Page 2802 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 October 1992
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MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (10.55): On behalf of the Government, I have great pleasure in joining other members in supporting this motion. The Amnesty International parliamentary group within this Assembly operates on a very clear tripartite basis with co-conveners - Mr Humphries representing the Opposition, Ms Szuty representing Independent members and me representing the Government. From time to time our parliamentary group, in concert with other parliamentary groups across Australia and indeed across the world, will be bringing before this Assembly motions expressing a viewpoint on a particular human rights violation. The first such motion to be moved in the current parliament is this one moved by Mr Humphries. The moving of these motions in future will be spread across the three co-conveners so that it is abundantly clear that no partisan advantage is being taken.
Mr Humphries, Ms Szuty and I spoke about this before the motion came forward today. That is as it should be, because the acknowledgment of the importance of human rights internationally is a matter on which no party should take high moral ground above the others. Within the Labor Party we have a long and strong tradition of support of international human rights. Mr Humphries made the point that human rights do not stop at international borders, and that is something that we strongly endorse. Australia took a strong role in drafting many of the international covenants that currently govern human rights. We in the Labor Party take particular pride in the fact that Dr Evatt, a great internationalist and a great supporter of the United Nations system, was the first to push the world down this path of international treaties respecting human rights.
Amnesty has operated for many years as a group lobbying governments overseas and encouraging public support for pressure on foreign governments on human rights. Cynics often say that it is a waste of time; that individuals or groups protesting against events in another part of the world really have no impact. I think Amnesty has shown that that is not the case, but so too have other protest movements. In years past many of us on this side of the chamber took part in protests, for example, against the South African apartheid regime. International pressure from individuals and from governments through sanctions has worked. The enormous changes that have occurred in recent years internationally are a testament to the effectiveness of pressure from groups such as Amnesty, from foreign governments and, most importantly, from individuals who will stand up and say that human rights violations are unacceptable wherever they occur.
This year how significant it was during the Olympic Games telecast to see Nelson Mandela attending those international games and cheering on a multi-racial South African sporting contingent. Only a year ago that man was a prisoner of the South African regime for his viewpoints. He was a political prisoner, the sort of person that Amnesty has long been lobbying for. Lobbying by Amnesty and action by individuals can achieve results.
Unfortunately, there is often a popular pressure to criticise people who will stand at a picket line outside an embassy seeking to put pressure on a foreign government for a human rights violation, but I certainly would always stand proudly in support of the right of individual Australians and individual Canberrans to express that sort of protest and put that sort of pressure on foreign governments, because it has worked. The person who is first on the picket line is always criticised. Back in the 1970s there was enormous pressure from
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