The Victorian Corrections Amendment Bill 2026 reveals what happens when a government decides that the difficulty of respecting rights is a sufficient reason to remove them.

The Victorian Government has introduced legislation that would allow Corrections Victoria to deny people in prison even one hour a day genuinely outdoors. In doing so, it has acknowledged that the law is incompatible with human rights and proposes overriding Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities indefinitely.

The Government has also acknowledged that the Bill is, in part, incompatible with the objectives of the Statewide Treaty Act: it may compound the unacceptable disadvantage experienced by Aboriginal people and result in unequal access to human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Section 47 of the Corrections Act provides that a person in prison who is not ordinarily engaged in outdoor work has the right to be in the open air for at least one hour each day, weather permitting.

In January, the Supreme Court considered what “in the open air” means in a case about yards attached to cells in high-security and management units at Barwon Prison and the Metropolitan Remand Centre. Some of these were small concrete enclosures with mesh roofing, obstructed sky, little sunlight and no sensation of wind. Fluorescent lights remained on constantly. Others were surrounded by brick, bars, steel sheets and Perspex.

The Court found that several of these spaces did not provide a meaningful sense of being outdoors. Offering access to them did not meet the statutory entitlement to be in the open air. It also breached the right of people deprived........

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