Robyn, I agree with you. However, having lived through the Bush-Blair-Howard era (and its continuation under other names), I am not so enthusiastic as I was. Governments will simply ignore international laws and their own national laws when they can get away with it and when it suits them.

The Human Rights Committee critical of Australia for not having acted on its number one obligation - that of ensuring that all rights recognised in the ICCPR are reflected in law, policy and practice.

Such rights include freedom of expression and of association, fair trial, freedom from arbitrary imprisonment, and freedom from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and the ceasing of racial segregation in particular the separation of families on basis of racial testing.

The Australian Human Rights Commission purports to be Australia's discrimination watchdog in terms of activities concerning human rights laws.

Commission president Catherine Branson, QC, perhaps finds it difficult to address HREOCs preferred flavors approach.

HREOCs preferred flavors approach results in HREOC itself being piecemeal, weak, and insufficient in protecting human rights.

The HREOC's "flavor preference" failed to address substantive "human rights" issues.

HREOC deserves be recipients of the "white feather" awards as result their actions when faced with publicly addressing issues or demonstrating cowardice and running away.

HREOC itself carries much responsibility for "fail to thrive" fourth world living conditions in so many communities around Australia.

HREOC's abusive usage of the A* label, whilst ignoring our Human label, significantly contributed to development of our "fail to thrive" fourth world ghetto camp style living conditions.

HREOC attachement of anti-human rights, indeed clearly racist, labels are its' excuse to ignore our otherwise held rights as Australians, as humans.

HREOC's actions held forseeable consequences such as the denial of equality of opportunity, then achievements in education and life.

Lost what held otherwise to be rational expectations for better opportunities in life as Australians or humans.

At least Mal Brough started address them.

Jenny Macklin and the Rudd gov are to their credit supporting and maintaining these essential actions.

Given its' failure to address these substantive issues, certainly an overhaul of HREOC is needed.

Well I have had my rights as a mother and human beging for 3 decades denied the right to protect my own children by the very government department that has been placed "DOC'S" every time i asked for them to investigate my aligations of child abuse done by my Mother to eventually be done by other family members, Partners and now my own children, it has been ignored,as a concequence my mother was able to steel my children and my right to protect them from the very evil that she is a shamed and guilty of marrying a "peadophile".

Because "NSW DOC'S" believed my mothers and sisters' word, eventually helped hand my daughter over to the very person that sexually abused me 31 yrs ago, and what makes matters worse "I AM IGNORED" by the legal system, the government system and all that are ashamed to talk to me, I want answers on how the government can take my human rights away as a mother when i was not the criminal "MY PARENTS and DOC'S" are the criminals and all that followed in their footsteps.

Robyn Seth- Purdie has a diploma of jurisprudence from the University of Sydney. She should know better than to write an article like this. If she really is an educated woman she should have been schooled in the basic skill, of Statutory Interpretation. The Constitution is the fundamental document in Australia, and when the Parliament of the Commonwealth enacts a law, it should be the duty of an academic like her, to now how to read it.

In 1981, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights was enacted as a Schedule to a Human Rights Act. Five years later it came on for reenactment. It was reenacted as Schedule 2 to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act 1986. What is and, it is a conjunctive. And joins two ideas in a sentence, and in the name of an Act. An Act is a court order from a Parliament, made by the s5 Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 binding on the courts judges and people of every State notwithstanding anything in the laws of any State. The Parliament of the Commonwealth makes the most powerful of all.

It ordered that a Schedule is part of an Act, by S 13 Acts Interpretation Act 1901. The Covenant has been law in Australia since 1986, but academics like the author, have been too uneducated, and too hoodwinked by lawyers, to understand its application. The systematic abuse of civil rights in Australia, by Judges and Magistrates should have ended on the 10th December 1986, when the Covenant became law. Dishonest corrupt academics and lawyers, whose monopoly is destroyed by the Covenant, newspapers whose invasion of privacy is stopped by the Covenant, in other words the intelligentsia, stand in contempt of Parliament when they say the Covenant is not law. I am a Christian and I stand for the truth. The truth is that Australia has had a Bill of Rights, since 1986, but no mechanism to fairly adjudicate any dispute since 1976. The Australian Prayer Network is opposing it, but the Covenant follows the New Testament. Christianity is justice.

God has heard the cry of the children and the mother abused by Docs, and he has enacted by His Parliament of the Commonwealth the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. A prayer was sent up, in that place, and the Parliament of the Commonwealth responded. Docs and every Judge and Magistrate in Australia is in contempt of the Parliament every time they sit without a jury, or sentence a child to sexual abuse, or a man or woman to prison, all because we have no real honesty or integrity in our judicial system.

The mini secondary Parliament in New South Wales in 1970, abolished the right to enforce Statute Law, by issue of a Writ, and destroyed the judicial system in New South Wales. In 1976, when the Parliament of the Commonwealth created the Federal Court it did not mandate Writs, it allowed the Judges of that Court total self government in an independent republic within Australia and did not mandate jury trials. Jury trials are practical Christianity. A Writ is a prayer to Almighty God, and the jury is the manifestation of the body of Christ.

The Party Political System acreated the Lawyers Republic, that is the Federal Court and the Family Court. It did so for the benefit of lawyers and academics like the author of this article. God hates injustice. That is why He sent JC. JC prescribed the separation of Church and State, but the blasphemers, who would deny the Holy Spirit, His day in court, by assuming the role of Almighty God and presuming to Judge, when Jesus prohibits it, are the ones who are the abusers of human rights.

The Covenant by banning discrimination, makes both sentencing by a Judge and Magistrate illegal as they are in the US, and reinforces the laws underpinning the Constitution. It is time the Parliament of the Commonwealth stopped pussyfooting around, and enforced its laws against the rebel States, and abolished the de facto self governing republic, operating outside the law, that is the Federal Court. Jury trials are a civil right the Covenant guarantees.

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Robyn and her critic Peter the Believer both portray to know what they are talking about and both seem to fail to comprehend what is constitutionally applicable. As a CONSTITUTIONALIST and GUARDIAN of the OFFICE-OF-THE-GUARDIAN I deal not with LEGAL FANTASY and LEGAL FICTION but with LEGAL REALITIES.

For example, after a 5-year legal battle with the Crown as my opponent I defeated it comprehensively on 19 July 2006 on all constitutional issues I had raised before the courts. Including that the Commonwealth has no constitutional powers to compel anyone to vote!

The Commonwealth of Australia isn’t an independent nation but was created by the federation as a POLITICAL UNION, in a sense like the European Union.
While purportedly Australia was a founding member of the United Nations it never had the status to do so.

Even if it had the status and were deemed to be validly a member it still makes not one of iota difference what the UN would declare because where it was in conflict with the (federal) constitution then it couldn’t be applicable and no kind of Commonwealth treaty could override constitutional provisions!

While on a personal view I oppose racial discrimination as a CONSTITUTIONALIST I have to acknowledge that the Commonwealth is racist because racial discrimination was specifically embedded in the constitution!

The Racial Discrimination Act 1975 is unconstitutional as while the High Court of Australia portrayed that it fell within external affairs powers the truth is that the Framers of the constitution made clear that external affairs powers related to existing legislated powers. As such, where Subsection 51(xxvi) provide for racial discrimination then external affairs powers could not pursue the contrary to it. As the Framers of the Constitution also made clear racial discrimination could not be used against the general community as RDA1975 purports to achieve.

In a recent case I was called in as a CONSTITUTIONALIST at the 6th CONTEMPT hearing where Her Honour already had made clear that she could imprison the accused. The case involved up to about 20 lawyers over the years