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The subject of a Bill of Rights in Australia had somewhat gone off the boil when we started this debate rolling with a major issues paper released in December 1993, followed by a major seminar in early 1994, published late in 1994, and by the issue of the final draft version of the Bill in late 1994. Since that time, interest in an Australian Bill of Rights has again come to the forefront. At the meeting that was held in May of 1994 we had a most impressive array of speakers discussing the issues surrounding a Bill of Rights for Australia. The proceedings of that seminar were published by the ACT Government during the period that we were in government. I ask members to look particularly at Justice Kirby's very learned comments. He gave four reasons why a Bill of Rights ought to be adopted in Australia despite the fact that we are well regarded internationally, and properly so, as a country where respect for the rule of law and respect for the rights of the individual are at a very high level.

His first reason was that it would acknowledge in Australian domestic law the sorts of international human rights norms which Australians over the years have done so much to advance and which are being seen as so important in guiding less well developed democratic polities to respect for human rights. It seems a little odd that Australia has been at the forefront of developing human rights internationally; yet in its own domestic jurisdictions it lacks recognition of fundamental norms.

The second point that Justice Kirby made was that legislatures can from time to time ignore these fundamental norms in the rush of daily business. He made what I think is a fair point when he said - he was addressing me as Attorney and Mr Humphries as shadow Attorney-General, I am sure, when he said this:

Forgive me for saying it again. But I was for ten years chairman of the Law Reform Commission. It is the product of my experience that often the legislators and the bureaucrats will pay attention to what law reformers propose if the time is right. Or if they are ready. But there are many suggestions for reform of the law which are not attended to with proper speed. There are many issues which simply cannot capture political attention.

Setting out in legislative form some basic norms of fairness allows the individual to litigate those issues and to get the light of judicial attention thrown on a human rights problem which legislators may otherwise be slow to address.

The third reason stated by Justice Kirby is education. He says that there is a problem in Australia in that young people tend to lack an awareness of political processes and rights of citizenship, which is somewhat at odds with the position in other developed democracies. Most dramatic perhaps, although he did not go into this, would be the position in the United States, where schoolchildren are taught in civics classes what their constitutional rights are and what their rights and obligations as citizens are.

The difficulty is that the Australian Constitution and our constitutional arrangements are fairly dry documents. Justice Kirby made the point that Lionel Murphy told him that he always took a copy of the Constitution to bed with him because he was so interested in Australian constitutional law and procedures. Justice Kirby seemed to think that was

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