The A-G has just announced that after much deliberation the Government has decided we’re not going to have a national Bill of Rights. We’re going to have a Framework instead, apparently. What that would mean I’m not sure. (My guess: Whatever the people administering the “framework” decide it is at any particular time.)
Not everyone is happy with this decision. Father [Frank] Brennan told The Age: ”I am disappointed that more coherent reasons for not adopting a human rights act were not offered by the government in light of the strong community sentiment for one.”
Oh, Frank, Susan, you sillies! I have no background in Human Rights law or government whatsoever but the reason is as about as coherent as it gets. Having put the indigenous unemployed of the Northern Territory on the Susso, they’ve been busily repainting and doing up the old Curtin gulag. Signing up to a Bill of Rights at this time would just lead to embarassing questions from all the wrong sort of people.
Move along.
Wow, a framework of rights sounds really really … meaningless.
But as McClelland said, perish the thought that this government would do anything that ‘divided the community’, and what could be more divisive than enshrining people’s rights in law?
Shelved for the same reason the ETS was, focus groups have shown it will be electorally unpalatable & there is an election looming.
Divisive, exactly. Discussion on a bill of rights would divide the nation with a cleave that hasn’t been seen since the days of Keating.
The fact that a dingbat like Fr. Frank Brennan is in favour of it is rather a good reason to be against it.
The fact that you’re against it Steve @ the pub, tends to point towards it being a good idea.
How many OECD countries have a Bill or Rights? All of them?* They seem to get on fine with their judiciary.
* I just checked Wikipedia, and the answer is yes.
Leaving aside my reality based opinion on a bill of rights (lawyer’s picnic), and this site’s groupthink obtuness being on the wrong side of just about everything over the past few months, it IS sorta telling that Rudd believes there are votes to be lost by introducing it before an election.
The A-G’s words:
“The Government believes that the enhancement of human rights should be done in a way that as far as possible unites rather than divides our community, and the framework is designed to achieve that outcome.”
So a Bill of Rights would be divisive. There would be those opposed to the violation of what other countries deem to be human rights. And then there would be those who have no objection to human rights being violated. The former group would most likely be those who’ve experienced fundamental rights breaches with little or no redress. The latter would be those who have so far or may have intentions in the future of breaching the fundamental rights of others.
I get it now. It would be divisive to put in place laws to protect the human rights of Australians because those whose interests lie in violating the rights of others would be handicapped in the free for all that exists now. The latter group wouldn’t like it. They’re right. Far too divisive. Couldn’t have that.
How many tin-pot dictatorships have a Bill of Rights?
We already have one insane BoR law here in Victoria thanks, courtesy of the execrable Rod Hulls.
Well, satp, the Joel Gibson article is centred round the following:
“…resistance to a bill..or charter, has centred round fears of power shift from parliaments to judges, who would be asked to assess whether laws are compatible with human rights…without the veto.. There have also been fears that it could prevent religious institutions…from hiring religious staff (so WHAT!?).”
satp, dont’ you beleive that “laws should be compatible with human rights”?
I suppose you think ecological sustainability as a means for determining “development”, should be likewise opposed?
A rational system must have some sort of substantial basis on which to rest, or we are back to mindless Hobbesianism and the Middle Ages and rule by virtual fiat by black shirted cretin types.
Checks and balances.
I recognise Anthony Nolan’s comment; a similar idea passed thru my mind after I’d posted earlier. Someone told me to “embrace paradox”, but what we could call “contradiction” is not so easily resolved; no one wants to be a “patsy”.
I really dont see what the fuss is. As Ive pointed out before, we actually DO have a bill of rights, have since 1689, its still in force here as in the UK, and it hasnt hurt us one little bit.
Among other things, its the source of parliamentary privilege our MPs all enjoy (wot, not so uptight abvout THAT bill of rights, Tones?. How interesting.)
Might be time to update it though.
In any case, it’d only be a piece of ordinary legislation. This means it can be amended, any time parliament pleases. Everybody calm down.
Well, at least we all still have the right to SATP’s opinion.
Fuck you, ALP.
A second bite at this cherry to echo FDB’s comment. I’m totally turned off them now including the party members, not just the parliamentarians and hacks. Maggots.
I have mixed feelings about this one.
At one level it falls into the category of things that are utterly innocuous. It mightn’t help, but it certainly couldn’t hurt. It is certainly possible that having parliaments have to pass legislation through a human rights impact test, and having this question made an explicit question for public debate might improve the legislative process. It’s hard to see a downside to this, so I would have been very happy to see this go through. The right on this question are, as usual, doing their crazed slippery slope routine. So predictable.
On the other hand, it is not as if this measure would have amounted to anything like the Bill of Rights that the US works with, subject to other existing law in the country, the states and the Commonwealth could have trampled on human rights as much as they liked. As now, judges can make this observation when it is germane to a ruling. So failing to propose it,along with the suggestion that such a thing could be “divisive”, while politically and ethically objectionable and disingenuous into the bargain, hardly alters the facts on the ground for those who need human rights protection.
