5. Enhancing the role of Parliament in protecting human rights In an analysis on the 10th anniversary of the committee, Charlotte Fletcher and Anita Coles summarise that: Overall, the committee has considered that three-quarters of bills do not raise human rights concerns requiring the committee’s comment. This is because the bills may not have engaged any human rights, they may have promoted rights, they may have limited rights but it appeared these were permissible limits, and/or they raised only marginal human rights concerns.13 A key aspect of the scrutiny process is the consideration of a Statement of Compatibility with human rights for all bills and disallowable legislative instruments introduced into the Commonwealth Parliament.14 The ‘primary function’ of these Statements of Compatibility is ‘to assist the Committee when it considers relevant human rights issues and to inform parliamentary consideration and debate’. Over its 10 years of operation from 2011, the PJCHR has had an increasingly important educative role – ‘enhancing the understanding of, and respect for, human rights in Australia, and facilitating the appropriate recognition of human rights issues in legislative and policy development’.15 It has produced and revised explanatory material and other resources.16 (c) Assessing effectiveness of parliamentary scrutiny The following strengths of the parliamentary scrutiny role of the committee have been identified: • the requirement to produce [Statements of Compatibility] for all proposed legislation, with which there has been formal compliance by the executive • the industriousness of the PJCHR, as evidenced by the significant volumes of analysis it has conducted • the consultative approach adopted by the PJCHR, whereby proponents of legislation are afforded an opportunity to provide further justification for their proposals beyond that contained in the Statement of Compatibility, and • the regime’s success in achieving its stated aim of limiting the scope for litigation arising under the Act.17 However, as Professor George Williams and Lisa Burton observed in 2013, the ‘ultimate efficacy’ of the committee’s work ‘will depend on Parliament’s ability to self-regulate its own compliance with the regime’.18 What ‘ultimately matters’, said Michael Tolley, is ‘whether rights are adequately protected’.19 A number of commentators have identified challenges to the effectiveness of parliamentary scrutiny, and human rights scrutiny.20 In 2014, UK research by Dr Phillipa Webb and Kirsten Roberts of King’s College London identified challenges to parliamentary oversight of human rights including political realities, lack of independence, shifting national priorities, the existence of a multiplicity of actors, the unavailability of sufficient resources and varying levels of human rights expertise. They also noted what they termed the ‘iceberg phenomenon’, whereby the visible impacts of parliamentary human rights activity may not be in the public domain, potentially impacting the legitimacy and promotion role of the parliament.21 In a series of articles, Professor George Williams and a number of co-authors have contributed empirical assessments of the effectiveness of Australia’s human rights scrutiny regime, by looking at: the deliberative impact of the regime within Parliament; the legislative impact of the regime, in the extent to which it results in improvements from a rights perspective to the legislative output of Parliament or the executive; judicial impact; media impact and international impact.22 FREE & EQUAL: Revitalising Australia’s Commitment to Human Rights 103