National charter keeps them honest

16/03/2009

A national Charter of Human Rights will help keep politicians honest and prevent bad laws, Julian Burnside QC will tell a conference in Melbourne on Monday.

The prominent barrister and outspoken human rights activist will present a keynote address to more than 400 people at the Victorian Equal Opportunity & Human Rights Commission conference on Monday.

“Parliament’s power is unlimited so we should have some mechanism to hold parliament in check,” he said. “We have far more to fear from unfettered parliament than we do from a Charter of human rights.

“The indefinite detention of asylum seekers who have committed no offence; secret gaol orders; secret control orders; secret hearings in which a person's fate can be blighted forever, are all examples of human rights abuses committed in this country,” he said.”

Mr Burnside pointed to the High Court decisions in 2003 which upheld Australia’s mandatory detention laws, as an example of laws that destroy basic human rights.

“The High Court has held that it is constitutionally valid in Australia to hold an innocent person for life in the worst conditions human malevolence can devise. In the same year, the High court held that the same principles apply even if the detainee is a child .

Mr Burnside said it was relatively easy for the government to get away with such human rights abuses because Australians subconsciously divide human beings into two categories: Us and Other.

“We think, perhaps subconciously, My rights matter, and so do those of my family and friends and neighbours, but the human rights of others do not matter in quite the same way because, (without quite saying it) the Others are not human in quite the same way we are. It is dangerous thinking and profoundly wrong.

“We have human rights not because we are nice or because we are white or because we are Christian but because we are human. That’s the sticking point that makes it possible for people to acknowledge that human rights matter and yet resist the possibility of those rights being protected by law.

Mr Burnside also refuted criticisms that a national Charter would be a ‘lawyers’ feast’.

“In Australia today, the people who need a bill of rights – the people whose rights are denied or disregarded – are almost always at the margins of society. They cannot afford to pay lawyers. Most human rights work in Australia today is done for no fee,” he said.

The national Human Rights Consultation will hold public meetings in Melbourne and regional Victoria in mid-April. Submissions to the National Human Rights Consultation close June 15.