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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-11-26 Daily Xml
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UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The Hon. M. PARNELL (20:59): I move:

1. That 10 December 2008 is the 60th anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;

2. That 9 December 2008 is the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide;

3. Recognises that the realisation of the rights in the declaration is a responsibility of all, including those in this parliament;

4. Pays tribute to those Australians who played leading roles in the development and adoption of these important instruments of international law and who, since then, have contributed to their implementation;

5. Recalls that the adoption of the declaration and the convention were a response to the suffering of those who had experienced human rights violations, especially the 'barbarous acts' perpetrated during World War II;

6. Recognises, with regret and disappointment, that in the intervening 60 years, violations of human rights, including acts of genocide, have continued to occur around the world;

7. Affirms that 'the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want [is] the highest aspiration of the common people';

8. Declares its own 'faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women';

9. Commits itself to the principles contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as 'a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations' and to their promotion throughout South Australia.

This motion notes that 10 December 2008 is the 60th anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As members will know, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the basic international pronouncement of the inalienable and inviolable rights of all members of the human family. The declaration was proclaimed in a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 as the 'common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations' in respect for human rights. It lists numerous rights: civil, political, economic, social and cultural, to which people everywhere are entitled.

Originally, the universal declaration was conceived as a statement of objectives to be achieved by governments and, as such, was not part of binding international law. However, the fact that it has been accepted by so many states has given it considerable moral weight. Its provisions have been cited as the justification for numerous United Nations actions and have inspired or been used in many international conventions.

The celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is being coordinated by a range of non profit community groups. I will quickly go through the list, because they should be commended for bringing this important date to our attention: the Human Rights Council of Australia, A Just Australia, Amnesty International Australia, the Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, Brotherhood of St Laurence, Diplomacy Training Program, the Edmund Rice Centre, Get-Up, Human Rights Law Resource Centre, Oxfam Australia, Public Interest Advocacy Centre, Rights Australia and World Vision.

I note that, whilst we are celebrating the 60th anniversary, back in 1988 the 40th anniversary was also celebrated around Australia, including in South Australia. The anniversary on 10 December has included the High Commissioner for Human Rights calling on all states to undertake their own programs of activities to mark this anniversary. I note that the current Rudd Labor government has taken the anniversary seriously and has initiated a number of human rights reforms.

Nevertheless, there are other reforms that are still needed. There are still international treaties and protocols that we have not ratified. During the Howard government years, Australia, which had traditionally been a leader in human rights, was moved into an oppositional role in relation to most of the major human rights institutions and initiatives. The result of this was that our international allies, our traditional allies, were at first confused by Australia's response and later they were alienated, because they were accustomed to a strong Australian commitment to an international human rights system and they could not understand what the Howard government was up to.

I do not want to speak at great length on this anniversary. The motion pretty much speaks for itself, but I do want to quote a few words from our current federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland, who in a speech on 7 August at the Human Rights Law Resource Centre entitled, 'Strengthening Human Rights and the Rule of Law', said the following:

It is timely, sixty years on, to draw inspiration from the declaration as we review our guiding principles for human rights in Australia and as we work to take our commitment to the next level...as federal Attorney-General, I consider the primacy of the law, informed by human rights, as fundamental to Australia's democracy. Most of us have grown up in Australia, or chosen to live here, knowing that our democracy is strong. But democracy is more than placing voting papers in a ballot box. True democracy must be underpinned by a respect for human rights. The way we govern ourselves and conduct our affairs as a democratic nation hasn't happened by chance—we need to continually work at it to keep the rule of law in good order and to ensure social inclusion.

I know that when issues like this are put on the Notice Paper of a state parliament members often think, 'Well, what has this got to do with South Australia?' My motion includes the comment that as a state government we should commit ourselves to the principles contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and as a parliament we should promote it throughout South Australia.

I note that it might not be a legal obligation on the part of our decision makers, be they ministers or bureaucrats, to comply with international treaties. In fact, we are the only state in Australia that has a special law that says our ministers and public servants do not have to follow international treaties.

That is an act of this parliament that I sought to remove some years ago and I will, no doubt, bring that measure back again. I think that it is an embarrassment. I think that, as a state, we can commit ourselves to the furtherance of human rights, and getting that particular law—the Administrative Decisions (Effective International Instruments) Act—off our statute books would be a very good start. I commend the motion to the council.

The Hon. SANDRA KANCK (21:05): I have enthusiastically seconded this motion because I am delighted to support it. I am going to focus on point 9 of the motion. In 2005, I introduced into this parliament South Australia's first ever human rights bill. I did so in the absence of any initiative at the federal level and following the successful passage of a bill in the ACT parliament. Last year, Victoria also successfully passed legislation. In both cases, the world as we know it has not fallen apart, as some of those opposing such legislation would have us believe.

