Australian Human Rights Commission CRPD information concerning Australia – 11.03.13 • a National Action Plan on Human Rights. 14. The Australian Government has invested over $12 million in a range of education initiatives to promote a greater understanding of human rights across the community. This has included an education and training program for the Australian Government public sector which has comprised the development of resources and materials and the training of over 700 public sector employees on human rights principles. Tailored and targeted human rights training to specific sectors of the public service will also take place in 2013. 15. The Commission welcomes the above initiatives, however notes that such training needs to be comprehensive across agencies and embedded into public service practice. In particular, the Commission encourages the Australian Government to ensure that specific Disability Convention training be undertaken with the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Launch Transition Agency (section 3.7 below).5 16. The Commission believes that the Human Rights Framework would be significantly strengthened by a greater integration of human rights in primary and secondary education. The Commission has been working with the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority to ensure: 17. 3.3 18. • human rights are reflected in the national school curriculum, and • the adoption of language in the national school curriculum, which includes the learning needs of all students with disability as part of the diverse learning needs of all students. The Commonwealth Parliament passed the Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011 (the Scrutiny Act), which came into force on 4 January 2012. The Scrutiny Act provided for the establishment of a Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. This Committee was established on 13 March 2012, and has been very active in its scrutiny of the compatibility of bills and legislative instruments with Australia’s human rights obligations. The requirement that all bills and disallowable legislative instruments be accompanied by a statement assessing their compatibility has largely been complied with. The most recent example of this is the Statement of Compatibility that accompanied the draft National Disability Insurance Scheme Bill 2012 (section 3.7 below). National Human Rights Action Plan The Australian Government released the country’s third National Human Rights Action Plan on 10 December, 2012. Although Australia was the first nation to develop a Human Rights Action Plan (in 1994, following the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights), the 1994 Action Plan and its 2004 update have been widely acknowledged as having had very limited impact. In the development of a new Action Plan, the Australian Government has followed a much improved process, with substantially increased conformity 5