We the people - a hard ten years

Our respect for the rule of law also seems to be diminishing. Courts have been attacked for activism, and various tribunals have been weakened. Despite needing them more and more, we are coming to disregard habeas corpus and other conventions of human rights.

The incarceration an Australian citizen for five years by a state that our government describes as a friend and a champion of freedom and democracy, is inconsistent with a regard for human rights. The passing of anti-terror laws that would enable people to disappear from Australian streets and to be held incommunicado by security forces is alarming.

It is likely that the agenda for a constitutional convention in 2006 would contain issues very different from those discussed in 1996. Delegates would ask how the constitution has allowed such dramatic changes in Australian political culture. Topics would probably include the concentration of power in the hands of the federal government, the US alliance and control of the Australian military. Discussion would be dominated by issues of human rights. Domestically, threats to multiculturalism and intolerance towards people from the Middle East would top the agenda.

This would be closely followed by discussion of our international reputation in light of recent abandonment of our responsibilities under international covenants relating to asylum seekers, and failure to provide clear rejections of torture and capital punishment. The idealism and optimism of 1996 had well and truly disappeared from Australian society. Amid such urgency, discussion of a matter as esoteric as a republic would seem like an unaffordable luxury.