The human rights movement spread across the globe throughout the 20th Century.   People who believed in protecting citizens from state abuse of individual rights formed 'civil liberties' and 'human rights' organizations.   In England, a National Council on Civil Liberties (www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk) emerged in the 1920s, around the same time the American Civil Liberties Union was created.  The first civil liberties groups (rights associations) in Canada were born in the 1930s in the throes of the Great Depression and the rise of the political Left.  Australia also organized civil liberties groups in the 1930s.

The following few pages provide an overview of the history of Australia's first and most famous rights association, the Australian Council for Civil Liberties. There is also some discussion on some of the most explosive debates on civil liberties in Australia in the early to mid-20th Century.   This section is designed simply as an introduction to a topic that has yet to be explored in detail by scholars.