Renewing the commitment to a fair go for all - Part 2

This is part two of Chris Sidoti's paper summarising Australia's Human rights performance during his term as Human Rights Commissioner. Part one looked at the rights of workers and Indigenous Australians.

Indigenous people in rural and remote areas are the most disadvantaged by far of all Australians but many others in these areas share their situation, though to a lesser extent. The Human Rights Commission's Bush Talks consultations in 1998-99 and its National Inquiry into Rural and Remote Education in 1999-2000, both undertaken by the Human Rights Unit under Meredith Wilkie, established that.

We entered into these major projects on the human rights of rural people for two quite different reasons. First, we were convinced that there were serious and distinctive human rights issues in rural Australia. That was apparent from other work done by the Commission from its establishment, including earlier national inquiries. The response to a small occasional paper published in 1996 confirmed our view. Second, we saw evidence of widespread rural alienation from the main political, economic and social institutions in Australia but no evidence that those institutions were addressing the alienation or were even aware of it. The phenomenon of Pauline Hanson's One Nation has to be seen in this context, not simply in the context of racism. It seemed to us that, unless the alienation of rural Australia was addressed, the nation would be seriously and perhaps irrevocably divided, at even greater cost to the human rights of rural people.

During three years of visits to rural and remote communities and extensive consultations with people there, we learned a great deal about the lives and experiences of people outside the capital cities. Australia outside the capitals is not homogenous. Indeed most regional cities are doing well economically and politically but often at the cost of towns and smaller communities that are nearby. But in general, with the exception of mining towns, the more remote the town or community the greater the poverty and disadvantage. The contemporary process of economic and social change, known as globalisation, may have long-term advantages but at this stage it is exacerbating the inequality and so increasing the alienation. Country people cannot see what benefit there is in it for them. But they are already feeling the costs.

The rural education inquiry showed the nature of the problem and the challenge required. Educational attainment in country areas is well below that in the cities. School completion rates generally are lower but they are particularly low in the poorest areas. The school participation rate of 16-year-olds (the first year after compulsory schooling in all jurisdictions except Tasmania) is around 80 per cent nationally. The five areas with the highest rates are among the richest urban areas of Sydney and Melbourne. The five areas with the lowest rates are among the poorest rural areas in the country. Nationally about 70 per cent of children complete year 12. In rural areas of Western Australia, only around 16 per cent of Aboriginal children do. In the Northern Territory, hundreds of Aboriginal children have little or no primary schooling and many thousands have no effective access to any secondary schooling.

I remain fearful for the future of Australia if rural disadvantage and rural alienation are not addressed, if rural human rights are not protected and promoted more effectively. One significant development since we began our work in the bush is that many others have come to share this concern. The metropolitan media are giving somewhat greater coverage to rural issues. The major political parties are conscious of the political risks if they do not win back disaffected country voters. Telstra is experiencing the consequences of rural dissatisfaction in its inability to complete its privatisation plans. Even the big banks are aware that something is happening although they are not yet doing much about it. The Bendigo Bank, by contrast, has been quick to respond, creatively and effectively, to its own benefit and the benefit of country communities.

There are answers to the problems of rural Australia. The Regional Australia Summit in October 1999 was a positive initiative of the Deputy Prime Minister. Its concluding communiqué offered practical and theoretical approaches that draw on the best possible research, analysis and experience. The reports of the Commission's rural education inquiry present more focused recommendations to address perhaps the most fundamental issue, educating young people for the rural communities of the future. It provides a blueprint for a new deal for country children. So we do not lack answers. Whether we see any significant action for country people, however, is another matter.

This year will be an important one for the bush. The expectations of country people have been raised by the Regional Australia Summit and the attention rural issues have been receiving. Their votes will be important, perhaps decisive, in the 2001 federal election. Both political parties say they have heard the cries of country people. Both say they support a greater effort in education. What will they deliver? The next federal budget will show the government parties' response. If it does not provide significant additional funding for rural education, then country people will know who to blame. The opposition's election platform will show its response. If it does not contain unequivocal, specific commitments to rural education, then the opposition's stated priority for education will have no credibility.

