The spirit of Mandy Rice-Davies is alive and well.

>>For eight months, the National Human Rights Consultation Committee engaged with the Australian public... The majority of that wide spread of people thought that specific groups were still in need of further protection of their rights.<<

Well they would say that, wouldn't they?

What the "consultation committee" probably omitted to ask - a mere oversight of course - was whether those same people believed that a Human Rights Act was the best, most appropriate, most efficient, most effective, least open-to-abuse method to rectify the situation. I'm sure they wouldn't have asked the question in a manner that achieved the result they were after, now would they.

The fact that "further protection" might be needed doesn't automatically deliver a result for the HRA activists. Although if you are on a junket that roams "all over the country, from urban and rural regions..." you are going to want a positive result, aren't you. Especially with such terms of reference as "The National Human Rights Consultation Committee will undertake an Australia-wide community consultation for protecting and promoting human rights"

You wouldn't want to discover that they were already sufficiently protected. would you?

I wonder how much that exercise in self-promotion and arse-covering cost us?

One clear finding of the Committee is that Australians know little about their human rights. According to the Report, Australians are
generally unaware as to what human rights are, where they evolved from
and how they are promoted and protected. It is not surprising then thatthe Committee recommended "that education be the highest priority for improving and promoting human rights in Australia". You only need to read the user Jayb's comments as proof.

I just wish the bleeding heart liberals in Australia would shut up and do some research. All Rudd has to do to introduce a fair just impartial Bill of Rights into Australia is sack Robert McClelland, Nye Perrem the Federal Court Judge in denial, and a few other of his scumbag ( a Paul Keating word) advisers, and accept that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights was legitimately enacted in 1981 by Malcolm Fraser, and confirmed in 1986 under Hawke.

A good researcher, and there MUST be at least one in Kevin07’s entourage, knows that it is referred to in the Privacy Act 1988, the Criminal Code Act 1995 ( Cth) where it makes it a 17 years jail term to ignore it, in S 268:12, the Dictionary of the Criminal Code Act 1995 ( Cth) where you are told it is Schedule 2 to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act 1986 , S 138 (3) (f) Evidence Act 1995, (Cth) where it is again made a condition precedent on the admission of evidence in any trial, and you must understand what a bunch of dishonest mongrels we have as Federal Court Judges in Australia. Every one of these scoundrels could take 10 minutes and this comment, and know they are rogues.

Rudd should publicly sack every Judge in the Federal Courts for dishonesty. They are dishonest according to the standards of ordinary people. Not my words, words from the Criminal Code Act 1995 ( Cth). On the other hand he could be a Christian and forgive them. But only if he makes like Almighty God, and hears them repent. Repentence is a turning towards Almighty God, and Almighty God is truth and honesty.

Lets just try a bit of prophesy. False prophets are a dime a dozen, but just lets say Tony Abbott, does the research first, and promises to bush the lot of them, without their flash pensions for fraud. I would then prophesy that Tony will win and Rudd will be a oncer. Man proposes God disposes. Howard’s sins visited on Rudd

Jayson84: "that education be the highest priority for improving and promoting human rights in Australia". You only need to read the user Jayb's comments as proof.

Jayson, could you please spell out for me exactly what you would want included in a Human Rights Bill. Please don't tell me that you are not qualifyed to comment as I would feel that, that was a cop out.

I would suggest the first, most fundamental human right should be the right to jury trial, where the jury is properly instructed to not only test the guilt or innocence of the accused, but also the validity of the Law(s) allegedly broken.
Too many recent laws seem to demonstrate the cultural, social or economic bias of the legislators, rather than any consistent ethical code.
Our legislators have too often either shown slavish obedience to the lobby groups/benefactors who helped get them elected, or simply got elected for the purpose of grinding their own axe.
Such ethically ambivalent laws need to be tested by an impartial, non partisan jury on their ethical merits, rather than by who benefits. Indeed, the first question a jury should ask is Cui Bono

I think all of the questions of "what rights for whom" have been fairly well covered in this topic, along with a few in the past, as well as the tendency of rights for some detracting from the rights of others (a right to trial by jury requires 12 people having their rights stripped away until the trial is complete- for the benefit of one person only).

But I would like to add that I find it strange that in a period where Australia is facing a net filter that this golden opportunity to actually get support for a Bill of Rights- for an actual nation-wide rights crisis, is mostly completely ignored!
But then again, the introduction of conscription, the introduction of compulsory super, the rather near-compulsory requirement to have a bank account, governments being allowed to compulsorily-acquire properties, the privatisation of national companies and property, to mention a few issues never got touched on either.
And of course, abortion and Euthanasia STILL not being properly legal in this country.

I'm still waiting for even THESE to even be mentioned in a BOR advocacy speech, before I even move forward to join Pericle's request for concrete evidence of efficiency of such rights, and others' questions about the degree of democracy and permenancy of such a proposal either.