However, when my bill was considered in the committee stage 15 months after I had introduced it, to their shame, both the Labor and Liberal parties in this place at this time voted every clause of the bill down so that we were left with only the title. I think that was absolutely shameful and, in time, I think historians will look at that action and condemn those MPs who were involved.

The principles in the UN Declaration of Human Rights—some of which are quoted in this motion—are self-evident, yet Australia is now the only western democracy without a Bill of Rights. Australia is a signatory to the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Despite this, in recent years, we have seen a reduction of human rights in Australia. This has ranged from the incarceration of asylum seekers to the passage of terrorism legislation at both state and federal level.

It was three years ago that this chamber passed anti-terrorism laws that enabled suspects to be held for 14 days without charge, and control orders that restricted freedom of movement were enacted to prevent attacks on the scale of the Twin Towers bombing by a terrorist mastermind such as bin Laden. These laws were rushed through with opposition only from the Democrats. A majority of members in this chamber opposed a motion to protect the human rights of David Hicks, thereby thumbing their noses at Articles 8, 9, 10 and 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These articles concern the right to an effective remedy for acts violating a person's fundamental rights: arbitrary arrest, detention and exile; a fair and public hearing by an impartial tribunal of any criminal charges against a person; and the right to seek asylum in another country.

Having concluded that the parliament will not defend human rights, the government has clearly decided to go for broke in its pursuit of the law and order vote. The Serious and Organised Crime Act was passed earlier this year. This enables a person to be sent to gaol for who they know, not what they do, and on the basis of secret evidence. In doing so, it violates a number of Articles of the Declaration of Human Rights, including freedom of association and freedom of assembly in Article 20; conviction on the basis of secret evidence in Article 11(2); and the presumption of innocence in Article 11(1).

The Criminal Assets Confiscation Act passed by the parliament last year violates Article 11(2), which concerns the presumption of innocence and a public trial, and Article 27(2), which concerns the protection of material and moral interests arising from scientific, literary or artistic productions.

Only yesterday, we passed legislation to give police the power to bar people from licensed premises, and I supported that part of the bill; but part of it will give police the power to use criminal intelligence, or secret evidence, to bar a person possibly from every licensed premises throughout the state. That measure also violates Articles relating to the presumption of innocence and public trials. It has been pointed out that the concept of criminal intelligence is already in the Liquor Licensing Act—and that is true. It was introduced in 2005. It is arguably another child of the fear of terrorism and, unfortunately, yesterday we had the opportunity to address that matter and we failed to do so in this place.

When the anti-terror laws were first passed the Democrats warned that we were on a slippery slope. In light of the legislation that has been passed in the past three years we have been proven right. In the space of a few short years we have turned the legislative tools designed to fight terrorism into tools to fight common criminals in nightclubs. I remind members that the human rights in this charter were not developed by idealistic dreamers in a trendy inner-city cafe. They were the bitter lessons of history, and recent experience for the drafters of these rights. Some of the drafters of the rights would have studied the lessons of the English, French and American revolutions, but others would have had vivid and recent memories of the gas ovens of Auschwitz, the bloody town square massacres of the Spanish Civil War and Stalin's show trials of the 1930s.

Many in our society now argue that the threat of bikies and terrorists means that we can no longer be precious about established rights, but these rights were drafted by people who dug children's bodies out of mass graves, saw horrendous torture and lived through bombing raids that turned cities into rubble. The drafters of these Articles knew a lot more about terror than we do—and, hopefully, than we ever will do. These rights are a precious gift from an amazing group of people who 60 years ago saw great suffering and concluded that the idea of having human rights could help to protect future generations from ever having to experience the same as they had.

I find it strange that we celebrate our military history as a fight for freedom and democracy but then we trash the very gifts presented to us by the people who fought in these wars. These rights, so hard won, should not be thrown away so easily, as this parliament has continued to do over the past four or five years. If we are going to violate these rights in the name of ordinary policing, on what grounds can we ever lecture countries—which are often struggling with real threats to their security—on how they should treat dissidents and political opponents?

I make an observation now about how this paranoiac obsession with crime is changing our culture. Not long ago the police would need a very good reason to accost a person going about their daily business. There was a presumption of freedom. Now you can be scanned at the airport, sniffed in Rundle Mall, fingerprinted in a nightclub and have your car stopped and searched. The government says that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear—which means that we are all under suspicion and all under surveillance. In fact, the balance has now changed. We now have an institutionalised culture of suspicion.

Violent crime is a serious problem, but we must put the threat we face into context. The authors of these human rights Articles we are discussing turned the terror of war and genocide into an instrument of hope. They were a generation of moral and intellectual giants. Our generation, faced with much smaller threats, is retreating from the idea of human rights. History will judge most members of this parliament to be a bunch of moral pygmies. I hope, therefore, that in the not-too-distant future members of this parliament will—as clause 9 in this motion states—commit themselves to the principles contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; that would be a truly wonderful thing for South Australia.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.M. Gazzola.

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