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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 11 Hansard (9 December) . . Page.. 3348 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

freedom from arbitrary arrest or detention, freedom of assembly. As Mr Wood pointed out in his remarks, despite the existence of those words in the declaration and despite the way in which those safeguards and protections have been translated into the language and form of legislation in many places, the fact remains that human rights are not universally respected and are not enforced uniformly around our world.

As the Amnesty International report Mr Wood quoted from indicated, even Australia cannot boast a totally clean human rights record. These structures and the awareness of the need to recognise human rights at least result in genuine attempts to uphold the rights of our citizens and protect us from the worst excesses, such as political murders, rapes and restrictions of freedom that occur in other countries. Clearly, Australia has some further work to do. We should, in some senses, judge ourselves on different standards, on higher standards, because we have for so long subscribed both in form and in practice to the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is incumbent on us, therefore, to set ourselves higher standards all the time, to both examine and explore the ways in which we are actually enforcing those rights in terms of our own practice internally in Australia and, as this motion refers to, the way in which the Australian Government is applying those principles in overseas practice.

There are some areas where we have not lived up to the standards we have set ourselves. There are other areas where we need to consider expansion of the way in which our laws apply to categories of discrimination and to enforcement of human rights. At the beginning of my remarks I read out the various bases of discrimination which are outlawed under the declaration. We have added other categories of discrimination in legislation in Australia and jurisdictions like the ACT. It is appropriate that we continue to do that, because the declaration should not be seen as a static document, a document which is just about viewing the world in 1948 and applying principles that were deemed important at that time. Clearly, the world evolves, the world changes and other issues have to be explored in the progress of human society.

I think a non-partisan parliamentary affirmation of support for the declaration may have value. In Australia we have a Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, which has the function of reviewing Federal legislation and practices and reporting on any breach of human rights instruments. It may be more appropriate to increase its resources for the purpose of education on human rights rather than establishing a different body. Nonetheless, I think there is some value in having the Federal Parliament and the Federal Government at least explore the proposal put forward in the motion that Mr Wood has moved. On either measure, it is important to make sure that we ratchet up the level of overview and enforcement of those areas one notch, and one measure or another would be appropriate to do that.

We must join with other members of the United Nations in promoting a sense of monitoring and enforcement of human rights in this region. I think we ought to establish a stronger sense of respect for those rights and those freedoms by referring to the declarations and the agreements that have been signed between nations. Some of the countries in our region are not signatories to any of the main human rights covenants, even though some of them are members of the United Nations. That might seem to be anomalous but, as a first step, we should try to bring nations under the umbrella of the

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