Today I speak with Karen Toohey, the ACT Discrimination, Health Services and Disability & Community Services Commissioner since 2016. After a career in marketing and IT in the private sector, Karen joined the Australian Human Rights Commission in 1995 and has since  worked in senior executive  roles in state and commonwealth human rights agencies including time in Victoria as the CEO of the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission and Assistant Commissioner at the Office of the Australian Information Commission.

Karen has managed statutory complaint handling & conciliation functions in state and territory agencies for over 20 years. Karen has  qualifications in law, marketing and computing science and is a well known advocate on issues of human rights and discrimination law.

In the episode today, we had a wide-ranging discussion on how she approaches her role. Complaints handling and regulation in the human rights space is hard, least not because Karen has so many different areas and industries that she handles complaints from. But that breadth allowed for a fascinating conversation about what I think of as “street-level justice” provided by these complaints bodies. I think of them as street level justice, because they’re far more accessible than going through laborious and costly court processes. A quick note my audio was a bit choppy, that’s because it was 36 degrees in Melbourne and I just had to keep the fan on. Sorry, not sorry. Please enjoy the episode.

Timestamps:

• Why regulation matters to Karen (2:15)
• Karen explains her broad role (6:00)
• How to strike the balance between being responsive to industry, and being captured by industry (21:30)
• How to remain impartial, but still enforce the law in challenging times (31:00)
• How to deal with power imbalances between marginalised people who make complaints and those they complain about (41:00)
• The unique challenges regulating health services from a human rights perspective (47:00)
• The personal qualities required to lead human rights regulators (56:00)
• One thing Karen wants regulators to go away and do (1:06:00)