Pip Hinman, Sydney
A public meeting to launch a campaign for a human rights act at the Sydney Town Hall on October 4 attracted 1000 people. Hosted by NewMatilda.com, the meeting heard from a range of people about why they supported the idea of a civil rights bill.
Speakers included former Liberal PM Malcolm Fraser, who said this initiative was important because of the bipartisan support for the "war on terror" and because common law does not adequately protect Australians' civil rights. He pointed out that Australia is alone among the Western countries in not having a bill of rights, and that all the countries making up the European Union are now covered by a charter of rights.
Fraser also criticised the ASIO legislation and the recently expanded terror laws, which have bipartisan support. He pointed to the deportation of Scott Parkin on "national security" grounds to illustrate how far the government, with support from the Labor opposition, was prepared to go. "If he had done something seriously wrong in the US, then why didn't the Australian government find out before they let him in?", he asked.
Larissa Behrendt, professor of law and Indigenous studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, said that a bill of rights would restrain governments. ACTU secretary Greg Combet talked about the Howard government's anti-union laws, saying that the right to free association and collective bargaining also had to be enshrined in law.
Other speakers were Spencer Zifcak, associate professor of law at LaTrobe University, who drafted the bill; John Menadue, NewMatilda chair and former head of three federal government departments; Elizabeth Evatt, a former Family Court chief judge and currently Australian commissioner for the International Commission of Jurists; Waleed Aly, a member of the Islamic Council of Victoria; and Nahid Karimi, a former Afghan refugee and detainee at Port Hedland, now in her final year of high school. The meeting was chaired by Susan Ryan, the chair of NewMatilda's Human Rights Act Committee.
The draft bill is being circulated for broader discussion and amendment, and the initiators hope that it will become a private member's bill. For more information, visit <http://www.newmatilda.com>.
From Green Left Weekly, October 12, 2005.
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