Page 2803 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 October 1992
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conservative forces on people who were protesting against the South African rugby tours; yet now we have bipartisan support for the enormous importance of abolishing apartheid regimes and for multi-racialism in South Africa. Those who are first to express the protest will often be the butt of criticism; but, if they are right, they should stick to their guns and make that protest.
Today, as Mr Humphries mentioned, it is particularly appropriate that we are moving this motion in this Assembly as it is a day when Africa focuses on human rights. Perhaps we have generally overlooked what has been going on in Uganda as we have been focusing on the events in South Africa - the hoped for progress that it was achieving earlier this year and the appalling events of recent massacres. Uganda is an important country for us to focus on. Australia has had long involvement. Australian military forces were involved in some of the training of the Ugandan Army when they came to power through the overthrow of Idi Amin. A Commonwealth training force, of which Australia was a part, assisted in the military intervention from neighbouring countries to oust the Amin regime.
Of course, the regime of Idi Amin was a byword for repression, torture and horror. In the late 1970s when he was overthrown there were great hopes that the new regime would bring with it a commitment to human rights. It has brought with it that commitment; but unfortunately, as has been documented by Amnesty, the record does not match the rhetoric in all cases of human rights within that country. It is important for parliaments such as ours to say that we support the commitments to human rights in this country, but we urge the Ugandan Government to take stronger steps to ensure that those obligations which they have entered into will be, in fact, matched.
I was pleased to hear Mr Humphries's strong support for the Amnesty viewpoint that the death penalty is unacceptable. It is encouraging that in this Assembly we have a degree of unanimity on that point. Unfortunately, from time to time in other parts of Australia politicians will often float the idea of the reintroduction of the death penalty. It is always a way to get a cheap headline, I suppose. It is encouraging to see that we, across a partisan divide in this Assembly, can take a strong stand on principle and say that we believe that this is wrong and that, as a civilised society, we should not go down that track and, indeed, we should resist attempts from time to time to push us in that direction. I was pleased to hear those remarks.
Madam Speaker, on behalf of the Government, I have pleasure in supporting this motion. It is important for parliaments such as ours to show that we are concerned about events beyond our borders, and it is particularly important that we have within the parliament an Amnesty group comprising members, persons working for members and persons working for the Assembly Secretariat. We can demonstrate that this is an issue that we take a multiparty approach to and that we are totally united on. I hope that Mr Stevenson can also lend some support to these issues, although I note that he is wont to stand up here and be very critical of United Nations instruments which entrench basic rights. He is wont to get up here and rant about one world government and the sinister conspiracy that operates at United Nations headquarters. But one hopes that, despite those aberrations, he too can join with us in urging the Ugandan Government to comply with those important international human rights treaties which it has freely entered into.
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