Tim points to “three main weaknesses” with the proposed Act, the first being that it “pretends to be non-political”. Is this not exactly what a human rights covenant should be and exactly what a country’s constitution is supposed to be, the latter being the very document Tim Anderson wants overhauled?

Secondly, Tim states that the Act does not represent or advance participatory democracy but the fact there has been such a push by the campaign for submissions and feedback is so that there is free and full public and parliamentary debate (and notably from more than just the “educated types” Tim Anderson refers to).

Thirdly, Tim believes the bill does not seek to engage with popular achievements in Australian history but this overlooks the fact that rights protection for all Australians references and remedies past injustices without having to include an acknowledgement or disclaimer or historical bio before every clause.

As for a discussion of the practical implications of implementing international human rights protection, the experience of other countries such as the UK, NZ, Canada and South Africa demonstrate the practical impact on indigenous rights, immigration, incarceration of nationals, arbitrary detention, same sex rights and more.

The fact is the happy majority in Australia do not currently feel the effects of discrimination or other impediments to their freedoms and therefore assume they never will. The fact is that, as Tim states, both major political parties in Australia and the corporate media are doing damage to our democracy. The fact is that Australia’s international reputation is regressing further by the day due to its blatant disregard for international treaties and domestic human rights protection. Surely the proposed Act is effective in addressing these issues and achieving Tim Anderson’s goals of defining rights and the Australian identity? It may even just be a valid and effective first step, keeping in mind that there are examples of countries where a two-step implementation process of a bill followed by constitutional amendment has been successful (in Canada, for example). Australia needs domestic human rights protection and the proposed Human Rights Act affords just that.

First things first, there were more reasons than the White Australia Policy which stopped a bill of rights, especially seeing as we decided not to have a bill of rights before we enacted the White Australia Policy. What is at issue is whether or not rights can be protected without a bill of rights, and whether or not having a bill of rights might damage things like democracy, the parliament, or our society in general.

Firstly, Bills of Rights offer very little success. America is the perfect answer, where it allowed massive descrimination on the grounds of race, was used to allow enormous corporations to become monopolies and be unregulated from state to state. In more recent times, it has been used to permit obscene, libellious and treasonable material to be published, and to promote the "rights" (give undeserved principles without responsibility) to minority groups. From this, one can see that Bills of Rights are not protectors of rights, just tools of whatever prejudice holds sway in the day. Monopolistic capital in the 19th and early 20th century, and a politically correct libertarianism in the late 20th. What it says, simply, is that a Bill of Rights is just a document to be used to whatever political ends one might wish. Take the right to Free Speech in the American constitution. Once considered to refer to political speech, it is now used to permit obscenity and libellous material.

Rights are, in many ways, like art. Often it is the ambiguity and obscurity of something that sheds light on it. Take, for example, the CUSTOMARY British right to free speech. It is the traditional gap that exists between sedition laws, libel laws, laws against treason, laws agaisnt obscenity, and laws against causing public disorder. If we were to say "we have a right to free speech", then chances are that it would be used to justify removing the above laws which created our customary right to it.

That is, a stated right assumes that it is something which exists naturally, and that everything else is an attempt to take it away. In reality, unless there is an authority over the land, we have no rights, because we have no civil society by which to define it, as rights are the product of a civil society. We are acutely aware of our customary rights, but understand that it is a product of necessity tempered by social obligation.

The great irony of those who accuse the conservatives in Australia of attacking Australian democracy is that many of them want a Bill of Rights... many of them also say that our society is becoming meaner and less concerned with our neighbours. Surely, a Bill of Rights is the type of thing that makes us more individualistic, selfish and selfserving! The people understand that, for the large part, we must discern between different sexes, sexualities and ethnicities at times. How could we seek to better the lot of Aboriginal communities by cutting of booze and smokes from their settlements with a bill of rights? How could we seek to use marriage as a means for increasing the birthrate and ensuring that kids get their customary right to a traditional upbringing when it would allow an arrogant homosexual lobby to cheapen the institution and destroy the customary rights of children? How could our society have made itself the most egalitarian in the world by having a differentiated male/female/child wage which gave a true chance to working families with laws against descrimination on the grounds of gender?

In the end, we must have faith in the common sense and the common heritage. We can expect help from the judiciary rarely, our unelected Head of State's representatives have interveened in two of our darkest hours. In the end, however, it is the people and its representatives that must bear most decisions, and they should do so untethered by an impractical list of false rights, and inhindered by a politicised individualism.

In regards to the 'Bill of Rights’, we as a Global society have become more enlightened than our previous ones. Maintaining laws, which are not relevant to Nationalistic and Global issues concerns, are stupid and ignorant. These laws are obsolete to say the least. An Australian republic is the answer, an Australian for head of State, that is just right, that is what we are, a State of the World. Anyone who suggest otherwise are bias and narrow-minded. Our humanity is not confined to Nationalistic borders, but to Global borders. Having Nationalistic Pride is good if your intentions are pure, but at the expense of being superior to other Nations, is racist and British in bygone days. The 'Bill of Rights' needs scrapping thrown on the garage pile. We need a Republic because our future depends on it; a new constitution in line with the United Nation Preamble and Charter, stipulating Human Rights and Policies Issues, which co-relate with the equality of every Nation of this World.
I respect the Queen and the tradition of Royalty, but not to the extent of sacrificing our equality, dignity, and responsibility we have has a State Nation of the world. Let the Queen live their Royal dream in their Palace, the legacy will live on only in tradition, but the reality is an ‘Australian Republic’ will emerge in its right time in the near future. Our survival of this world depends on each Nations' becoming States of the World, being individualistic and co-depended on each other, purely because we are human beings and a benevolent society fighting against terrorism and injustices.

Australians will not support a Bill of Rights, primarily because they distrust the motives of those most clamourous in proposing it. People like Tim Anderson, a man implicated in the Hilton Hotel terrorist bombing, in which three Australians were murdered. The fact that the confessed bomber fingered Anderson as the mastermind who put him up to it, undouptably causes unease among the public, even though Anderson was found not guilty of the charge.

The reason why radicals like Tim Anderson support a Bill of Rights is because it is the easiest may to by pass the people’s Parliament, and have their pet causes adjudicated by “progressive” judges who now infest our courts. One only has to remember the case where a Family Law Court judge exceeded his authority by interpreting his judicial powers in such a way, as to dictate immigration policies to Parliament. This judge ordered the release of “refugee” children from Baxter detention centre.

It was never the intention of the Constitution for the Family Law Court to by pass Parliamentary authority on matters like immigration policy. If judges want to rule, they can stand for elections just like politicians. Giving lawyers and judges a Bill of Rights to play with will guarantee some pretty novel interpretations of what constitutes "rights" that will be parodies of the very freedoms which we all wish to keep.

In short, a Bill of Rights is nothing more than a Trojan Horse for people like Anderson, who can not get what they want through the ballot box, and so they prefer to resort to other means. It is a sugar coated cyanide pill which will explode and injure our community, just as indiscriminately as the Hilton bomb.

There is no case for an Australian republic or Bill of Rights. People calling for a republic in the name of Australian identity and independence could better serve their country by opposing anti-Australian multiculturalism.