Make no mistake. This is a right-of-centre government. It always was, even though many liberals have allowed themselves to think otherwise, and reactionaries assert its leftist credentials. In November 2007 we got a non-Howard based conservative government, not greatly dissimilar from that of Fraser and which, at least in some respects, is somewhat more parochial.
The main difference, it seems to me, is that while Fraser relied mainly on conservatives to elect him, Rudd relies substantially on self-identifying leftists to give him effective preferences. That’s a nuance that is a considerable something, but it is easy for us self-identifying leftists to overstate it and get ourselves all bent out of shape over it. Rudd knows that most of us are captive voters. When we walk into polling booths, almost all of us will rank the ALP above the Coalition, whatever else we do or however much we object because in our minds, the Coalition are always worse, and any drift in support to the Coalition will make the ALP even worse. This is what political blackmail looks like.
This is not the least reason why I continue to favour very serious surgery to our political arrangements.
Well, it would be nice to have a Bill of Rights. But if we did, apart from all that pesky business about refugees, Aborigines and coervive anti-terror laws it would mean we would actually have rights like freedom of speech (Goodbye, Conroy’s internet censorship, or any censorship for that matter; open slather on all politicians in every medium), right of association (goodbye Building and Construction Workers Commission), right of assembly (no more banned marches ever!). Seems to me the pollies don’t trust us to be free. And yes, I will still give my preferences to Labor before I ever give them to the Coalition and their ultra-right wing offshoots.
And, yes, I would feel a lot lot safer if we had a bill of rights. But did anyone think we’d ever really get one, given how much power the pollies would have to give up. Never.
Fran: you may not agree with the suggestion but this mob makes me wish we had prportional representation.
Just to muddy the waters a bit – although I’m obviously in favour of the bill, I find myself not 100% so when I start thinking: “Well, they have one in the US, and look at it.” (examples – the new abortion restrictions (including actual invasive procedures), the new stop and search laws for people guilty of looking Hispanic in a public place.)
Helen, I reckon Arizona’s search-a-spic laws will be overturned as soon as someone takes a particular case to the US Supreme Court. They’d contravene the Constitution in much the same way as the segregation laws were found to.
Hmmm, Right to Bear Arms, etc etc. And we can all look forward to a Right to Free Speech, be rather pleasant to have my Right to Free Speech able to trump the “right” of adherents of a judean desert cult to be “offended” if I quote verbatim from their book of guidelines. Ahhh, can’t wait!
How many tin-pot dictatorships have books of law of any kind? The answer is “all of them”. The fact that dictatorships flout their own laws isn’t an argument against laws, its an argument against dictatorships.
Of course, the rule of law requires that those who wield power agree to follow their own laws.
A Bill of Rights won’t stop a dictator any more than any law will.
However, a Bill of Rights, properly drafted (i.e., not like Victoria’s pathetic facsimile) clarifies what governments cannot do legally.
I don’t understand the logic of any objection of a properly drafted Bill of Rights.
FTR, I believe that the US Bill of Rights is an excellent example. Even the Second Amendment is good if understood in its proper 18th-century context.
Katz said:
Indeed … the qualifying reference to a well-regulated militia is absolutely key.
also, take your pick from the range of 18th century weaponry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:18th-century_weapons
I rather like the 12 pound cannon.
yes, what it lacks in portability, it makes up for in ‘bang’.
shock and awe.
It out not be forgotten, of course, that in eighteenth-century colonial America and in the nascent USA a “well regulated militia” was the primary instrument of state, racist terrorism against Indians and African slaves.
Moreover, the institution itself was steeped in patriarchy. The idea of allowing a woman into a “well-regulated militia” was unthinkable.
These facts are today conveniently forgotten by “intentionalist” jurisprudence.
Katz @ 24,
This was so from Virginia southwards so far as Afro-Americans go, but there is clear evidence that there was at least one black militiaman on the road back from Concord on 19 April, 1775, and at least one black participated in the battle of Bunker Hill. He shot the marine major Pitcairn, probably in the streets of a burning Charlestown, or possibly on the Breed’s Hill rampart.
While American women were not in the militias, they were at the forefront of economic warfare against Britain. The pre-war consumption bans against a wide range of commosities, most notably tea, would not have been successful without their organisation.
That black militiaman was probably a freedman.
The rebels had a seizure when the British offered freedom to any slave who enlisted in the loyalist forces.
Of course they did. Lord Dunmore, the Governor of Virginia was I think the first of the British to do that. In Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia, with good reason, the colonists lived with an abiding fear of slave revolt. Dunmore though, went even further. He formed the Ethiopian Brigade, made up of slaves who had escaped to the British and who actively fought against the American rebels at the battle of Great Bridge and elsewhere. Mind you, in the end, Dunmore treated them very very badly and abandoned most off them on an island off the South Carolina coast when a smallpox epidemic broke out amongst them.
The history of the Afro-American role in the Revolution and the War of Independence is not that clear cut. Many slaves in the south took the Americans at their word, to the alarm of southern colonists, and rallied in what they perceived to be the cause of freedom. They were, of course, very quickly disabused. There are quite few examples of black and slave support for the American side, but this comment would become unduly lengthy if I went into them all. Some time this year I’ll be putting a post on my blog, but my research is rather caught up with events in Massachusetts at the moment.