Page 184 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 December 2008
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Momentum has been building in this nation for an explicit charter of some kind. We in the ACT led the way in 2004 with the Human Rights Act, a direct descendant of the universal declaration and of the many international conventions that have followed it down the decades, securing for the vulnerable and marginalised of our world the same rights enjoyed by the wealthy and privileged. Victoria has followed our lead. Other states have begun their own explorations, and now, under Father Frank Brennan, we are to have a national conversation on a national bill of rights.
Sixty years on, the language and intent of the universal declaration are as powerful and as plain as it was when it was drafted, in the wake of a global war by men shocked into togetherness by the sheer divisiveness of the years that had just passed. They were brought together by a shared recognition that no species could allow such dreadful events to recur, and a belief that humanity was capable of choosing for itself standards below which it would refuse to stoop.
Our experience in the ACT as a pioneer legislator for human rights in this country has generally been a positive one, and it continues. In less than a month, amendments to our act come into force which take human rights in this territory to a new level, creating a statutory obligation on public authorities to undertake their work consistent with the principles found in the Human Rights Act. Also created will be a statutory right of action that will allow individuals to take alleged breaches by a public authority to the Supreme Court. The next challenge we have committed to as part of the five-year review of the act is the consideration of economic, social and cultural rights in addition to the existing civil and political rights for which we have already legislated.
While I do not want to labour the point, it is worth remembering, in the context of the conversation which is about to begin around a national bill of rights, that the rights extended by our local law are only available for enjoyment until the day a commonwealth government decides that it does not like a particular law passed by an ACT government and overrides it. I believe the momentum for a national charter of some kind is greater now than at any time in my memory.
At the federal level, we have a government willing to engage in robust conversation with our friends and neighbours regarding human rights, and determined to engage in another conversation here at home. Perhaps, on the 61st anniversary of the universal declaration, we will have cause for another celebration.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (11.59): It is a pleasure to speak to this motion today, and I commend Ms Bresnan for bringing it forward. The United Nations General Assembly Universal Declaration of Human Rights was truly a historic occasion and it is worth, on this 60th anniversary, reflecting on, I suppose, what led to it and also how far we have come. I think that is very much what this motion is aimed at doing.
World War II was a time of some of the greatest atrocities seen in human history. We are all aware of the Holocaust and the great suffering imposed upon people of the Jewish faith and the Jewish nation during World War II, but there are also so many others who suffered as a result of a runaway dictator, in the form of Hitler, and in so
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