The argument for a Bill of Rights

Second, more importantly perhaps, I thought that we simply did not need one. Australia had been one of the most active supporters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948; we signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. I thought that no Australian government would pass laws which betrayed basic human rights values. I was wrong. The past few years have convinced me that Australia needs a Bill of Rights.

Even a decade ago it would have been difficult to foresee the erosion of human rights in Australia we have seen under the present government. The most florid recent examples of the problem are:

• our treatment of asylum seekers, in particular the arbitrary detention involving cruel inhuman and degrading treatment of children and adults, the unregulated use of solitary confinement and treatment amounting to torture;
• the government’s complacent acceptance of the detention in Guantanamo of two Australian citizens, Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks. Habib was tortured by Egyptian and American authorities; Australia knew about it and did nothing to help him. Hicks was held for five years and did a plea bargain when faced with a “trial” which would have lacked all of the features and safeguards of a proper criminal trial; the Australian government did not lift a finger to help him;
• the 2002 amendments to the security legislation permitting the incommunicado detention of people not suspected of any offence;
• the 2005 amendments to the security legislation permitting imprisonment for up to 14 days without trial, and house arrest for up to 12 months without trial.

These things should not be acceptable in this society. A Bill of Rights articulates the basic assumptions on which a society is founded, and ensures that those assumptions are respected by the Parliament. It is a profoundly important expression of the will of the people: by declaring the moral limits to what Parliament may do, it says what sort of people we are.