Grassroots Human Rights - beyond symbolism

10/12/2003

Aboriginal elder Prof Lowitja O'Donoghue presented a 10-point plan for human rights action when she delivered the third annual Victorian Human Rights Oration today.

The Oration is the Equal Opportunity Commission Victoria's annual event to mark the United Nations Human Rights Day. The Attorney-General, the Hon Rob Hulls, MP, delivered the opening address.

Founding chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, Prof O'Donoghue called on all Australians to accept personal responsibility for change, treat everyone with respect and maintain the rage against human rights injustices.

Prof O'Donoghue said Aborigines had much in common with Afghani refugees. She said both Aborigines and Afghani refugees had experienced government oppression, suffered family separations and been allocated arbitrary birth dates.

She called on the Federal Government to abolish the 'Pacific Solution' and the mandatory detention of refugees. She said asylum seekers should be released from detention centres into the community as soon health and security checks were carried out.

"I want to remind Prime Minister Howard and Ministers Ruddock and Vanstone, that my people had to deal with boat people over 200 years ago.

"Just imagine what would have happened if back then, when we saw those tall ships and those men in funny hats, we had tried to excise Sydney Cove from Australia," she said.

Prof O'Donoghue also criticised the Federal Government's inaction on the health and wellbeing of Indigenous Australians.

She said the Government's Reconciliation policy has failed and Australia lagged behind New Zealand, Canada and the United States in relation to its treatment of Indigenous people.

"We still have a situation where Indigenous Australians have third world health status, where our children are dying as babies at the same rate as in the poorest countries in the world," she said.

Prof O'Donoghue described the Government's 'practical reconciliation' policy as a band-aid model and a failure.

"If anything, the health and wellbeing of Australia's Indigenous people is getting worse," she said.