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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 13 Hansard (25 November) . . Page.. 4580 ..
MS DUNDAS (continuing):
Are those rights that are not laid down in the law illusory, or is there such a thing as an inherent right to which an individual has access by virtue of their humanity?
Do rights arise from responsibilities, or the other way around? Or is there no necessary nexus between the two?
The report goes on to quote the National Children's and Youth Law Centre who said:
The enjoyment of rights should not be contingent on the performance of responsibilities. If that should happen, and rights should become seen as the reward for 'good citizenship', those most vulnerable to rights abuse and least able to complain about it-the infirm, the mentally ill, prisoners and accused people, for example-would be in danger of falling outside the embrace of a bill of rights.
So the consultative committee believes that protection of human rights should not be the reward of what is deemed good behaviour. Human rights are based on the notion of human dignity. Of course claims to human rights will often need to be balanced against those other individuals and groups in the community and as a result may be limited in particular ways. That short quote and example shows the work the Bill of Rights Consultative Committee went to and the thought it put in to the consultation process and the thinking that was behind this. It didn't just come out with a yes or no answer and not bother justifying it. There are extensive pages here that go into the detailed depth of the arguments put forward both for and against the bill of rights, whether or not it is desirable and what it should look like.
I move on to the government response to the report of the consultative committee. The government has chosen to exclude rights contained in the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights. This has attracted significant comment in the media and criticism by non-government organisations. I would like to quote from the Vienna Declaration of Human Rights, which states:
All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis. While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economical and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.
This most important declaration has now been ignored by the ACT government in developing its response to the consultative committee's report. That shows an unfortunate and disconcerting decision to water down the protection of human rights in the ACT. By deciding not to include rights as shown in the ICSER the government has gone down the path of categorising and classifying human rights and spreading them into two categories: one group of rights that it believes it is deserving of special protection in the Human Rights Act, and another group of lesser rights, which is not. This is in stark contrast with the statement in the government's response that it accepts the view that all categories of human rights are universal, independent, interrelated and indivisible.
The government is saying one thing but doing the exact opposite, and the government has divided human rights. It has produced two categories-one set which will be protected and the other which will be an optional extra. The worst element of the
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