I am not surprised by the Uniting Church’s position on human rights, it seems to be a denomination ready to baptise any fashion that comes along with little or no theological reflection in order to present itself in a favourable light to the surrounding society. This piece by the president of the national assembly reads like a PR exercise that is unbecoming of a Christian church.

The decision to support a human rights charter indicates a displacement of what should be central concerns of the church. The prophetic call for justice pertains to the community of faith and cannot be transformed into rights thought to adhere to the individual. As in all developments of this kind that owes it origin to the European Enlightenment, community does not exist, it is only the individual that exists and this is the reason that justice is also individualised. So instead of the community of faith ensuring that the orphans and the widows have a place in the community we have to invent a new species of existence, a human right. What the character of these mythical species is is determined by the councils of the United Nations where they seem to breed like rabbits. Any well meaning sentiment may be turned into a right. It is this path of good intentions that will lead to unforeseen and undesirable outcomes.

By supporting human rights legislation the church abandons its expectation that God will bring about in the church the kingdom of heaven and, as its activist agenda predicates, attempts to bring about that reality by its own efforts. This is nothing less than an attempt to take the kingdom by force, it is a sin against the Holy Spirit because it takes the place of that Spirit and conforms to the Enlightenment agenda of the self-made man/woman.

Human rights can only diffuse community by setting competing rights against each other. It leads to ethical conundrums as we have seen with the abortion debate. The church would be better off preaching the gospel and letting the Spirit do its work in the world.

Peter Sellick

Are we just looking after Christians, or also including peoples like the Sri-Lankan Tamils most of whom are related to those forcibly brought over from South India by our colonial Brits.

As one of a mixed old and young students doing research in Sri-Lanka in the early 1980s, it was part of our studies to look into the Sri-Lankan Tamil problem, Tamils having been brought over by the Brits mainly to clear the hillsides to grow tea, a practice which the Buddhist Sri-Lankans were very much against, particularly the Jainist sects.

It is so interesting that Dr John Macquire our leader gave more than one lecture about the above post-colonial problem.

Indeed, a problem caused so much by our British Christian fore-fathers, but now lumped so much together with other so-called terrorists borne so much from the heinous practice of colonialism.

From a secular point of view, the proposed charter of rights is profoundly anti-democratic because
it vests ultimate power in the hands of unelected judiciary and officials.
Those who would impose their will on the people can bypass the election process and would not be held unaccountable.
Nice work if you can get and it will be the zealots who will be seeking it.

The statutory rights of any population may be inalienable, as via the Common Law in Australia, but not universal. This is because of the variability of individual circumstances.

Peter Sellick sums up the dangers of a Bill of Rights very well. His take on the pathetic result of a merger between some Presbyterians, Methodists and Congregationalists is pretty good too.

I note that Alistair Macrae isn’t prepared to reveal the people – or class of people – who “fall through the cracks”. There is no reason for anybody in Australian not to have access to rights; and legislating a B of R would not make any difference to people who are not accessing their rights now.

One of the usual suspects drags up Tamils. I don’t think that even the proponents of a Bill of Rights for Australia had illegal immigrants in mind when the idea struck them. Refugees are covered by the UNHRC, and people using people smugglers to avoid putting their case for refugee status are not the sort of people who should be claiming rights as they pertain to a Bill of Rights. If it is the Tamils remaining in Sri Lanka that Bushbred is concerned about, their welfare is in the hands of the Sri Lankan government, not the Australian government.

As for the hated “Brit” colonists, they have nothing to do with Australia, Bill of Rights or no Bill of Rights. If the UK has any bad conscience about its long-gone empire, leave it to them.

There is no rational reason why Australians should allow themselves to be shackled by a Bill of Rights

I am again disgusted at the slavery to lawyers exhibited by so many pseudo Christians, who either cannot read properly, or refuse to read and understand the fundamentals of Statutory Interpretation. Just because a lying cheating lawyer says we have not enacted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights into Australian Law, doers not mean you have to believe him.

In this instance hysteria promulgated by dishonest Christians, who oppose the laws made by the Parliament of the Commonwealth without a skerrick of either truth or logic in their argument, are not serving either God or man properly.

If Christians, and for that matter Jews and Muslims, will just go down to Information Victoria, or go online, at Comlaw, and just do a little clicking, as we now can, they can get a copy of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act 1986 . In it as Schedule 2 they will see the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Just to set their logic chips up, they should go also to the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 and see that S 13 makes a Schedule a fully functioning part of an Act.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is a paraphrasing of the principles set out in the New Testament and pushed by Eleanor Roosevelt after World War II as international law, to ensure peace after the violence of that enormous war where 60 million died. Misguided and misled Christians, are listening to the wrong advice. A basic misunderstanding of the function of a conjunction, in the English Language, leads Christians astray. And joins two ideas.

Failing to make laws meeting the criteria of the Covenant as it is called, in the Criminal Code Act 1995 means a 17 years jail term. ( s 268:12 ) It is a pity lying to a member of Parliament is not such an offence, or the Hon Robert McClelland would no longer be qualified to be Attorney General.

It is no wonder closet Liberal lawyers in the Labor Party want to stop the Australian Federal Police from working properly