The delicate diplomacy of being 'nice' human rights violators

And:

We believe it was unreasonable for the CERD Committee to make recommendations on the reconciliation process, to suggest that Australia use external affairs powers to override Australian State laws in certain instances, or to propose how we should allocate resources to address Indigenous issues. The CERD Committee's comment about our obligations under the UN Refugee Convention, which is an issue outside its mandate, underlined the disappointing approach that the Committee adopted during its examination of our report.

Finally, in blustery intimidation, Australia spoke of its commitment to reform of the human rights treaty process, and tried to verbal the UN Secretary General to give support to the idea that the Committee should keep its observations to itself, or face “reform”:

Mr Chairperson, as a result of the efforts of the Secretary-General, the Committees themselves, and concerned States such as Australia, such reforms are becoming accepted practice across all the Committees. I am confident problems such as I have described as having occurred in the past will not be apparent on this occasion.

Of course this sort of approach provoked members of the Committee to respond angrily - some couched in diplomatic niceness, others directly, or most memorably, with a combination. The Brazilian member of the Committee recalled how much he, as a veteran diplomat, had enjoyed serving with Australians on UN Committees, and how when hearing such a speech attacking the role of NGOs and using such grand titles for programs, in days past Australia would have joined in criticism of the speaker, usually being from a Latin American dictatorship or a Communist bloc nation.

The Committee’s “concluding observations” are published now, and seek clarification of lots of issues, further information, more reports and basically will make sure that Australia stays clearly on the list of countries whose human rights violations are subject of international concern. In a matter of fact way, the Committee repeats as its first recommendation that:

The Committee recommends to the State party that it work towards the inclusion of an entrenched guarantee against racial discrimination in its domestic law.

The reality is that we don’t have any effective protection against racial discrimination in Australia, so much evidence of the results of this absence, and no amount of high level diplomacy can hide that fact.

What is refreshing about seeing all this process in action, is that outside the fair-go fog which befuddles Australian political life, you can put the facts to intelligent people and you get a clear response. This Expert Committee has people from France, United Kingdom, India, Russia, Argentina, China, United States, Denmark, Brazil, Egypt and elsewhere - and they can all clearly recognise Australian bullshit. They respect Mr Smith, love Sydney, but will not let us pretend that our treatment of Indigenous people and asylum seekers is anything other than clear violations of international law.

We said in the key NGO submission to the Committee, that “we present this critique of Australia's progress since (our ratification of CERD in 1975), not to suggest that Australia has failed comprehensively in its implementation of CERD, but to demonstrate the areas where Australia, as a democratic and pluralist society, could make further advances in meeting its obligations under CERD.”

Here in the cold light of a Geneva day and outside the fair-go fog, it’s clear that we need to be sharper in our criticism, like other people concerned with human rights around the world.