Page 810 - Week 03 - Thursday, 22 March 1990
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first place? It is very hard to understand. What is more, as Mr Collaery pointed out, the Follett Government sat here for seven months and did not achieve any restoration of the human rights commission. It sat here for seven months and she was not able to persuade her Federal colleagues to bring back the human rights commission to the ACT. I really wonder whether, in the view of her Federal colleagues, there is a case for having a human rights commission office in the ACT.
I wonder what the volume of cases dealt with by such an office in the ACT really is. I know that my department has had a few instances where it has dealt with the commission, mainly because people within the education system, for example, have taken matters to it. To my knowledge there have been only four cases in the last 12 or more months - hardly a huge volume of matters.
Mr Speaker, I will finish by saying that I think that we ought to look more carefully at the issues of human rights in this Territory. I believe that the appropriate forum is the antidiscrimination Bill, to which Mr Collaery has referred. I will support that Bill when it comes forward. That will be the way in which I will make my statement in support of human rights in this Territory and I will not do it through rather stupid matters of public importance of this kind.
MR MOORE (6.40): It is interesting that the way in which the lawyers see human rights is through the law. What they do not comprehend is that people who are most disadvantaged do not understand the law, do not have access to the law and do not have access to the money to seek redress by the law. That is one of the major problems and a critical matter for us here.
I shall start my speech by talking about Mr Collaery and human rights. Since I have known Mr Collaery, he has described himself as a human rights lawyer and the vast majority of cases that he worked on were concerned with immigration. My understanding, gained from the people to whom I spoke in his office, was that he genuinely had a great empathy for those people who were discriminated against by the Federal Labor Government on matters of human rights to do with immigration. I do not think it is fair for anybody to take away from him that empathy and the effort that he has put into that particular aspect of human rights and I certainly would not be one to do that.
I will say, though, that human rights are much broader than immigration and I know that Mr Collaery understands that, but as part of this Government, he must accept that it is appropriate for members of the Opposition to do just what he is criticising them for, and that is to attempt to set the pace, to attempt to "push the Government along". It is appropriate for Opposition members to do that when they perceive that the Government is not looking to a particular issue as quickly as they believe it ought to be addressed.
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