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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 13 Hansard (25 November) . . Page.. 4583 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

It is also interesting to see what members of the community feel about whether or not a bill of rights is necessary and to look at which groups think that such a bill of rights or human rights act is necessary. It should come as no surprise that people who are vulnerable, who lack advocacy skills, who are vulnerable to rights abuses, think we need a human rights act. It is very disappointing that the government has decided to pull out the economic, social, and cultural rights. There is very important normative value in having those rights included, and educative value for the public, private, and community sectors as well as the broader community. I don't understand why the government has pulled it out. I think it is a failure of courage and we will regret it.

This Human Rights Act is in itself quite timid, so let us not pretend it isn't. It is timid. But I commend the government for doing it. It is basically a dialogue model. It is setting up a conversation. The government has removed the damages component in this bill as well. So, we are left with a statement of principles, which are extremely important, but it has left out fundamental principles for some reason which I still haven't heard it fully explain.

If it is a concern that in some way there will be unrealistic calls for particular services to be provided-and that is basically what this is about to a degree, for example, in the area of housing, or health, or education-it has to be remembered that the overarching principle of the Human Rights Act and of the convention is that the action and decisions that are taken have to be in the broader interest of the whole community. So that is a qualification that will ensure that reasonable actions can be taken. If we stick with the health example, we have indicators developed by the World Health Organisation, there is a notion of best practice, so you can also always qualify-I guess is the word-the implementation of such an act with this notion of best practice and with the notion of indicators and benchmarks.

Another argument that is sometimes put up is that in some way this is an egotistic notion to have a human rights act, that we have a society that is very broadly self-interested and that this sort of document actually supports that. In fact, it is the other way round and it is interesting to look at where the political ideologies sit when you have this debate. It is more likely to be the Labor parties or left-people who are more left if you want to use that paradigm, or people who are more concerned about social supports and social justice-who will support this. Therefore, one wonders, if this is about egotistical endeavours, if this is about the Mrs Thatcher notion of there being no such thing as society but just a whole lot of individuals, why would it be that the Liberal Party members are basically the ones opposing such an act. That is because this is not egotistic or individualistic.

A bill of rights or a human rights act is actually about responsibilities of government more than anything else, in my view. It is saying that we have fundamental responsibilities as leaders in the community and that government has a fundamental responsibility to ensure that these very basic requirements for life are met. So in many ways, I think you could call it a bill of responsibilities as much as a bill of rights. So I do reject that notion that it is in some way based on an individualistic point of view that does not take into account the broader interest. I think, in fact, it is quite the opposite.

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