Lead Article
Why a Charter of Rights is important to Indigenous Australians
A few weeks ago I was honoured and humbled to be entrusted by the national stolen generations representative groups with the responsibility to participate in and later to speak in response to the Prime Minister’s Apology to the Stolen Generations.
I was touched by the Apology in all imaginable ways: as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner; the National Race Discrimination Commissioner and most importantly as the great grandchild of a Stolen Generations woman.
‘Her mother will not part with her’. This was the chilling account of the officer who reported on my great grandmother in 1899. When I recalled this at the Apology ceremony I had in mind not solely the pain of the past, but also the responsibilities of the present, and the demands upon the future to prevent the violation of basic human rights and dignity, such as the right of a mother to care for her child.
Read more »Other Articles
Guarding us from the laws that guard us
Since the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001, the Australian Parliament has enacted more than 30 laws dealing with terrorism.
With bipartisan support, the legislature has agreed that protecting Australians from terrorism demands exceptional restrictions on civil liberties, such as freedom of speech and freedom of association.
Offences and procedures have been established which depart significantly from traditional criminal law principles and practices.
Read more »Extract from a Letter from Human Rights Watch
Dear Prime Minister Rudd:
Congratulations on your recent election as Prime Minister of Australia.
Human Rights Watch is a nongovernmental organization based in New York that monitors and reports on international human rights, refugee, and humanitarian law issues in more than 70 countries around the world.
Read more »
Talking Points
How do we move forward with Indigenous Australians?
No promise made by the new government is more important for the future of a just Australia than its commitment to our Aboriginal and Torres Strait population. Lets hold them to it.
In the speech by Tom Calma posted here he says: “In the environment created by the Prime Minister’s Apology, I believe that a Charter of Rights in Australia — which specifies those fundamental rights that should never be compromised other than in grave exceptional circumstances — will assure all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, that their basic rights are protected.
Yes a Charter of Rights is not adequate by itself to deal with Indigenous issues but is nevertheless an important element of a holistic approach. Indigenous people - as individuals - should have the protection of a Charter of Rights as a supplement to, rather than a substitute for, their collective rights to self-determination and cultural identity.”
Read more or leave a response »Reading
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For the first time in the history of the UN, member states are each going to be examined in turn on their human rights records. The inaugural session of UPR, the big new thing at the Human Rights Council, opens on Monday.
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A progress report by the Government on how it is closing the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians will be made on the first working day of every parliamentary year, Kevin Rudd has pledged.
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John Pilger in the New Statesman says the decimation of Aboriginal Australia laid the foundation of an Australian empire that “stretches from the Aboriginal slums of Sydney to the ancient hinterlands of the continent and across the Arafura Sea and the South Pacific.”
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The limited powers and restricted terms of reference of the Rudd Government’s inquiry into the bungled investigation into Mohamed Haneef are tighter than those given to the Howard government’s royal commission into the “wheat for weapons” scandal, write Tom Allard and Jonathan Pearlman in the Sydney Morning Herald. But “as Opposition leader, Kevin Rudd repeatedly criticised the AWB inquiry for having inadequate powers.
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As a positive first step, the new Rudd Government has announced it will end the controversial and expensive Pacific Solution policy and close the processing centres in Nauru and PNG. Now the task will be to negotiate new relationships with the countries contracted to house Australia’s asylum seekers and refugees in recent years, in particular the impoverished nation of Nauru. Susan Metcalfe writes in Eureka Street.
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Speaking on ABC Radio’s PM, Fred Chaney, former Liberal minister in the Fraser government and now a director of the group Reconciliation Australia, says that an apology to Aboriginal people by the Rudd Government will be the final symbolic act in the jigsaw puzzle of reconciliation.
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