Page 2217 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 16 August 2006
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our Human Rights Act, but that is as it should be and it highlights the important check that the territory has put in place with the passage of this piece of legislation.
It was very welcome to see our scrutiny of bills committee attending this conference. This is a developing issue around the country and it will not be long, I believe, before we see a majority of Australian states and territories with human rights acts, bills of rights or human rights charters—however you may wish to describe them—that seek to embed in a legislative way, in statute, the civil rights and liberties that we know are fundamental to our ability to participate in a democratic society.
That, I think, is a very welcome development because it requires all of us as legislators to have higher and better regard to the importance of these rights and liberties. They are not things to be taken lightly, to be trampled upon at will. Any response and any infringing of human rights must be proportionate, must be considered and must be done in an informed way. That is the discipline that all parliaments will increasingly face and one that I am very proud the ACT leads on.
MR BERRY (Ginninderra) (11.27): I too attended this conference. I had not expected to speak on this matter today but, as it is before us, it is timely to talk about some of the themes that emerged from the conference. It was also timely to see such an important gathering of experts on the matter as human rights legislation develops around the country. Whilst the conference was on, at about the same time, the Victorian parliament agreed to its human rights act, which many people were enthusiastic about.
What came through for me, though, is how good it is to have a human rights act, but how difficult it is going to be to retain all of the human rights which are set out in these pieces of legislation. If you look at the situation in the UK you will see that, when there were difficulties with the IRA and so on, there was much less action on the reduction of human rights than has occurred as a result of the station bombings in the UK, even with a human rights act. You cannot help thinking that there is a bit of a racial tinge to all of this. In fact, it confirms that there is a racial tinge to all of this. I think the same applies in the efforts in this country to reduce human rights. There is a racial tinge to it.
Mr Mulcahy: Ask terrorism victims whether they think it is just racial, the Australians who died in Bali.
MR BERRY: Protect me from this interjector, Mr Deputy Speaker.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Mr Berry has the floor.
MR BERRY: I do not respond to interjections, as a rule, but it is hard to ignore the fact that there is a racial tinge to the human rights reductions which have occurred in this country and other countries. They have been on religious and racial grounds. It is all right to say that who does it does not affect much the person who is being terrorised, but it seems to me that it gains more prominence if there is this tinge of race around it. I must say that I am very uncomfortable with that.
Another issue which emerged in the course of discussion at the conference was the role of executive government, the way that politics in Australia works—party politics in particular and the effect that solidarity amongst parties has on protecting human rights—
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