When consultation is not consultation

Sixty per cent of UN condemnatory motions are against one country - Israel - but there is no criticism of Darfur, China, North Korea or Zimbabwe. That is a consequence of block voting by some Middle Eastern and African nations plus China, Russia and Cuba. Ban Ki-moon has criticised the council for its ineffectiveness and urged countries to “drop rhetoric” and “rise above partisan posturing and regional divides”. No chance.

The same block has succeeded in gagging criticism of, for example, aspects of Sharia Law. When a group criticised the stoning of women for adultery and the marriage of pre teen girls, Muslims got very upset and the President of the Council ruled that talk about religion would not be allowed.

You can have free speech or freedom of religion or neither, but you cannot have both unless you are a Hogwarts’ alumnus.

The Attorney-General, his obedient minions and the New Class support the UN lot. I do not, and can not. They are at best useless and at worst bad because they connive with and provide an imprimatur of respectability to those who commit terrible breaches of Human Rights in the name of religion and culture.

Shamefully the Australian media self-censored itself at the time of the publication of some cartoons depicting Mohammed in Denmark. We heard, saw and read about Islamist violence, so clearly it was news. But no Australian paper actually published the cartoons; they put abject terror above their responsibility fearlessly to tell the public what is happening. (Like me, a lot of people would have disliked a piece of “art” called Piss Christ. I saw pictures of that in the press - but then I do not relapse into primitive violence when somebody offends me). Real or pretended hypersensitivity to perceived slights is, when combined with a propensity for violence on the one hand and spineless fear on the other, another major threat to freedom of speech. We must stand up for freedom of speech or we are lost.

The drive to democracy via elected representatives meeting together has been a slow struggle over the centuries. People have suffered and died so as to achieve the supremacy of Parliament. From the 1688 Bill of Rights in England that made it crystal clear that the monarch was to operate with the consent of, and to an extent under, Parliament; through the struggles of Chartists and Suffragettes and on to the efforts of Fisher and others; to the demise of the White Australia policy and constitutional change re Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders, it has been a long road to the supremacy of democracy via Parliament.

A Bill of Rights would empower a group of (presumably) lawyers to “examine” legislation that is before, or has been passed by the democratic process in Parliament, and then to decide whether Parliament’s decision should be allowed or struck down.

The Attorney-General opposes a Bill on the grounds that it would demean Parliament (and lose votes). Consequently we are force fed Mr Hull’s Victorian “Charter of Rights”. That empowers a group to examine Parliament’s decisions but, to “ensure the supremacy of parliament” will be unable to strike them down but will be able to declare them contrary to the Charter. They will be stating that the Parliament is acting immorally. No Parliament will allow that to happen so they will back off. A Charter is a Tricky Dicky Nixon way of getting the effects of a Bill while pretending that Parliament is not weakened.

Any Bill/Charter will list “Rights” as generalisations. Generalisations must be interpreted so there will be an eternity of (highly paid) pontificating by those who will judge our Parliament (and hence us the proles who elected them).

A phrase frequently used in the East End of London is “a nice little earner”. The group that will pontificate on the rights or wrongs of Parliamentary actions, will be unelected, unsackable, have total power but no responsibility at all. Power without responsibility is proverbially the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages. Lawyers will salivate! It will be a nice little earner (NLE) or, probably, a nice big earner.

Because of the never ending stream of issues, this NLE will make the Jarndyce case look speedy. That case stopped when the money ran out. This NLE’s costs will be borne by the proletariat and they can be taxed ad nauseam.

The Chairman of the Consultation team, speaking on SBS about the consultation, gave examples of issues that might be affected by a Bill or Charter. They were virtually all individual examples of dubious treatment of people such as Ms Rau by government departmental officials in the last few years.