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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 3 Hansard (6 March) . . Page.. 681 ..

MS DUNDAS (continuing):

We stand in this chamber almost 100 years to the day when women in Australia were granted the right to vote.

Mr Cornwell made the point that my motion is almost superfluous. As I have made claims that other motions in this chamber have been superfluous, I must say that I do not believe that women's rights, freedoms from discrimination and protecting human rights are in any way superfluous.

Points were made about the UN committee system. It was noted that UN committees work outside their mandate, but my question for the federal government is: what is outside the mandate of human rights? Are human rights not something that we should all be looking at no matter who we are, where we come from or what is written in our job description?

The point has also been made that some countries with good records in women's and human rights have not signed the optional protocol and that some countries with bad records have. The point that we are making with this motion and that we are calling on the federal government to recognise is that ratification of the optional protocol indicates a commitment to improving women's human rights. We are asking the federal government to make that commitment.

There have also been concerns that CEDAW is unsound and that it raised concerns about awards being given out to mothers in Belarus. I cherish mothers and I cherish the fact they should be supported as part of our community. However, being a mother is not the only role for women in our society. The opposite of the concerns that were raised is: am I devalued because I am not a mother? Like every other woman in this chamber, I am a daughter, and I am incredibly proud of that. That is something we should be looking at.

Concerns have been raised about community consultation on ratification of UN systems. The UN specifically invites non-government organisations to be part of the UN process. The federal government has in many ways worked to hamper the work of Australian non-government organisations in the field of women's human rights. The role of non-government organisations is community consultation, but sometimes this is not happening.

This debate has been quite amazing. Some concerns were raised that we should not be having this debate in this chamber, but, as always, we must think of the slogan, which is quite relevant, that we must think globally but act locally. That is what my motion does today.

Just because we have led the way in the past and been one of the first countries to have the right for women to vote or because we in the territory were the first state or territory to allow a woman to lead us it does not mean we should now stop. We must push forward. This is not about appealing to the lowest common denominator or comparing ourselves to the lowest common denominator. It is about raising the standard for women's rights.

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