THE Rudd government is under pressure to introduce a human rights act, transfer significant new powers to judges and launch a campaign to entrench a rights culture in the community. This follows the threshold victory of the human rights lobby, which has won much of its agenda in the recommendations of the National Human Rights Consultation report chaired by Frank Brennan.
Despite its qualifications, caution on social and economic rights and gentle start on a long escalator, this report is ambitious for a recasting of Australian governance. Its aim is to entrench values enshrined in human rights ideology. Every vital institution is affected: public service, the parliament and the courts. For the the human rights lobby, with its long-run plan to transform Australia, this is an important start. The Brennan report, rather than drawing a line in the sand, has encouraged the lobby, given its campaign a new legitimacy and brought pressure on the Rudd government to bring Australia into line with international human rights norms.
This report, in effect, seeks the obliteration of the Howard cultural legacy. It makes clear the driving force behind the submissions was the hated Howard agenda of national security laws, the Northern Territory intervention and tough asylum-seeker laws.
The intent of the human rights lobby is to change Australia's system of government to prevent such measures being introduced in future. Its initial progress is manifest in this document.
The terminology is deceptive. The human rights debate is about politics: it is a device to achieve social, political and economic change opposed by a majority of the population by recourse to human rights law as interpreted by the courts. The Brennan report will further divide the country. Read more.