NEXT50 Lunch: Rights for All, Not for Some: The AHRC at 40

Join us for our final NEXT50 lunch of 2026 with former Human Rights Commissioner Lorraine Finlay, in conversation with Peter Kurti.

This December marks International Human Rights Day and 40 years since the establishment of the Australian Human Rights Commission.

As the Commission reaches this milestone, Lorraine will share her reflections on five years at its heart: what the Commission has achieved, the debates it has navigated, and the challenges it faces as it looks to the decades ahead, including the Commission's response to issues such as rising antisemitism, social cohesion and the protection of fundamental freedoms.

Human rights are at their most powerful when they unite people and offer hope. But in an era of deep division, how do we keep them that way? What has 40 years of the Commission meant for Australians? How should freedoms of speech, religion and association sit alongside other rights? And how can human rights remain universal, belonging equally to everyone rather than to any one side of a debate?

Dr Lorraine Finlay served as Australia's Human Rights Commissioner from November 2021 to November 2026, with particular responsibility for fundamental freedoms, including freedom of speech, religion and association. She was previously a law lecturer at Murdoch University, a State Prosecutor in Western Australia, and a Senior Human Trafficking Specialist with the Australian Mission to ASEAN.

Peter Kurti is Director of the Civil Society program at the Centre for Independent Studies and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Notre Dame Australia. He has written extensively on religion, liberty and civil society in Australia, leads CIS's research on antisemitism, and appears frequently as a commentator on television and radio.