Page 208 - Week 01 - Thursday, 16 February 2006
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I will just take the opportunity to respond to the continuing doubts raised by the shadow attorney about the appropriateness of a human rights commission. I think the shadow attorney’s comments were not directed so much at the commission as such, or the establishment of the commission as an administrative model or an appropriate government model for allowing the administration of the statutory oversight bodies that currently exist and which we propose exist, but essentially at a continuing concern about the Human Rights Act and the appointment of a human rights commissioner as such.
It does need to be understood that the Human Rights Commission, so named, is a commission that will incorporate the existing Discrimination Commissioner in her continuing role, the Health Services Complaints Commissioner in the continuing role of that commissioner and will, when appointments are made and legislation commences, include, in addition to the Human Rights Commissioner, a children’s commissioner and a disability and community services commissioner. So it is an overarching body that will provide the governing framework for all five commissioners, not just a human rights commissioner.
It is at one level misleading to lambast the commission as such because of one’s opposition to a bill of rights or a human rights act as such. The Human Rights Commissioner is just one of four commissioners who will reside within the Human Rights Commission. We had, I think it might be fair to say, a brainstorming session of some sort in order to determine a name for the commission that would be the overarching organisation, governing body or arrangement for the new agreed co-location of our statutory oversight arrangements within the territory, and at the end of the day the government settled on Human Rights Commission, to the extent that each of these commissioners and each of the statutes underpinning their work goes to issues around human rights and the rights of all of us as humans, whether it be in relation to discrimination, human rights per se, health complaints and issues around the work that the Health Complaints Commissioner does, or the work that the children’s commissioner or the disability commissioner do. These are all human rights issues, all rights invested in us as humans or as individual members of this society.
So it does need to be clearly understood that the Human Rights Commission is the overarching body within which there will be five resident commissioners, one of whom is the Human Rights Commissioner. It is something of a pity that an objection or opposition to the Human Rights Act and the role of an existence of a human rights commissioner infects a view around the model that has been developed for delivering in a collegiate, coordinated sense the range of statutory oversight functions that I think each of us would accept as being very, very reasonable.
It is in that regard that I take issue with the shadow attorney that the Human Rights Commission exists to meet the needs of people at the edge of society whom the Liberal Party, through their attorney, do not believe deserve support or even deserve to have their humanity recognised, such as criminals. Mr Stefaniak, in searching around for a—
Mr Stefaniak: I didn’t say that, Jon. I just said that that seems to be the main emphasis.
MR STANHOPE: The shadow attorney responds that this is the emphasis. The statistics and the facts will prove that not to be the case but, even if that were the case, it does
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