Australia’s Engagement with Economic and Social Rights

Russell Solomon’s book provides a timely and insightful reminder of the neglect, avoidance and regression that has tended to dominate Australia’s treatment of economic and social rights. He reveals the dangers associated with a neoliberal approach to policy making for the realisation of these rights in the absence of any schemes to ensure their constitutional or statutory protection. His focus on the rights to health, housing, work and social security allows him to demonstrate with clarity the differences between welfare or charity based approaches and a genuine human rights based approach.  This book, with its clear and accessible style, will be an asset to anyone with a genuine interest in understanding how Australia can better protect economic and social rights.
-       Prof. John Tobin, Francine V McNiff Chair in International Human Rights Law, Melbourne Law School, Australia

This timely book fillsa gap by focusing on the implementation and protection of economic and social rights in Australia, particularly in the areas of health, housing, labour and social security. Despite extensive international obligations, these rights are under-protected in Australia, a fact which has been brutally exposed by the Covid-19 crisis. Their protection is confined largely to the political and policy arenas dominated by neoliberal thinking rather than by enforceable laws.

-       Prof. Sarah Joseph, Griffith University, Australia

This book is a contemporary socio-legal study of Australia’s protection of economic and social rights. Despite Australia’s hortatory language of compliance with international rights standards, its translation of these standards into domestic law and policy has been found wanting. In considering Australia’s compliance across the policy areas of health, housing, labour and social security, it is argued that Australia’s failings can be understood in terms of its institutional framework. This framework provides incomplete legal protection for rights and leaves that protection almost exclusively in the realm of politics and policymaking, an arena still dominated by neoliberalism and a political culture averse to the protection and promotion of economic and social rights.


Russell Solomon teaches law in the Global Urban and Social Studies School at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia