I’m not sure that it is really our “fellow Australians” that concern the author. Like all proponents of some sort of ‘rights’ legislation, he kicks off with those ‘poor’ people who were locked up for arriving illegally, or staying illegally, in our country, and those ‘oppressive’ terrorism laws designed to actually protect people from lunatics.

His 2005 warnings about terror legislation have now proved to be without substance.

As for the homeless and aborigines, these people have had the same opportunities as everybody else; no human rights instrument will ever help them.

If “A statutory charter should not allow Courts to strike down laws that are incompatible with human rights”, then what is the point of having judges interfere and waste time and money? As I read Victoria’s abortion legislation and an apeal against it, the courts cannot do anything but refer it back to the Minister for further consideration. The Minister does not have to act.

If courts would not be allowed to “strike down laws that are incompatible with human rights”, just what would be the “meaningful remedies” provided by the super-humans of the judiciary?

Lawyers, in their arrogance, seem to think they know more about right and wrong than we “ordinary” Australians. The author's use of ‘ordinary’ to describe somebody other than himself or others not in his profession doesn’t endear the him to anyone, nor give confidence that he and other lawyers are not merely interested in more power for themselves in their wish to undermine society by usurping the role of elected representatives.

John von Doussa's article is a timely warning of what can happen when 'correct' laws are made and administered without taking into account the real human dimensions of their consequences. It is time for a fundamental change in approach when a learned judge admits that he had to make a decision which "... was both legally correct and morally reprehensible".

There is something fundamentally wrong with a legal system that requires a judge simply to interpret the law when it is screamingly obvious that the law is a bad one because it hasn't taken into account the deleterious human impact of the law. ("I was not asked to understand the emotional trauma of the detainees that appeared before the court. I did not know the conditions in which asylum seekers were detained - nor did I ask. Although international law prohibits inhumane and arbitrary detention, Australian law does not.")

As President of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Judge von Doussa was finally confronted with the sorts of human rights problems he couldn't see sitting in a Court building. ("At Baxter I saw children - the same age as my own - and witnessed in their disturbed manner the profound damage wrought by long-term detention.")

Judge von Doussa is right to suspect "...that members of the judiciary, like people on the street, have little occasion to engage face to face with the human rights problems faced by their fellow Australians". But what he doesn't say - and should have said - is that politicians who make these terrible laws that judges have to administer are in too many cases also out of touch with the human rights problems.

Successive Ministers of Immigration, for example, in the previous twelve years, were so intent on being mean and tricky that they lost all sense of compassion and fairness. Ruddock still can't see what all the fuss was about when he imprisoned small children for years.

Maybe this is the era when judges can deal with laws such that their decisions can be both legally correct and morally right.

The Author:

<"I would like to see the legislature focus on solving existing human rights problems and preventing human rights problems from happening in the future.">

Ok.. fine.. would my human rights NOT to be discriminated against by the allocation of STATE land for private religious purposes to people who do NOT include me, be protected in such a bill?

Would the RIGHT of Australians NOT to have their STATE land mis-used by minority (or majority) religious groups by politically "correct" but morally reprehensible Educational institutions such as Latrobe, Monash, and Melbourne Universities, be protected or abused as it is at the moment?

Would my RIGHT to be protected from the STATE being used to advance a religion which:

-Curses me because of my faith.
-Calls on it's followers to fight me and destroy me until I am subjected to it's rule
-Has a history of mass extermination of Christians as recently as 1910-1915 which saw up to 750 THOUSAND Assyrian Christians massacred along with the over a MILLION Armenians over the same period?
-Makes literature available for public sale which calls for the murder of Jews by it's followers to bring in "the last hour"?

I rather think any Bill of Rights would be a shoe on the other foot.. 'Guaranteeing the freedom to practice your religion without interference' even though your religion might be advocation Paedohilia such as the "Children of God".

Such a bill would inevitably contain the seeds of harm and abuse of such unimaginable dimensions that we would see the same abuse of rights ...just among different people, most likely 'ordinary fair minded Aussies'

How incredibly Ironic is was.. I mean..DOUBLY ironic, yesterday to have a Hijabed Kurdish girl poke her head over my shoulder saying "I couldn't help overhear..may I ask.. etc" and then express some indignation at the very thought that if her religious group ever took power non them might face problems.. IRONIC x2
1/She was here because of persecution.
2/Her own ethno-religious group spearheaded the massacre of Assyrian Christians less than a century ago!

nah... it could NEVER happen here...could it?

Mr Right, you're not a fool. You know perfectly well that claiming asylum isn't illegal under any Australian or international law. Saying otherwise only serves to make you look like a blinkered bigot.

And can you back up your line about the terrorism laws by telling which of them was used to apprehend the would-be terrorists in Victoria? So far the answer is "none".

Phew, a bit of passion from POLYCARP, but there's a serious point to his remarks. Who decides what rights are to be protected? John Stuart Mill in 'On Liberty' proposed that the state should protect its citizens from harm inflicted by others but not from harm emanating from their own actions. Leaving aside silly definitions of harm like casual insults, this seems to me a pretty solid basis for the contract between the citizen and the state.

What do we do then about non-citizens, like the so-called boat people? At one level, human compassion seems to dictate that we welcome them onto our shores. Their chosen method of arrival, however, removes from us as citizens the right to ensure that they do not come with intentions to harm us and that they can and will accept the fundamental values that underpin our society. These values include a commitment to elected government, the rule of law, equality of all before the law, freedom of religion and association and so on.

In the end, charters of human rights threaten to remove from us as citizens the chance to examine the actions of those to whom we grant the privilege of governing us and to hold them accountable when we think they have erred. I don't think this is a risk worth taking.

The author talks about laws put through without adequate consideration af basic human rights relative to the NT inteverntion. What about the rights of the kids not to be abused or sexually interferred with. The human rights of the kids, I am far more interested in, rather than if the parents can spend all their social security on grog.

He raises the usual garbage about kids in detention but again no mention of the fact that they and their parents can leave at any time, if the claim for refugee status is withdrawn. Even if not, the claim would be dealt with much sooner if their papers were not destroyed and the truth told to our officials. So kids in detention are the parents responsibility. Do they want us to seperate the kids from the parents or simply let them all in because they have kids with them. Cornelia Rau was a person who deliberately set out to deceive everybody, so what do we expect our officials to do?

What about the human rights of the "Forgotten Australians" to compensation and an apology and what about the human rights of Australian girls being subject to FGM and the State Governments doing nothing to stop it or bring the offenders to justice. The human rights advocates never mention these people, they are too busy looking after those that have the money to buy their way to Australia via the back door.

I do not share the authors faith in the judicery, as almost daily we see reports of inadequate sentences being handed down to criminals.
A year or so ago a court allowed a non-citizen, convicted drug dealer, to remain here because he had fathered a child while here and to deport him could effect the child. There is a similar case now being considered about a bloke from NZ who came here on a false passport and has a n extensive criminal record. I bet he will succeed, so where is our right not to have to put up with criminals being allowed to stay here.

I wish, just once, that a "Human Rights" lawyer writing on the topic of "Human Rights" and the need for a "Human Rights Bill" would tell us in plain English what is being proposed.

The whole of the Human Rights case seems to rest upon obscurity and obfuscation.

>>There is something fundamentally wrong with a legal system that requires a judge simply to interpret the law when it is screamingly obvious that the law is a bad one because it hasn't taken into account the deleterious human impact of the law.<<

No, no and again, no.

There may well be something fundamentally wrong with a Law that does not take into account "deleterious human impact".

But this does not in any way, shape or form provide evidence of a failure of or in the legal system itself.

There is a great deal wrong with the manner in which our laws are conceived, constructed and enacted. But this does not provide valid justification for the introduction of an even shakier legal construct, "Human Rights", against which other laws may be measured and found wanting.

The horror of this paragraph is not only its sanctimony, but its sheer infeasibility...

"A statutory charter should not allow Courts to strike down laws that are incompatible with human rights. However, if we are serious about implementing our international obligations, we should give Courts the power to provide meaningful remedies to individuals who are victims of human rights violations."

So, A goes to the law for a remedy against B, and loses on a black-letter decision: the law does not support you. But somehow he is able to persuade the Courts to give him a "meaningful remedy" anyway.

It's a Looking Glass world, people.

"There's the King's Messenger. He's in prison now, being punished: and the trial doesn't even begin till next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all."

"Suppose he never commits the crime?" said Alice.

"That would be better, wouldn't it?"

<< "the so-called boat people? ...Their chosen method of arrival, however, removes from us as citizens the right to ensure that they do not come with intentions to harm us" >>

Yeah, because every nation's preferred method of attack is to put desperate religious minorities on leaky boats so that half can die en route and the survivors can beg for mercy on arrival.

I'm sure the SIEV-X was loaded with people who were willing to endure starvation and exposure just for the opportunity to come here and harm Australians.

What a worthy, realistic argument.

