Page 2462 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 22 August 2006
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Beyond these operational issues, a major focus for the review is the protection of economic, social and cultural rights and the treatment of environment-related rights. At the outset, the government accepted, in principle, the fundamental proposition that all categories of rights are universal, interdependent, interrelated and indivisible. However, it also acknowledged that the implementation of some of the economic, social and cultural rights would present more of a challenge than the civil and political rights.
It is evident from submissions that few people would disagree with the value of recognising social, economic and cultural rights. They inject into the human rights dialogue a wider vocabulary that reflects all of our shared experiences and aspirations. Around 70 per cent of the submissions on the discussion paper addressed the protection of these rights and over 80 per cent of those supported their inclusion in the Human Rights Act. However, few submissions addressed the threshold issues associated with these rights.
Whilst we have a clear appreciation of the sorts of rights that would be encouraged, we still do not have a clear direction about the way in which they would be enforced. Undoubtedly, the arguments for protecting economic, social and cultural rights are strong. However, despite the passage of 12 months or two years since the legislation was passed, there is limited experience in what effect those rights may have in the ACT.
As submissions to the review concede, the thinking on civil and political rights continues to be more developed overseas and there are rich sources of case law and debates on principles on these rights. Professor Paul Hunt, United Nations special rapporteur on the right to health, noted that economic, social and cultural rights are on the rising tide but conceded that the trend to take these rights more seriously is contested and uneven. Significantly, there has been no serious attempt to incorporate them into bills of rights in New Zealand, Canada or the United Kingdom. South Africa, the main jurisdiction to have incorporated these rights into its human rights regime, is largely an exception. Nor have they been included in the recently enacted Victorian bill of rights.
It is still the case that the inclusion of economic, social and cultural rights would make us exceptional amongst comparable human rights jurisdictions and it is still the case that the inclusion of these rights would have an unclear effect. The government contends that the territory has been courageous and groundbreaking in what it has done with respect to a bill of rights in Australia. Whilst we will not rest on our laurels, it is prudent to let other jurisdictions catch up before embarking on what, even in global terms, is unknown territory. Therefore, whilst we are committed to improving the operation of the Human Rights Act and the quality of the human rights dialogue within the ACT, the government will not be moving to incorporate economic, social and cultural rights in the immediate term, nor will it be developing options now for statutory oversight of environmental rights.
We will have the opportunity to reconsider these issues in the context of a five-year review of the Human Rights Act which is required to be tabled in this place by 1 July 2009. The government will, however, consider other ways to increase awareness and recognition of these rights. I commend the report to the Assembly. I move:
That the Assembly takes note of the paper.
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