A Bill of Rights is as Jeremy Bentham said (to borrow a phrase)

"nonsense upon stilts"

Bills of Rights merely state what society at the time thought was the correct way of doing things.

The people that suggest that there are fundamental rights, what are these rights? and more importantly given that society is changing and dynamic, who are you to tell generations 200 years hence what to do? Or are these people all knowing and all seeing?

A bill of rights does nothing but provide a chance of activist judges to legislate from the bench (which is great for lefties because their views would never gain the appeal to win an election).

How about some of these decisions (which were legislated from the bench and have never faced debate on the floor of the legislature, which is surely the fundamental right of everyone, to have their representatives debate law).

Roe v Wade

The Pledge of Allegiance Case (about to come before the Supreme Court in the USA, however a circuit court of appeals ruled that the words "under god" should be removed from the pledge)

The recent attempt by the ACLU to sue New York Police for searching bags at train stations

The ten commandments case, in which an historical stone plaque of the ten commandments was removed from a court house because it "instituted religion"

The case in california where a city council had to remove a sign of the cross from its insignia (the cross that it represents is actually a landmark and the picture was of the landscape of the bay)

Yes lets have a bill of rights and give the nutcases the keys to the assylum.

While we are at it, lets bury democracy, because it will become the rule of the political correct minority.

Brent says that "a Bills of Rights merely state what society at the time thought was the correct way of doing things." So in 2005, the idea of separating church and state is no longer correct? Wow! Are the Taliban are looking for a new spokesman?

Redneck complains about "people who have no shame in announcing that they are prominent homosexual civil rights advocates." Perhaps he or she forgets that it was not long ago that said people were vilified and prosecuted for how they conducted their private lives. They fought for a place in society and most Australians have no problem with this. Redneck's demonstrable intolerance gives the "homosexual lobby" a continuing reason to fight with the support of the "none of my business"/"live and let live" majority.

To Sneaky Pete

Too bad you don't have enough wit to learn how to spell.

Yeah, David Latimer, I deliberately stuck the "no shame" shot in order to spark a reaction. People who get angry and emotional over their fav. causes tend give away their own self interest and reveal where they are really coming from. I hope I am not giving too much away teling you that little trick.

Look, I do not really care what homosexuals do in the privacy of their own bedrooms. Although I don’t think that the public should foot the bill for the proctologists who repair the damage to their rear ends.

The decriminalisation of homosexuality was never put to the electorate as a voting issue. Like Multiculturalism, it was simply imposed upon the people by gazette. While I agree that most people may have accepted decriminalisation, decriminalisation certainly did not automatically bestow respectability on this group by the public. And the homosexuals know it. This is why homosexuals are always savagely attacking the society that they know does not accept them. And if the people who make up this group continue to be prominent in the anti everything brigade, which constantly attacks the values, attitudes and morals of my society, then I do not see why I should not consider them as a hostile group and return the complement.

The Bill of Rights is a Trojan Horse of the homosexual lobby. It is constantly promoted by the homosexual lobby as a means to get around the laws of the People’s Parliament. If “most” people “have no problem” with homosexuals, then homosexuals would not have any trouble at all obtaining the equal rights that they constantly demand. The fact that they have to stoop to subterfuge in order to pull the wool over the public’s eyes to try and get what they want, clearly displays that you are wrong when you claim that most people accept homosexuals as equals.

Bill of Rights the cure all for society's ills, wrong wrong wrong.
It is a straight jacket for societal and democratic development.
All it does is lock in todays values for tomorrow's future.

Imagine establishing a bill of rights 100 years ago, would homosexuals have any rights, of course they wouldn't when the prevailing law at that time was that it was illegal.

The prevailing view of the that time was that women were regarded as chattel wouldn't that too be reflected in the bill of rights created at that time.

Look at how section 92 of our current constitution has been interpreted. It was meant to ensure that there would be no tariffs between the states yet became the barrier to Federal Government's ability to nationalise industry, some may argue this is a good thing but clearly it was never the intention.

Societies values change and the legislative process must not be hampered by outdated relics of the past.

We will be going through some significant changes as the biotechnology revolution approaches. Issues will arise in the next 50 to 60 years that we cannot even imagine today, how is it that we are supposed to establish a framework for decision making for events that we cannot even comprehend or imagine.

Greg Barnes falls into the age old trap of wanting to have a safety net for bad laws. If there is a Bill of Rights won't the parliament be less careful about infringing people's rights on the basis that there would be a court based safety net.

Shouldn't the parliament be accountable for bad laws and face the wrath of the population.

People say that the Bill of Rights can be amended, the reality is like all constitutions it becomes a holy grail and is very difficult to amend.

The question we should be asking is not whether we need a Bill of Rights but whether we need these tough anti terror laws, where is the need, have our security level gone to red?

Society must not be panicked into political image making agendas.

First of all, to redneck: if I had to make a choice between spelling correctly on the one hand and sanity and truthfulness on the other, I'd choose the latter. Yeldham never served on the High Court. Perhaps you're thinking of Kirby? Even if you are, to turn his presence on the High Court into the foundation of your homosexual government conspiracy is, shall we say, a little rococo. (I think I'm having a sexual identity crisis now: I used the word "rococo")

In any event, the issue at the bottom of Greg's call for a bill of rights is the very dangerous territory into which we are entering. The scariest comment made in respect of his article is that such laws are to be directed only at the bad people. Thousands of years of human history teach us that such laws will usually be abused either for personal agenda or for simple bloody mindedness.

I don't know whether a bill of rights will do any good in Australia. To have any lasting effect, it would have to be implemented as a constitutional amendment. One may doubt whether any referendum to limit the powers of the parliament to legislate against terrorism would succeed in the present political climate.

What we really need is for the people whom we elected as members of a broad church of conservatism and liberalism to stand true to the values they espouse. How could any inheritor of the conservative tradition in this country support the effective abolition of basic freedoms won over the centuries? How could any heir to the classical liberal tradition form the view that the laws now proposed are an acceptable concession?