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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Tuesday, 2 March 2004) . . Page.. 525 ..

another convention that we have signed up to and seem to be about to violate—

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognises children’s rights to ‘special safeguards and care’ including ‘appropriate legal protection before as well as after birth’.

So much for the human rights crusaders of the Assembly. We are going to exclude the unborn from the protection afforded by at least three international covenants to which this country has signed up to and which form the basis of the reasoning for the Chief Minister’s actions in bringing this bill here today. The press release continues:

Article 4 of the ICCPR stipulates that no government can derogate from the right to life even in times of “public emergency” and Article 50 states that no federal state may put limits on any of the rights contained in the Covenant.

Is this bill about to violate international agreements to which this country had signed up? The press release continues:

“The human rights of children before as well as after birth have been recognised for 80 years, going back to the Geneva Declaration of 1924. They cannot be taken away by the ACT Government.

“Members of the ACT Legislative Assembly should reject the Bill of Rights if it does not recognise the right to life of our smallest citizens, even up to the point of birth.”

We will move amendments later, through Mr Stefaniak, that will remove this clause. If members believe what the Chief Minister has said about the basis of this bill being our compliance with international agreements, they will remove clause 9 (2) because it violates everything that the Chief Minister purports to represent.

Another curious thing about this bill is that it contains no penalties. We do not necessarily need penalties, but we have a human rights bill that does not protect human rights because there is no offence created, there is no cause of action, and the only action that you get is a letter from the court saying, “We think you’ve got it right. Think about it for six months.” The bill is a Clayton’s bill. It is a Clayton’s bill because of its vagueness. It limits some rights.

It is quite interesting that the Chief Minister, in introducing the bill, said that many of our rights are vague and subject to the political will of the day. The bill does not overcome that hurdle identified by the Chief Minister. There is a clause in the bill that says that the bill does not tell you what all your rights are because we are going to discover them as we go along when we go through the court system.

Mrs Burke raised earlier the concerns that we have had voiced to us privately by many members of the public service. I refer to an article in the Canberra Times of 3 February 2004 by Max Spry, which said:

Further, the consultative committee tasked to examine whether the ACT should have a Bill of Rights reported that it constantly encountered those who were deeply disillusioned by their contact with the ACT bureaucracy. Many of these people, the

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