Page 2808 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 October 1992

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their country. These international treaties limit the rights of governments elected by the people. If they are not elected, of course, if they are dictatorships, that is a different matter. Governments should be elected by the people and the laws of that nation should be determined by those people and their elected representatives.

Let us look at some of the United Nations conventions. There are good declarations that recognise a number of classes of rights. They recognise life and liberty; they recognise due process of law. When the Universal Declaration first came out, article 17 recognised the right to property; but the right to property was omitted from later covenants, although the Council of Europe fully recognise the right to property. One could ask: Why was this omitted? We had a situation where a Bill of Rights was accepted in the Soviet Union for decades, yet the Soviet Union was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people in their push for a socialist one-world government. It is not too long ago that Mikhail Gorbachev reiterated his total commitment to the ideals of communism. He did not say that he had changed; he said that he would never change. Their goals would never change.

It is interesting that the debate on human rights has basically been directed to non-communist countries. For decades we had the situation where the eyes of the world media, and many governments, were not on communist countries but on non-communist countries. I ask: Why is this? Mr Lamont mentioned earlier the African National Congress. Yet Nelson Mandela supported terrorism for many, many years. It is not too long ago that he repudiated the use of violence.

Mr Lamont: I think you are selectively misquoting.

MR STEVENSON: Mr Lamont says that I am selectively misquoting. Let me paraphrase a quote from Nelson Mandela. In his book How to be a good Communist, he wrote that communism is the greatest movement in the history of mankind. Was that selectively misquoted? Or the statement by his wife, Winnie Mandela, that encouraged people to necklace others? What is necklacing? It is tying someone's hands with wire, perhaps behind their back, putting a rubber tyre around their neck, pouring petrol in it and on them, and setting fire to it so that they are burned alive. Why not use a spear? Because of terrorism, as supported by Nelson Mandela and encouraged by the Australian Government, with their financial support. It was $16m two or three years ago and $15m one year later on.

I note that a number of members of the Labor Party are smiling about this. What is there to smile about when we look at Australian taxpayers' money being given to the ANC to support their terrorist takeover of Africa? What is there to smile about when we look at these things? Why does the Labor Party support the ANC and their terrorist activities? Why did they not support Chief Buthelezi, who had far more people supporting him?

Mr Connolly: Who is funded by the South African Government; who has been documented by their royal commission to have been involved in tribal violence.


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