Nation’s prisons face new scrutiny
On May 2, Attorney-General Robert McClelland and Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith announced that Australia had begun the process of becoming a party to the Optional Protocol of the Convention against Torture. This will allow both international and national scrutiny of our various systems of detention.
The announcement by McClelland and Smith received little media attention, even though it amounts to a significant step by Australia in enhancing human rights protections and represents a welcome reversal of the Howard government’s thumbing its nose at the prospect of international scrutiny of our detention facilities.
The practical impact of Australia becoming a party to the optional protocol is that those thousands of individuals who are detained in our prisons, youth training centres and detention centres will now have a greater opportunity to prevent being subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.Brown paves the way for Rudd
Ever since the Hawke government proposal for a modest charter of rights and freedoms was defeated in a referendum in 1988, the opponents of Australians enjoying a bill of rights have pointed to the fact that such a legislative measure was unnecessary because the common law already guaranteed our rights. Last week, the new British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, debunked that myth, and in doing so undermined any rational objection to Australia adopting its own enforceable bill or charter of rights.
Mr Brown announced last Thursday that his government was beginning consultation on a statutory Bill of Rights and Duties. It was time, he said, to entrench liberty in the constitution. Brown’s speech, given to the University of Westminster, should be compulsory reading for Labor Leader Kevin Rudd and those Liberals who, unlike their leader John Howard, have an open mind on an Australian bill of rights.
For what Mr Brown does is to put the notion of a statutory bill of rights as something that naturally evolves from the common law tradition - the thread that runs through British and, by extension because of our history and practice, Australian society. Of course, unlike Australia, Britain does not have a written constitution, but this does not alter the fundamental need to root in our most sacred civic document, our rights and freedoms.
"Sorry" first, but progress must follow
Twenty years ago last Australia Day, the Bicentennial celebrations kicked off on Sydney Harbour. But for thousands of Australians like me, the day started at Belmore Park with an enormous rally calling for a treaty with Aboriginal Australia. The idea of a document to underpin a fundamental revision of relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal had been around for a few years, and a Senate Inquiry had given the idea clear support a couple of years before. Then in 1990, the Governor-General opened the first Parliament of the re-elected Hawke-Keating government with a commitment to work towards an instrument of reconciliation - the treaty concept was centre stage in national politics.
A Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, eminent Australians to oversee the process of negotiating a “document of reconciliation”, was established with the unanimous support of the Federal Parliament. After hard negotiation with Aboriginal communities, churches, key community organisations, among Government MPs, the Opposition Liberal and National Parties, and the Australian Democrats, the Parliament made this commitment to reconciliation. Whatever party was to be in power in the future, a ten-year process of negotiation towards a document would continue, leading to a result by 2001.
John Howard's government came to power in 1996, and overturned that commitment, both through open hostility, and then slow neglect. The process of reconciliation continued - but the hope was ripped out of it. In 2000 the march across Sydney Harbour Bridge showed that a symbolic reconciliation had enormous support across the community. But in the end, the opportunity to address this hole in the heart of the nation passed - the centenary of Federation in 2001 was just fireworks and late-arriving commemorative medals.