Dear Nicky,

Thanks for your reference.
I will look it up.

You, and other posters may be interested
in the following website:

http://www.humanrightsact.com.au/2008/

It gives a list of various interesting
references on the topic.

How about including pensioners & exclude voluntary drug users in the human rights bill.

Ofcourse we should.
In a growing multi-cultural society we need to make sure that EVERYONE is conversant with all that it means and are acceppting of it.It should then have the force of social coersion.

Knowing the habits of our legislators where would you find anyone who has the guts and how long would they take to hammer one out....forever?
socratease

individual: "exclude voluntary drug users in the human rights bill."

I presume you would include cigarette smokers in that category. Heavy drinkers should also be in there too, come to that.

Binge drinking was just defined as about 3 glasses of wine in a night, wasn't it? I guess you would has to class binge drinking as heavy drinking. I have been known to drink that much in my younger days, so I guess I would be excluded.

Do you think people who engage in other dangerous activities, especially ones that endanger innocent others, should be excluded as well. People who speed would fall into that class, I guess.

I think Australia is more in need of a Human Responsibilities Act.

Apparantly the argument revolves around Judicial (non-elected) vs government power.

Sadly.... almost without exception.. 'Human Rights' or Bills of Rights legislation are thinly cloaked poorly disguised attempts to vilify Religious faiths of the Christian persuasion.

Inevitably they will include reference to sexual orientation as a reason people cannot be disciminated against..

That is just a short hop away from "Banning all Hate speech"

which..in turn, is defined under such 'Human Rights' laws as being anything which makes people of particular classes or people groups or religions (Except... Christian) feel uncomforable.

This in turn leads to a call to ban hate LITERATURE..which of course would only include the Bible.. (Romans 1 and Leviticus 18 in particular) But not the Quran which actually calls for stoning those (in the here and now) who don't like Leviticus or Romans ..

We have seen how 'Human Rights' commissions are in fact Left wing/politically correct star chambers, and unless we want a Cromwellian reaction to them... they are not helpful.