As for removing "from us as citizens the right", what we need is some kind of government department to oversee immigration on our behalf. We could call it "the Department of Immigration". I'm surprised no such organisation exists, and people are still permitted to enter Australia without any scrutiny or interference from Australian officials.

John,

Surely your job as a judge is to administer the law as approved by the people's representatives in parliament. If you think a law is wrong, you should do what the rest of us would have to do, which is to get elected to parliament so it can be changed.

You post makes me think of the machinery question of how the people should go about effecting a legal reform in the teeth of the opposition of the entire legal profession. If, for example, a substantial majority wished to bring back hanging drawing and quartering, and had the votes to pass a referendum to that effect, would this be enough, or would the referendum also have to remove all current justices on the High Court, and replace them with a nominated panel?

If I am not mistaken, some members of the judiciary may actually care about all people regardless of race, creed or otherwise,
BUT
they also fear an accusation of treason.

http://www.comlaw.gov.au/ComLaw/Legislation/ActCompilation1.nsf/current%5Cbytitle/37BA4B1F187B70ABCA256F71004F4FA9?OpenDocument&mostrecent=1

and a pertinent extract:

" ... Article I
The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.

Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

When the Dalai Lama said:
"By INTENT or otherwise, there is a cultural genocide taking place"

he may have done so with an awareness of the sorts of arguments, if they can be called that, which have been made in Australia.

STOLEN GENERATION:
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
" We weren't tring to do 'em wrong, we did it for their own good."
!HOLY JESUS mother of SATAN!

DESERT CAMP CHILDREN:
(b) Causing serious bodily or MENTAL HARM to members of the group
I have not read any of the "deceit" that has been proferred to refute this one by the likes of howard and his knowing and obliging child
abusing mates. Verily, the pre-emminent society of psychiatrists in this country (and not just them) stated, DO NOT do this to these children as MENTAL ILLNESS will be the result.

TREASON or not, my view is that the "crown" is a genocidal institution at times and it has been for a very, very long time.

*NOTE* No good only acting after the fact. That leaves some irrepairabley harmed.

...Adam...

Upon the experience of my nearest and dearest's human rights abuses, the suffering has taught me to be more compassionate to others and really look at power imbalances that exist throughout our system. I wondered why such a complete disregard for human rights is supported when we are all human beings and deserve to be treated equally, that those who are vulnerable are protected and dignified. I even extend that to those I feel less compassion for, that have abused others human rights. The best "punishment" for human rights abusers is to learn and understand what suffering they have caused and learn to treat others with dignity and respect. Authoritarian ways are really for the simple minded - there is not much intellect in brutality and not much to be learned from cruelty and torture, except hate against the people who did these things. My hope in humanity is the fact that the human rights declaration was made so purely and without corruption of its principles, the fact that the declaration still exists and you are writing this article is hope for salvation without a religious under-toning - just the "good" of humanity.

As President of HREOC, Mr. John von Doussa had the opportunity to DO something about it when I complained against UNSW Vice Chancellor who has banned me from entering the University. Given that I am Australian and there is not one shred of evidence that I am a security risk, the only legal basis on which I could be banned is ‘ownership’ – that I am not Australian. The Police did list me as Sri Lankan despite my strong protests that I was Australian. That was lateral majority power influencing the Police – the Parallel of the reason for detention when Australians do not know the background. Mr. John von Doussa did have the Inclosed Lands Protection Act 1901 under which I was arrested by the Vice Chancellor through the Police, to find the Vice Chancellor guilty of Unlawful Racial Discrimination. But due to his rulings, the current vice chancellor Mr. Fred Hilmer sent armed officers to break into my home and remove assets to pay his hired lawyers. Experience says Mr.John von Doussa is not true even to himself. Hence he does not qualify to speak on behalf of Common Australians. He needs to limit himself to the intellectual path – however narrow that may be in Australia.
I wrote to Mr. John von Doussa – that Human Rights is separate from Equal Opportunity. Mr. John von Doussa did not respond. But to me karma ‘happened’ – with the Commission now being just Human Rights Commission. Likewise karma happened at UNSW . I complained of unlawful racial discrimination and my services were terminated even though I was expressly recognized as a high performer by users of my services including the Dean of Medicine. Karma happened after I left and UNSW spent millions of dollars defending itself against charges of racial discrimination described as scientific fraud in the Hall matter and also with Mr. Ul Haque – a UNSW Medical student being charged for terrorism. KARMA SURE HAPPENS. Mr. John von Doussa failed to see it coming because he did not see himself first – before seeing others