The Federal Government is peeved that meddling United Nations committees have dared to criticise Australia’s human-rights record. The Government is now threatening to wind down its commitment to the UN and its human rights effort and to some UN treaties. There is a good way out of this for Australia that would improve human rights, improve our human rights image and get around the “”foreign meddling” accusation.
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has cited the discriminatory approach to law enforcement in Western Australia and the Northern Territory by mandatory sentencing and the International Labor Organisation has attacked Australia’s workplace-relations regime.
There will be more to come. There are six UN committees on human rights and Australia is due to be looked at by four of them in this Olympic year.
The Government has some reason for grievance, but its response is counter-productive.
The Government might question the credentials of other member states who have representatives on these committees. However, these people sit as individuals or as UN employees, not as representatives of their own countries. Sometimes, for example, you hear UN officials who are US nationals slamming the US over things like US arrears in subscriptions or the US death-penalty record.
The Government has grounds for questioning the way the committee appears to have listened to Australian domestic barrow-pushers ahead of the Government’s submissions.
The Government is also right to question whether some of the issues taken up by some of the committees are human rights questions at all. Workplace Relations Minister Peter Reith was especially effective in challenging the ILO view of the world. the ILO might have had a point in attacking Australia over the role of troops in the waterfront dispute and whether the new legislation makes representation in workplace unacceptably difficult. However, the ILO also attacked Australia’s secondary boycott legislation. That is not a human rights issue. It merely makes unions civilly liable if they take against against third parties who are not party to the dispute. The government is merely protecting the rights of innocent third parties.
Some have defended mandatory sentencing on the ground that the law applies to everyone, irrespective of race. But the operation of law certainly discriminates.
Later, when other committees report, Australia is going to get into similar arguments. For example, many think Australia has freedom of speech. But our courts work on a principle of publish at your peril. Those speaking or publishing are under a very costly onus to prove the truth of what they publish. Just this week the NSW Supreme Court applied a permanent injunction Channel Nine censoring an interview it wanted to air.
On the world scale, though, Australia’s human rights record and its system of justice must rate very highly. So why do we need these poorly credentialled foreigners to sniff around where there are far more pressing cases elsewhere?
There are two responses. First, the examination of human rights by the UN must be universal. As soon as the UN exempts some (rich, mainly white democracies), others (black, Arabic and Asian) countries will quite reasonably cry foul.
Second, Australia’s cultural history of democracy and liberty, its legal and justice infrastructure and its comparative wealth make it easier for Australia to aspire to the very highest standards in human rights. It is much more difficult for, say, Zimbabwe to treat illegal refugees with comfort than Australia.
Given the need for UN scrutiny, therefore, how can the fall-out be limited?
The British experience is saluatory. Britain, like Australia, having long been a leader in liberty has been miffed when anyone (like the UN or the Europeans) has suggested that Britain is not perfect. Whippings in the Isle of Man, restrictions on freedom of speech in the name of national security or through impossible libel laws, and flaws in the ciminal law in cases involving Northern Ireland have been cited against Britain. Now Britain acknowledges the European Court of Human Rights and it has helped update Britain’s earlier smugness about human rights.
Australia could do something similar by putting a Bill of Rights in the Constitution, guaranteeing equality before the law, the independence of the judicary, freedom of speech, religion and assembly, a right to fair trial and so on. The Bill of Rights would be determined by the Australian High Court (an equivalent in our federation to the European court in the European federation). If the laws that our Parliaments created failed the test, they could be fixed or struck down before the UN could have a go at them. And if they passed the test of a judicially overseen Bill of Rights we would be in a much stronger position to ignore a UN committee in the unlikely event that it still found them defective.
A Bill of Rights would also reduce domestic critics’ propensity to run to the UN because they would have somewhere else to go in Australia.