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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Tuesday, 2 March 2004) . . Page.. 506 ..

another attempt, to win over the multicultural vote in this forthcoming election? I do not know, but I am not convinced that that is what multicultural communities want here any more than do Australian communities.

Another point in argument for a bill of rights was that a bill of rights would empower the socially disadvantaged and those citizens most susceptible to right abuses. How? How would it empower the socially disadvantaged? It is not a question of the socially disadvantaged not having the rights of everybody else; it is simply that they do not have the opportunity to use them. And passing a piece of legislation of this type is not going to assist them to do so. You can have all the legislation in the world, but socially disadvantaged people will not have the opportunity to use it. The government seem to imagine that, once the bill of rights is passed, it will be a magic wand that we just have to wave and everything will be all right for all the people out there that are socially disadvantaged. I would like a definition of “socially disadvantaged” too, by the way, because I think we may find it is extremely broad. Nevertheless, I repeat: how do you empower those people? I would imagine that the way to overcome the socially disadvantaged is to address questions like poverty, education and, certainly in some countries, overpopulation. But I do not really think that we are going to assist them by passing a bill of rights or something similar to that so that they all feel so much better for it. I think this has been very, very well demonstrated by the Right Reverend George Browning, the Anglican Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn. Mrs Cross referred to a letter he wrote and I would like to do the same and quote from it. Talking about values, he said:

Of course all the values, which the Bill seeks to preserve, are honourable, but it is misleading to signal that such rights can be preserved through legislation. Fundamental rights, hopes, values, dignities are only deliverable through the forging of communities where trust and respect dominate over fear, suspicion and a competitive disregard for others.

He goes on at a later point—and this is particularly pertinent to our Chief Minister, who is always talking about these people:

The seventh point of the preamble specifically mentions the needs of the Indigenous people. The emphasis is one that I deeply applaud. However, it is ironic that the Bill should, in my view, give false hope to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Anyone who knows anything about indigenous culture knows that an inappropriate emphasis on the individual has contributed to the pain and not the health of that community. Indeed, if anything, indigenous culture subsumes the “rights” of the individual into the dignity and values of the community to which the individual belongs. It is hardly too much of an exaggeration to say that one of the greatest losses experienced by Indigenous people has been the loss of their sense of community brought about by assimilation into a culture dominated by the idea of the individual.

That is the statement by Bishop Browning. He also goes on to raise an interesting point:

I can imagine a future situation in the ACT where elders—

That is indigenous elders—

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