Page 797 - Week 03 - Thursday, 22 March 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
conciliation, to effect a settlement of the matters that gave rise to the inquiry; and
(ii) where the Commission is of the opinion that the act or practice is inconsistent with or contrary to any human right, and the Commission has not considered it appropriate to endeavour to effect a settlement of the matters that gave rise to the inquiry or has endeavoured without success to effect such a settlement - to report to the Minister in relation to the inquiry;
Further, section 12 states:
In the performance of its functions the Commission shall have regard to the principle that every person is free and equal in dignity and rights.
This is the body that the Liberals would seek to abolish. This is the body that Mr Collaery has denigrated. I believe that we need such an office in the ACT. We need an office to ensure that the Federal Act operates as it is intended - to protect human rights.
The ACT has its own share of human rights concerns, and the people affected are disadvantaged by the lack of access to the commission's office in Sydney or to some alternative office in the ACT. There are particular problems at the moment in the ACT when people whom we were elected to represent are forced to go to Sydney to raise their concerns.
I would like to spend a couple of minutes on some of those matters. The level of discrimination against children with physical and intellectual disadvantages in our mainstream public education system is a matter of great concern to a number of my constituents. They have come to see me about it. It has been put to me that our education system has one of the poorest records in this country on the mainstream treatment of children so affected. An office of human rights in the ACT could work to address more effectively that problem, in full consultation with the local community.
Discrimination against women is still an area of major denial of human rights in the ACT. One public example has been the appalling treatment of the ACT's first, and so far only, female firefighter. That is an indictment of human rights in the ACT, and it proves that discrimination against women in the ACT is still a fundamental part of the system. I have a further case of an elderly woman constituent - - -
Mr Duby: That is a load of codswallop. It is a load of rubbish that that woman was discriminated against.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .