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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Tuesday, 2 March 2004) . . Page.. 519 ..

I would assume that he will claim the children overboard affair and sending asylum seekers to places in the desert as examples of Australia being a human rights backwater. But the very fact that those people seek to come here because they see Australia as a place to be, a place away from real human rights violations, would indeed indicate that Australia is not a human rights backwater. For instance, Russia has been quoted as well. Russia had a bill of rights in about 1937. A fat lot of good that did you in the gulag! At least you were happy under the knowledge that your rights were being protected by something passed by the soviet parliament!

If Australia is a human rights backwater, prove it. What evidence is there? Give us some examples. Let’s look around the world at those that are nabbed off the streets by goon squads. Let’s talk about those that have disappeared in various cultures around the world. Let’s talk about those countries where human rights violations occur on such an extreme level.

We had the outburst today by the Chief Minister that John Howard killed 35,000 Iraqis. I have not once heard him talk about the millions of people that Saddam Hussein killed. Saddam Hussein killed millions of people. I saw one figure that said that either 10,000 or 100,000 Iraqis were dying a month. There was no violation of human rights there; he was just a dictator and you accept that from a dictator!

If Australia is a human rights backwater, let’s prove it. The very fact that we are having this discussion today would indicate that we are not. We actually live in a free and tolerant society—well, some of us are tolerated, but others who dissent are yelled at by individuals, particularly in this place. But the very fact that we are having such a debate today indicates that we are free to do so and, I think, puts the lie to the claim that Australia is some sort of human rights backwater.

The next point occurs on page 6 of the Chief Minister’s speech. I guess it is the ultimate contradiction in the bill. In the speech he says:

Unless the law is intended to operate in a way that is inconsistent with the right in question, the interpretation that is most consistent with human rights must prevail.

So we are going to have a human rights bill that allows you to pass a law that violates human rights as long as it was passed with that express intention.

This bill is a dynamo of a document. We are actually going to legislate that you can pass laws that violate human rights as long as that was the intention of the bill. So much for standing up for human rights! I think it shows the impossibility of what is being attempted here. You cannot do it properly without eroding the rights of individuals. Therefore, I do not believe that you should do it all. I do not think the case has been made that we need such a bill of rights in this country today.

The major concern, and the thing that people should be very worried about, is addressed by the Chief Minister on page 7 and is about the declaration of incompatibility. We are actually going to pass the bill tonight; we can count the numbers. We are going to pass a bill tonight that says that the Supreme Court of the ACT can declare a new law

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