Prime Minister Julia Gillard used a meeting with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa to stress the need to address human rights abuse allegations in his country.
Their meeting came after damning photographs emerged allegedly showing executions and abuse by Sri Lankan soldiers at the close of the country's civil war.
The president of the International Commission of Jurists' Australian chapter, John Dowd QC, said on Wednesday that photographic evidence of war crimes in Sri Lanka had been sent to him.
The images showed the execution and degradation of female victims as the bloody fighting came to an end in 2009, and had been sent by an Australian union official two weeks ago, he said.
"All members of the commonwealth, if the commonwealth is going to be taken notice of as a human rights body discussing human rights, should take this fact into account," Mr Dowd said.
After Ms Gillard's meeting with Mr Rajapaksa on Wednesday, the prime minister's office said she had asked about progress in Sri Lanka's reconciliation commission.
She had underlined the importance of this process in addressing allegations of human rights abuses in Sri Lanka at the close of the civil war.
Earlier, Mr Rudd said the next Commonwealth leaders' meeting was set to go ahead in Sri Lanka but it was a matter for individual governments how they viewed the situation in that country.
Some commonwealth leaders have already made statements on the issue, including the Canadian prime minister, who has called for a boycott of a Sri Lankan CHOGM.
Ms Gillard said there were no plans for Australia to boycott the CHOGM in 2013.
Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma defended the relevance of the Commonwealth on Wednesday, saying it had "never been in danger of decay" and he was convinced Perth would be a "landmark CHOGM".
In a recent list of countries deemed to be the best in good governance, democracy and rule of law, seven of the top eight were Commonwealth nations, Mr Sharma said.
"This cannot be by accident. This is a result of the sedimentation of the culture of democracy over time which Commonwealth members have been able to generate."