A failure to respond adequately to the needs of country children will damage not only the political parties. It will also, more importantly, damage the political process itself and the nation as a whole. For the alienation of country people will be reinforced, the inequality between city and country exacerbated and the unity of the nation undermined. But most seriously of all, the human rights of children in rural and remote areas will be further violated.

When discussing Indigenous rights I referred to the increasing numbers of Indigenous people in prison. This trend has affected both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. The past five years have been years of more and more locking up and of more and more public monies needing to be spent on locking people up. There is no evidence whatsoever of a significant increase in crime. There is still no research to indicate that prison is an effective means of rehabilitating offenders. The increased numbers in prison, therefore, are not a response to any crime wave or to new research findings. They are the result of nothing more than political decisions to lock more people up, whatever the cost.

The imprisonment rate for adults has risen by 14 per cent in only three years. The rate of imprisonment of Indigenous adults is even worse. In June 2000 some 3.3 per cent of Australia's Indigenous adult male population was in prison.

These lock-them-up policies raise human rights concerns for prisoners. These have been the subject of a recent seminar sponsored by the Human Rights Commission: Prisoners as Citizens. The Commission will also publish a book on these issues next year to generate further debate.

The policies also have social costs in the failed lives of unrehabilitated prisoners and their families. And they have direct financial costs that the whole community is forced to bear. Between 1995-96 and 1998-99 public expenditure on public order and safety increased by at least 50 per cent. It is expenditure that cannot be justified in human rights terms. And it cannot be justified in practical terms either. Prison simply does not work to rehabilitate offenders and reduce crime.

This environment has produced the laws and policies in Western Australia and the Northern Territory that impose mandatory sentencing regimes for some offenders. These laws violate human rights. For adults and children alike, they violate the right not to be arbitrarily detained. For children, they also violate the obligations to detain children only as a measure of last resort and only for the shortest appropriate period of time. They also violate the obligation to give paramountcy to a child's best interests in all decisions that affect that child.

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission has repeatedly expressed its firm conclusion that mandatory sentencing violates these and other human rights commitments. It did so:

• in the early 1990s when the Western Australian laws were first proposed and passed and later amended;
• in mid 1997 when the Northern Territory laws were proposed and passed;
• in late 1997 in Seen and Heard, its joint report with the Australian Law Reform Commission;
• in 1998 to the federal parliament's Joint Committee on Treaties in its review of the Convention on the Rights of the Child;
• in 1999 in its submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee's inquiry into mandatory sentencing of children, and;
• in 2000 in a rare joint public statement by the President of the Commission, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner and the Human Rights Commissioner.

There could have been no surprise, therefore, when these laws and policies were also criticised by the four international committees of experts responsible for monitoring compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention against Torture and the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination.

Mandatory sentencing of children is not only a criminal justice issue. It is also an issue of how children are treated generally. The past five years have seen increasing targeting of children and decreasing sympathy for them. Mandatory sentencing laws violate the human rights of young offenders. Other laws and policies violate the rights of young non-offenders and even the rights of young victims of crime. Laws now criminalise many ordinary activities by children, such as gathering in public places. Indeed often children can be removed from public places for no reason at all.

The Seen and Heard report described the experiences of child victims of sexual abuse subjected to unfair and improper cross-examination by defence counsel. It made recommendations for changes to rules of evidence and of professional ethics to ensure their protection. Legal professional associations in NSW, South Australia and the ACT responded positively to the recommendations and I am pleased that the Law Society in NSW recently adopted comprehensive new rules for the examination of child victims. The Law Society of Queensland, however, responded to the recommendation with vitriol. Perhaps not coincidentally, the worst reports we received were from Queensland, including the aggressive cross examination of a 7-year-old boy for seven hours and of a 14-year-old girl for two or more days on two separate occasions. It is a pity that it took a Four Corners re-enactment of the first of these incidents to force a comprehensive review of processes in that state.

There are many rights at issue in the criminal justice system: the rights of victims to receive justice and remedies, the rights of offenders to be treated fairly and in accordance with the rules of natural justice and the right of the community to safety. The approach to offending in recent years promotes none of these rights. And it is costing us all a fortune, diverting resources from more effective crime prevention and criminal rehabilitation programs and from other areas of human rights concern. Surely politicians from all parties can stop playing games with community safety for electoral advantage and start leading by developing and implementing more effective law and justice programs that meet human rights commitments.