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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Tuesday, 2 March 2004) . . Page.. 449 ..

have to have considerable additional staff because of the different types of rights in this bill which would apply to that, albeit small but important, part of our public service area.

This is just one indication of how the application of Mr Stanhope’s bill—if, unfortunately, it is passed; I know he has the numbers—might affect the public service. So even though it is a minimalist bill of rights, I think there are very significant economic issues, apart from the very important legal issues.

Mr Speaker, some other very learned comments have been made in relation to this bill. Michael Sexton, the New South Wales Solicitor-General, wrote an article in which he raised some of the points that I have covered. At that stage I do not think he had seen Mr Stanhope’s bill but had seen the report of the consultative committee. He stated:

The ACT sometimes has been suggested as a social laboratory for novel legislation. But this proposal has an other-worldliness about it that suggests a scientific experiment gone wrong.

In 1998, a Queensland parliamentary committee recommended against a bill of rights and, in 2001, a New South Wales parliamentary committee did the same. They had perhaps grasped the point made by the American jurist, Leonard Hand:

“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help.”

(Extension of time granted.)

Michael Sexton continued:

It is, of course, always possible to remedy a particular social ill by specific legislation, such as the anti-discrimination laws that exist in all Australian jurisdictions.

The very point I was making earlier. The Solicitor-General goes on:

But a general and nebulous bill of rights is not only inconsistent with parliamentary democracy, it is also a positive encouragement to a culture of litigation.

The final article that I am going to quote from was published in the Canberra Times on 1 September 2003, after the consultative committee had produced its report and before Mr Stanhope introduced his bill. So I am not going to talk about economic rights in respect of this article because they are irrelevant; Mr Stanhope does not have that. The article was written by Allan Hall, who may be known to some people. He is a former deputy president of the Commonwealth Administrative Appeals Tribunal. Mr Hall states:

No-one doubts the need to protect our basic human rights; the debatable question is how that can best be achieved. Should we rely on the democratic process? Or should we give a greater role to the courts?

Under the human-rights bill that is under consideration by the ACT Government, there are essentially two ways in which human rights are to be protected:

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