Ozbib wrote, "It would help if commentators bothered to read the Matilda Bill."

Sterling suggestion, ozbib, though contrary to the practice of many contributors here to not let facts get in their way. Just in case someone does want to read it, they can find it at http://www.newmatilda.com/admin/imagelibrary/images/ydt2Wji77QxS.doc

The table of contents gives a quick overview of the rights that it addresses.

It is true that a Bill of Rights structured after the US pattern puts some decisions in the hands of judges that most people would prefer politicians to make. The legality of abortion is an often-cited example. However the US structure is not what New Matilda is proposing.

The High Court of Australia publishes its judgements. For example the Mabo case is at http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/disp.pl/au/cases/cth/HCA/1992/23.html

This was thought by many to be an example of "activist" judges "discovering" a right that legislators had never intended.

The Court (which, by the way, did not then include Michael Kirby) found in a 6:1 judgement that, "the common law of this country recognizes a form of native title which, in the cases where it has not been extinguished, reflects the entitlement of the indigenous inhabitants, in accordance with their laws or customs, to their traditional lands..."

The reasoning was complex. The judges wrote five separate judgements. This is not the sort of careful logic that you can expect from a parliamentary debate.

As for a Bill of Rights being a leftist plot, nobody who reads business newspaper The Economist would dream for a moment of accusing it of being leftist. (This week it is grumbling about governments' tendency towards creeping paternalism, http://economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6772346 ) Yet when the British Code of Human Rights came into effect in 2000 it editorialised, "The adoption of a code of human rights marks a welcome change..."

Contributors here who believe that the rich and the powerful have an inalienable right to exploit the poor and the weak will remain unconvinced. The best we can do is to outnumber them.

The biggest problem with the "Matilda Bill" is that it has too many words, and too many of these words would be open to subsequent interpretation.

That isn't only a fault of this particular document, but is visible in other countries with the massive increase in "Human Rights Lawyers" who make a living from the interpretation of the generalizations that are the only material with which such Bills can safely deal.

I can imagine a lot of legal fun, for example, with the "Right to Life" clause that states "This section applies to a person from the time of their birth."

This specifically excludes embryos, so will have the effect of finally silencing the right-to-lifers on the topic of abortion.

Was this intended?

If it is changed to "this section applies to a person from the time of their conception", it would have the reverse impact, of finally making all forms of abortion illegal.

Either way, I can see a massive new area of legal discussion from which the only winners will be (surprise) lawyers.

And this is only one clause. Let's find another.

In the section on the right to a fair trial, we find that "Everyone has the right to ... a fair and public hearing."

But once again, the devil is in the detail.

"However, the public may be excluded from all or part of a trial ... to protect public order or national security in a democratic society"

Anyone who has had any dealings with the government, even on matters as harmless as freedom of information, will know how easy it is for them to invoke the excuse of "detrimental to national security".

There is unfortunately nothing in the Bill of Rights that imposes upon any government the requirement to conform with it - hence all these weasel-clauses, without which no government on earth would allow such a Bill to be passed.

Toothless. Pointless. Just a piece of self-righteous tosh that states the obvious in order to make its proponents feel all warm inside, instead of having to get off their backsides and do something practical.

Baraka,

Thugs & criminal should be seen as policing issues.
Whether they are Asian, middle eastern, italian or Anglo gangs should not matter. The law have to be enforced on everyone evenly for safer streets.