One in three jobs will be slashed at the Australian Human Rights Commission as a record number of complaints and low base funding take their toll.
The human rights agency has issued a blunt warning that its current funding “does not provide us with the resources required to perform our statutory functions”.
The commission handles complaints under federal discrimination and human rights law, providing a check on government over issues including offshore detention and Covid-19 border restrictions.
Rosalind Croucher, the president of the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), first raised the alarm that the commission was in deficit in the 2020-21 annual report, saying the AHRC faced “significant capacity constraints in dealing with the dramatic increase in complaint numbers over the past year”.
The commission’s work has “increased substantially because of the Covid-19 pandemic”, she said. Further detail from the AHRC suggests this “surge” in complaints amounts to an 85% increase in the past two years compared with the average over the previous five.
The AHRC’s annual core funding was slashed from $22.9m to $14.6m in 2017-18 when it shifted from receiving a direct appropriation to grants through the attorney general’s department.
The Australian National Audit Office has noted that since 2017 the AHRC has run deficits, leading to net debt of $5.4m by June 2021 when the AHRC recognised “we were facing a cashflow problem”.
“We had been operating in recent years with a staffing level above what we can afford,” the AHRC told Guardian Australia.
The AHRC received an additional $16m in the 2021-22 mid-year economic and fiscal update. But its core funding of $16.5m a year pays for 76 staff, not the 144 it estimates are required to handle complaints.
Since July, the AHRC has saved about $1.8m through “immediate budget controls” and cutting 18% of jobs, the agency said.
“To operate within our current appropriation, we estimate we would need to reduce our staffing levels further (by about 33% from July 2021).”
“We commenced the process of a further reduction in our staffing levels in March.”
The AHRC noted the Productivity Commission “has a similar level of statutory office holders” and 169 staff, with a budget of $33.3m.
“The commission is committed to working with the attorney general’s department and department of finance to ensure that we are adequately and reliably resourced to deliver against our statutory obligations into the future.”
Labor’s shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, said “the damage done to the [AHRC] by the Liberals is a shocking indictment of the Morrison government, and further evidence of their contempt for honesty and accountability”.
“The commission plays a vital role in our nation holding governments to account, and defending the human rights of all Australians, and is too important to be treated as yet another place for the Liberals to wage their culture wars.”
The attorney general’s department said funding for the AHRC “is considered as part of budget processes”.
“The government has provided an equity injection of $16m to assist the commission to address the cashflow problem it is currently experiencing and return it to a sustainable financial footing,” it said.
“The appropriation of the commission to perform its core functions has been steady over recent years. The commission also receives additional funding to undertake work on specific projects.”
The AHRC has been a persistent check on the Coalition government, criticising its attempts to keep national cabinet deliberations secret and to restore its power to deport Aboriginal non-citizens.
In 2017 the outgoing AHRC president, Gillian Triggs, accused the then Turnbull government of being “ideologically opposed to human rights”, saying Australia’s human rights are “regressing on almost every front”.
Anti-corruption experts have argued the government must improve the resourcing of bodies including the Australia National Audit Office, AHRC and the office of the information commissioner to improve scrutiny.
