this is an interesting article that hopefully will spark an intelligent debate about the need for effective human rights protection in the law. Australian citizens manifestly do not have much in the way of protection and certainly not from any legislated Charter or Bill of Rights.

Establishing the PJCHR was a small, useful step but it does not go far enough. As George Williams and others have shown, Australia has remarkably draconian laws passed in the largely manufactured post 9/11 hysteria. None of those laws can be challenged against any legislated protection such as an entrenched Charter or Bill. Experience has shown that bodies such as the Police and ASIO will always seek more and more power, even when that power is rarely exercised.

Australian governments have shown a willingness to ignore international standards when it suits them, as the abysmal refugee policy currently demonstrates. Holding accountable those who perpetrate war crimes and crimes of aggression internationally is another example of a major lacuna in the law.

It seems to me that the onus is squarely on those who oppose a Bill or Charter of Rights with teeth to demonstrate why Australia should remain almost unique among developed democratic nations in refusing to have such a Charter. I have yet to read or hear any convincing argument for the continuing refusal. The Canadian and New Zealand experience shows what it is possible to achieve without destroying parliamentary sovereignty.

HUMAN RIGHTS DELAYED

"Everyone has the right to build their own shelter and grow their own food"

Advocates and defenders of human rights legislation say that without legislation, "human rights" is nonsense. Human rights don't exist unless there is a state and a law to back them up - that human rights come from law.

Whether this is true or just self serving, the statement makes it clear that human rights legislation is the expression of the state.

Private property rights are foundational to the states which wrote the United Nations Human Rights Declaration.

The right to life obviously features in the UNHRD and a right to shelter is also mentioned, but no right of access to land upon which shelter depends is mentioned.

Land and property is of primary importance to the power of the states. The land, a gift of nature on which life depends, has been privatised and so "property rights" are protected by the UNHRD.

So, in order to uphold the privatisation of land and protection of property, the apparent contradiction between a right to life and the lack of a right of access to a natural element upon which life depends is niftily buried by declaring shelter rather than land access a right.

Homelessness could be dealt with instantly anywhere in the world through the recognition of a right of access to land upon which people could build their own shelter, but provision of shelter by the state is expensive and can be forgivingly forestalled indefinately on the apparently reasonable grounds that tax payers are stretched. The poorer the state, the longer and more reasonable the delay.

State welfare is also seen more as a matter of goodwill or charity than as a right.

All in all, the right to shelter is not seen as a human right but as an aspirational goal - an ideal and a charity

In theory the law could be changed, but not while the majority of voters have so much invested in their own property and see no personal advantage in thinking much about the rights of the landless.

The best chance for the poor would be to show that with their right of secure access to land they could be less dependent on tax. In Australia there is one opportunity I can see for the unemployed to demonstrate this through their access to public housing. see http://bit.ly/S4EjvG

The Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act sets the fox to guard the hen house ... good luck with that!

"Sovereignty of Parliament"? Ha Ha, that's a good one. Whatever happened to the sovereignty of the people? Governments govern with the consent of the people. The people are not the subjects of parliament.