A BILL of rights would erode Australia’s democracy, diminish the reputation and accountability of Parliament, politicise the judiciary and represent the ”final triumph of elitism in Australian politics”, the former prime minister John Howard said last night.
Delivering the annual Menzies Lecture at the University of Western Australia, Mr Howard campaigned against ceding power from elected individuals to the non-elected judiciary…
He warned ”political activisits [sic] of the left” to consider that one day a cause they may support ”might be better served by the votes of contemporary Parliament, rather than a court dominated by men and women holding views you might not share”.
A strange argument from Howard. Human rights are the bedrock needed for a society to flourish. It provides the basis for a true confidence in the people living in a society where they know they can count on the establishment to back those rights. Without that confidence of human rights most people will tend to remain muted and cautious.
Without respect for human rights, the Howard government locked up people in administrative detention for years without end, they locked up children in horrible conditions, they locked up Australian citizens (such as Ms Rau for one example) and subjected them to degrading treatment. Even with the immigration regime while Ruddock was the minister, some people found it easier to enter the country after having an advocate slip a donation to Ruddock’s local branch of the Liberal Party. Rights and privileges in Australia are available to those people who can afford to defend them. That is elitism to the point of corruption.
More from the article:
Mr Howard has long opposed a bill of rights. He said ministers and parliamentarians should make all the controversial decisions transparently and be accountable for them.
”A bill of rights would further diminish the prestige of Parliament, it would politicise the appointment of judges, it would increase the volume of litigation and it would not increase the rights and protections now available to Australian citizens,” Mr Howard said.
Minister Ruddock was in charge of government departments that were deliberately made to be opaque with regard to decision-making and with deliberately retarded information flows. He was a disaster as Minister for Immigration and he was rewarded by being promoted to be Attorney General. The public is still not aware of the damage Ruddock did to the organisations under his control as AG and the secretive nature of some of those organisations means that they will probably not even be aware of their dysfunctions until they are forced to honestly review the way they work. Ruddock has not been accountable for what he has done as a Minister in Howard’s Government. A Bill of Rights would have actually been a key element in keeping Howard’s Government accountable. Howard is responsible for keeping Ruddock in the ministry.
The standing of parliamentarians has fallen as a result of Howard’s government. Think of the events such as the Patrick’s dispute over working conditions on the docks. What about the children overboard saga and the way that Howard initially agreed with the racism of Hanson. Then there is the way that Howard treated the indigenous community and even dismantled ATSIC which was a democratic process for establishing the legitimacy of indigenous leaders. Once ATSIC was dismantled Howard’s government and some parts of the media thought they were free to pick and choose whom ever they wanted to promote as representing the indigenous community.
The question to ask Howard is, “who does he think parliamentarians are primarily accountable to – 1) the people in their constituencies or 2) the political boss of the party and the House?” Prime Number 2 is the wrong answer. A Bill of Rights would provide all citizens with a basic level of rights. Given our democratic political system where it is compulsory to vote, basic human rights should extend to everyone in our society and not just those who politically side up with the most powerful politicians. The imbalance of power and resources between the state and an individual is of such a scale that we need a Bill of Rights. The state has the power to completely curtail the life chances of an individual and the state needs to be held accountable for that if they do that in practice, whether they do that covertly or overtly. The actions of Howard as Prime Minister demonstrates the urgent need to establish a Bill of Rights in Australia.
And we can understand why Howard would be hostile to a Bill of Rights. There were also the culture wars, the dumbing down of society and the commercialisation of education. The anti-terror laws are still incredibly ill-liberal and have been shown to be misused in the Haneef case. The list goes on and on…
But wait, there’s more…
We pride ourselves on the egalitarian character of our society. Let us not deny that great heritage by embracing an approach based on the belief that the great mass of the Australian people, properly represented in our parliaments, and property advised by a free and sceptical press cannot decide the great moral and civil issues of their time and get it right.
Egalitarian is not a synonym for the “statistically average” or a “statistical majority”. There are a number of ways to define equality in society – usually there are two broad categories of equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.
I consider egalitarianism to be based around an equality of opportunity. It is an ideal. But I believe that equality of opportunity was an ideal that drove Australian society for most of the twentieth century, with the Harvester Case for living wages being one of the most important early benchmarks. Our universal education system, our tertiary education system until the fee paying regime started more recently, our public hospital and Medicare systems, social security, etc – all these and more were based on an ideal of an equality of opportunity.
John Howard has worked hard to dismantle egalitarianism in Australian society.
He does this in a convoluted way by first trying to define egalitarianism as an equality of outcome, then by dispensing privileges to a large subset of society and then by trying to exclude from consideration the people who miss out – but who actually needed the extra help from the state to lift their life chances to a fairer level.
You can now compare the difference between state-funded public schools and the funds available for private schools, and how that has impacted on the quality of education received by children and their subsequent life chances. Howard funnelled large amounts of public funding to private schools, that also have the resources of school fees from parents, while public schools have languished and Howard tried to spin that by claiming that it gives parents more ‘choice’. I suppose that would be an example of how Howard understands egalitarianism as an equality of outcome. That quantity of funds used to pay for everything at a public school, including maintenance and teaching, be matched in the funds given to private schools who can top up their school fees with the government grants. Even if you look at the outcomes, this is an unfair distribution of public wealth. In terms of the opportunities of children who go to public schools, it might lessen their chances to complete school or higher education. That is just one example.
With regards to parliament being a reflection of society – it generally does not provide a good cross sectional representation of people with diverse backgrounds as you find in society. The main political parties have extremely small memberships and they are increasingly inbred in character. It may still be the case that some political party branch memberships are predominantly filled by stacks. The parties are not a good reflection of the diversity in our society.
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