(c) What rights should be included in a Human Rights Act? The key function of the Human Rights Act will be to coherently implement Australia’s international obligations domestically, and to reflect and codify fundamental common law rights. It would provide the ‘bedrock of rights’ in Australian law. The Commission’s recommended model primarily incorporates rights derived from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). When formulating the wording of these rights, the Commission has taken into account state and territory human rights instruments, and Australia’s specific constitutional and federal structure. The Commission has also reflected Australia’s obligations arising from ‘thematic’ treaties beyond ICESCR and the ICCPR, relating to particular subsections of the population, such as children (Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)) and persons with disability (Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)); as well as rights and principles from the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), noting Australia’s particular obligations to First Nations peoples. The Commission has proposed embedding key overarching principles from these instruments through the inclusion of a ‘participation duty’ and a related ‘equal access to justice duty’ in relation to the Executive. The Commission also proposes that the thematic instruments are reflected through the inclusion of a clause that requires the Human Rights Act to be interpreted in light of international human rights instruments. This clause would reference the seven core treaties that Australia has ratified, and UNDRIP. This will encourage courts (as well as Parliament and the Executive) to take into account these instruments when interpreting the rights within the Human Rights Act, and considering how the rights in the Human Rights Act may apply to federal legislation that raises human rights considerations. FREE AND EQUAL A Human Rights Act for Australia 2022 17