20% of previous commission cases, will now be handled at long distance from Sydney. Redundancy notices have been handed out to around 30 federally employed staff, who will not be transferred to the new state body.
Commission state head John Britton criticised the separation of federal and state offices. "The 'one-stop shop' arrangement is plain common sense", he said. "It avoids fragmentation and duplicating functions and service delivery by the two levels of government."
He said people would feel threatened about lodging complaints with the new state government-operated and -funded commission because it would not be an independent statutory body, but part of the Justice Department.
Queensland Council of Civil Liberties Council president Ian Dearden said on November 14 that there was great concern that the expertise of the federal commission's staff would be lost.
Community and Public Sector Union members in HREOC here met on November 21 to condemn the federal government for its failure to maintain the office in Queensland, and called for union action to reverse the closure. Members discussed imposing bans on work associated with office closures, and on referring complaints under federal legislation to Sydney when the work would normally be done in Queensland.
Members also discussed urging HREOC members in Sydney to take complementary industrial action, and launching a community and media campaign.
The Anti-Racist Campaign has called a picket of the HREOC office here on December 6 at 4.30pm to protest the closure as a threat to community access to anti-discrimination protection in this state. For further information, phone (07) 3254 0565 or 3871 1446.