Page 3295 - Week 10 - Thursday, 19 October 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
government at its word that there will be some very significant savings in the budget; we hope that is the case.
It has always been our view, however, that the community can ill afford the level of expenditure by the Stanhope government on a human rights bureaucracy. Since the act started, I have yet to see any benefit to ordinary law-abiding members of the Canberra community from the Human Rights Act. Indeed, if anything, the people I have referred to it indicate that it has been unable to actually assist them with their problems, some of which I have mentioned before in this place and would seem to go very much to their human rights.
I have used an example before and I will use it again of a fellow who was an assistant manager at the West Belconnen Leagues Club when the regulations changed in November 2004—this was before we had a regulations adviser on the scrutiny of bills committee, so it probably was not picked up—to ensure that anyone involved as a member of the club who worked for the club and who had anything to do with gaming in their job could not play poker machines or have a flutter on the horses at the TAB and at the club, even after-hours.
This constituent of mine was an ordinary member of the club as well as working there. He was concerned about the regulation as he thought it effectively made him a second-class citizen in the club of which he was a member. It was also a situation that had not occurred before; it was a new regulation that had been brought in. He did not succeed in his discrimination case before the commission. I thought one of the sections of the Human Rights Act provided that everyone has to be equal, but, quite clearly, he wasn’t and the act did not do anything to help him. It is a minor point, but the commission was unable to help him.
I have referred probably a dozen or so people to the commission and I cannot think of any instance where an ordinary person has been helped by the Human Rights Act. I am now getting some worrying indications—indeed, this is in the DPP’s report—that the Human Rights Act is being used more and more to grant bail to criminals who otherwise would not have been granted bail. There are already implications that the act has been used in a number of instances for this and it looks like the operation of it might well be extended further in the criminal jurisdiction and used more, I would submit, to the detriment of law-abiding Canberra citizens. So we have an act that seems to benefit the rights of criminals, but there is no sign to date that it helps ordinary Canberra citizens availing themselves of the opportunity to have their rights protected in ways that are important to them.
The other classic example of this act has been the antiterrorist legislation. Although it may well be compliant with our Human Rights Act, it is far weaker than that in any other state or territory and it leaves the ACT very much exposed, according to Mick Keelty from the AFP. That evidence was given before an Assembly committee and it has been reiterated a number of times. The only people it will benefit are would-be terrorists. I submit that it would be almost impossible to have them detained under the current act in the ACT because of the difficulties that police face in what they have to show to the court. In fact, in one instance I think it would be utterly impossible to show that detaining a would-be terrorist is the least restrictive way of preventing an act. One could think of probably hundreds and thousands of other ways that might be not quite so
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .