Former Justice Michael Kirby was joined by satirist Bryan Dawe, Executive Director of the UNAIDS Michel Sidibe, and Monash University’s Professor Adam Shoemaker to launch the Michael Kirby Centre for Public Health and Human Rights last weekend.

And it’s not just naming rights that he gets as Michael Kirby is set to maintain an active involvement in the Centre’s work and future direction.

“I thank [the Michael Kirby Centre team] for deciding to associate their Centre with my name. I commit myself to a close, ongoing relationship. For nearly 30 years, I have had the privilege of being involved in a practical demonstration of the link between public health and human rights. This will be a new and vivid connection,” Kirby said, addressing the hundreds who attended the centre launch.

Check out our photos from the launch here.

The Michael Kirby Centre for Public Health and Human Rights is a collaboration of scholars in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Melbourne’s Monash University. It aims to conduct research which informs the development of public health policies and programmes in which human rights standards and norms are critically considered.

During his address, Michael Kirby spoke of the link between human rights and public health, specifically addressing the HIV epidemic.

“Before HIV came along, public health was not naturally viewed as associated with human rights. In fact, human rights tended to be thrown out the window when a serious epidemic broke out. It requires recognition of a paradox. Acceptance that, to alter human behaviour, society would have to protect the human rights of the infected and vulnerable.

Despite all the other differences and disagreements we have had in politics in Australia in the intervening years, we have basically been united over AIDS. I hope it will always be so because HIV is above politics. It is a test for humanity.”

The centre will undertake teaching programs which facilitate informed inquiry about public health, law and human rights in hope of making a practical contribution to the promotion of public health and human rights. Comprised of lawyers, ethicists, medical practitioners, scientists and others, the new institution will undertake research that critically examines the contribution of human rights and law to the realisation of good health, particularly amongst vulnerable communities in Australia and in the developing world. Kirby Centre staff also undertake activities in Australia and internationally where theories are put into action.

“We should resolve that this Centre will truly become a centre of excellence. That it will become a bright star in the southern hemisphere.

And that it will achieve world renown for the excellence of its investigations, research, its scholarship and publications. Nothing less will be good enough for this Centre. A shining star it will become.

Not ignorance, but knowledge. Not prejudice, but empiricism. Not dogma, but science,” Kirby said.

You can find out more about the Michael Kirby Center for Public Health and Human rights here.