The joint statement by three ministers on the way the United Nations deals with human-rights issues in Australia is either a silly over-reaction or wilful politicking and populism. In any event, it is illogical.
The joint statement said Australia would call for a complete overhaul of the way UN human-rights committees go about their business. It called for the UN to respect the primary role of democratically elected governments and the subordinate role of non-government bodies in reportage of alleged human-rights abuses. Australia would not sign a new Un protocol to eliminate discrimination against women. The statement noted that while other countries were engaged in arbitrary arrests, torture and the Like, Australia’s problems were marginal and minor.
Maybe Australia’s human-rights questions are marginal compared to those of, say, Burma or half a dozen African hell-holes — all the more reason not to be so precious and defensive. Australia should be a leading democratic light, unfearful of having the very highest standards of human rights applied to it. Australia should not engage in the business of comparative human rights, saying we are doing better than Country X or Country Y. Human rights are universal and absolute. We should not be fearful of have absolute standards being applied to us. We should not be fearful of a benchmark not just of world’s best practice, but of an absolute standard being applied to us.
The Australian Government’s squirming on slightly adverse findings being made against us is unbecoming of a liberal democracy. Xenophobic allusions to interference in Australia’s internal affairs and appeals to UN committees to favour government reportage over the reportage of non-government bodies is especially unhelpful. These are the two very cries of undemocratic regimes. Malaysia and China, for example, forever cry foul on the basis on inference in internal affairs. They and other undemocratic regimes hamper or bar the activities of non-government bodies, substituting the official government view that all is well. The action by the Australian Government this week means that every dictatorship can gain succour from the Australian position that the government view is to be preferred and non-government bodies’ views are to be ignored or discounted.
This flies in the face of experience. Governments engage in by far the most breaches of human rights in the world and to date under the UN committee system no state has brought a complaint against another state. It mean that if UN committees are to identify human rights breaches they must rely on non-government bodies. With a lesser or no role for non-government bodies, the UN’s role in exposing human-rights breaches will be lost. And there are very few other means of exposing human rights breaches, let alone acting against them.
Rather than pointing to worse offenders (which is no excuse) Australia should have met the UN criticism head on and moved to do something about it. Instead Australia shamefully went on the defensive.
That the statement was put out by Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer, Immigration and Reconciliation Minister Philip Ruddock, and Attorney-General Daryl Williams is especially sad. We have come to expect Prime Minister John Howard to engage in policy by talk-back radio. We have come to expect Workplace Relations Minister Peter Reith to engage in the adversary government of guard dogs and hyperbole and we expect the National Party to engage in government by vested interest. Mr Ruddock used to be a voice of moderation. Mr Downer while not an intellectual giant comes with a pedigree of commitment to good government. Mr Williams was a man with a great belief in the rule of law and the rights of the individual. Sadly all have now succumbed to Howard-style populism and fear of Pauline Hanson with an appeal to some mythical battler instead of a more appropriate adherence to principle and the ideals of liberalism.