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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Tuesday, 2 March 2004) . . Page.. 518 ..

That is the point that I think that this bill misses. Yes, we are all individuals, but we do not live individually. We live in communities. We live as part of the family that we live in. We live in a part of the streets that make up a suburb. We live in a part of the areas that are made up by those suburbs and the city of Canberra that is made up by those town centres.

I think that the flaw with this bill is either that it does not go far enough because we are too timid to do so or the government is too timid to do it or, more importantly, that it does not actually carry out that which it seeks to do. It is very much a Clayton’s bill. It is very much fairy floss because under any examination it just dissolves.

The Chief Minister, in his preamble, says that he is very much interested in protecting the rights of the indigenous people. Point 7 of the preamble reads:

Although human rights belong to all individuals, they have special significance for Indigenous people—the first owners of this land, members of its most enduring cultures, and individuals for whom the issue of rights protection has great and continuing importance.

The irony of that is that the Aboriginal people and the Torres Strait Islander people very much believe in community and it is actually when they are put in isolation, whether in a European context or the isolation of a jail, that the Aboriginal people suffer most. I think that it is quite interesting that on page 2 of his letter—somebody else read this paragraph; perhaps it was you, Mr Deputy Speaker—Bishop Browning went on to say:

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. The best that can be said about the years of the “Stolen Generation” is that white people mistakenly believed that it would be in the best interests of individual indigenous children if they were separated from their communities and brought into white society. Few would now disagree that this was not only a terrible mistake, but that a gross injustice was perpetrated. The language of the preamble does nothing to indicate that we have learned very much.

Therein is the rub. I will go through several examples of how something that purports to protect, enhance and guarantee the rights of individuals may actually erode and downgrade the individuality that we all seek to express in our communities.

I take exception to some of the things that the Chief Minister said in his presentation speech. For instance, on page 4 of his speech he says:

But, in truth, Australia is a human rights backwater.

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