Page 4280 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 22 September 2010
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Why did she first go public, in a way that effectively undermined the stance taken by the school principal, when he was seeking to uphold the rights of children by ensuring that they go to school and by ensuring that he does everything he possibly can to see that they get an education? He is looking after the rights of those children much more than the human rights commissioner is when she says that they have a right to buy Kingsley’s Chicken when they should be at school.
That is what it boils down to, and, if the human rights commissioner had really thought about this issue, she would not have been out there giving kids free rein. The intervention of the human rights commissioner in this way is essentially telling every child in Canberra who wants to wag school and go down to the shop—any shop or any amusement arcade—that, if anyone challenges them, they are now emboldened to say: “You cannot challenge me. I will take you to the human rights commissioner.”
That is an appalling state of affairs. It defies common sense, and it defies the common man test. You ask any man or woman on any 300 bus going to and from Tuggeranong whether they agree with the human rights commissioner’s intervention and I will lay you pennies to pounds, London to a brick, that they are not in favour of the intervention of the human rights commissioner on this occasion. They are collectively scratching their heads, asking themselves, “What is the world coming to when a principal cannot go out and engage with his community on this issue without being undermined by some other bureaucrat?”
If the human rights commissioner had a problem and was seriously concerned with addressing that problem, rather than self-aggrandising, she would have gone to the principal and to the shopkeepers and worked this out in a less public way. What has happened now is that her intervention has told every shopkeeper, “Be very afraid, if you challenge any kid who you think should be at school and is not at school.” The human rights commissioner has given those kids carte blanche to take that matter up with the Human Rights Commission and to drag some hapless newsagent or takeaway proprietor in some shopping centre through the human rights processes, which would be unfortunate, and it would be difficult for them to say, “I think I was acting in the best interest of the child.”
We have a situation here where the minister today has been given the challenge to support the principal in what he did. As Mr Doszpot has rightly said, this is not unusual. Only last week, at about the time that this started to be a live issue here, we saw on the TV, over and over again, the principal of Hermannsburg primary school in the Northern Territory being lauded for the actions that he has taken to address absenteeism in his school. One of the things that he has done is exactly what the Lanyon high school principal has attempted to do. He went to the shopkeepers and said, “If the kids are in your shop, please do not serve them.”
It happens in Western Australia. It happens in New South Wales. All of these places have a discrimination act. All of these places have an act which says that it is not lawful to discriminate against people for a variety of reasons, including age. But I would actually submit—and this is the message that I send to those schoolchildren who think they can get away with this and those shopkeepers who would like to
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