Bureaucrats are struggling with it and lawyers just do not understand it, but five years on, the ACT's Human Rights Act has been given a qualified stamp of approval by a team of Australian National University experts. The laws, which were Australia's first Legislative Bill of Rights when they were introduced in 2004, guaranteed the territory's citizens a range of rights, including the right to life, a fair trial and freedom of expression and required all future decisions by the ACT's courts to be consistent with the Act's provisions. A report by a team of ANU experts, led by Professor Hilary Charlesworth, Professor Andrew Byrnes and Gabrielle McKinnon, has, with some reservations, declared the Bill a win for human rights in the ACT.

The authors write that a ''lively, if sometimes fragile'' culture of respect for human rights within the territory government has been fostered, although it noted many bureaucrats still did not understand their obligations under the Act.

The laws were passed in March 2004 with the ACT Liberals vowing to repeal them when they next won office.

But the torrent of litigation feared by the Bill's critics has not materialised, with references to the Act in only 91 cases in courts and tribunals in its five years of operation and, according to the report, these have not been expertly conducted. The report says the territory's courts need to become more active in the human rights ''dialogue''. ''The courts have, for the most part, remained a spectator to the Human Rights Act dialogue thus far,'' it said.