Human Rights Act would give Left cover for a new attack on freedoms

Labor MP Josh Burns is backing the establishment of a Human Rights Act. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

According to Labor MP and chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, Josh Burns, the case for a federal Human Rights Act is obvious. And judging by his effusive urgency, it is not just obvious but really, really obvious.

“It’s time we start the conversation about what needs to be done so we can get there,” he declared two weeks ago, noting the committee had received 335 submissions. “Submissions were overwhelmingly in favour of the introduction of a Human Rights Act, with only four per cent opposed.”

The people have spoken! Well, some people anyway. We are talking the Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, the Australian Human Rights Institute, the Human Rights Law Alliance, the Human Rights Law Centre, Human Rights Watch, the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Queensland Human Rights Commission, the ACT Human Rights Commission, the Victorian Equal Opportunity & Human Rights Commission, the Australian Council of Human Rights Authorities, the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, and Western Australia for a Human Rights Act.

Amazingly, all these human rights bodies insist we need a Human Rights Act. And before you interject with “Of course they would bloody well say that,” just consider that many other supporting submissions came from organisations without the phrase ‘human rights’ in their title.

Take for example Mums 4 Refugees, Grandmothers for Refugees, the Blue Mountains Refugee Support Group, the Refugee Advocacy Network, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, the Refugee Advice & Casework Service, the Refugee Action Collective (Victoria), Climate Change Balmain, Environmental Justice Australia, Reconciliation Australia, the Indigenous Law and Justice Hub, the Charter of Rights campaign coalition, Amnesty International, the United Nations, the Australian Feminists for Women’s Rights, and the Coalition of Activist Lesbians.

There you have it: mainstream Australia in one paragraph. There is as much diversity of opinion in those submissions as there is in a Q+A panel.

As for those opposed, Burns breezily dismissed their concerns. “I reject the notion that a Human Rights Act risks politicising the judiciary and opens the floodgates to litigation,” he said.

Under the committee’s proposed model, the judiciary would have to interpret all Commonwealth legislation “in a manner that is consistent with human rights”.

But how would courts properly undertake this task, given human rights are a nebulous concept? Easy, the legislation would “include a clause directing that it is to be interpreted by reference to international law”.

To give you an idea of the potential ramifications, just consider only this year the United Nations Human Rights Committee determined the Federal Court had breached the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in dismissing a native title claim involving rival Indigenous parties in the WA Pilbara region.

In addition to finding the claim be reconsidered, it found that compensation should be paid to the applicants.

The determination is non-binding and is just another case of the bureaucratic haranguing so typical of UN panjandrums. But it would be a far different situation if Labor accepts the recommendations of this report. It would require the government to review, on the presumption of withdrawing, “all existing reservations and interpretative declarations under UN human rights treaties”. It is a backdoor way of enshrining the UN interpretation of these treaties in domestic law.

As legal experts Professors Nicholas Aroney, Professor Richard Ekins and Dr Benjamin Saunders noted in their dissenting submission, a Human Rights Act would require courts to decide cases using “open-ended moral and political reasoning” in balancing rights. With justification, they point out this could transform judges into lawmakers.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

And Burns and his colleagues desire to transform not just the courts but all our public institutions. It is not just a case of wanting officials to be awash with human rights. Rather, they want public servants to marinate in them, the report declaring that “there needs to be a seismic cultural shift within the public service to mainstream human rights”.

This would be accomplished by legislating changes to the Australian Public Service (APS) Values and Code of Conduct, requiring employees to make decisions and give advice in accordance with human rights. Every government agency would have to set up “specialised human rights units” and provide annual compliance reports.

How many of them would have to do this? Only 1334. It is long overdue, I say. A government agency without a human rights unit is like an armpit without fleas.

The ideologues of the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) must be salivating at the thought of the government accepting these recommendations. Its numbers and powers would be expanded to allow it to audit departments and agencies. It would also give the AHRC powers to commence proceedings to enforce compliance where it identifies “systemic” human rights concerns.

Forget the notion its employees will act impartially. As reported in February, 24 of the 122 staff employed at the agency wrote to AHRC President Rosalind Croucher expressing “frustration at the commission’s failure to fulfil its mandate as an accredited national human rights institution in regard to Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank”.

Excuse my ignorance, but are not AHRC employees also required by legislation to act apolitically in the course of their duties? Why must we continue to fund these entitled brats?

Responding to the committee’s findings, a spokesman for Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said last month the government had “no plans to introduce a federal Human Rights Act”. That was hardly reassuring, given this report arose through Dreyfus’s referral. Another case of “Our position hasn’t changed,” perhaps?

A Human Rights Act is political expediency. The far-left ideology it fosters complements Labor’s agenda and would gradually permeate all aspects of public administration. It would allow the Albanese government, which is already notorious for abrogating responsibility, to deflect blame for these creeping changes by insisting it is simply abiding by the law.

There is another ulterior motive for the Albanese government to pursue these measures. It is still smarting following its decisive loss in the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum. It wanted a constitutionally entrenched activist body that would undermine and frustrate a future Coalition government. But a Human Rights Act would be an ideal Plan B. Better still it does not need the mandate of voters.

As for Burns and his fellow committee members, I have one suggestion. Instead of canvassing interested parties, try going to the outer suburbs and asking the residents to nominate their top five concerns. How many of them do you think will burst into tears and say the absence of a federal Human Rights Act is tearing them apart?

Enough of this rubbish that the case for this legislation is overwhelming. It is the social justice equivalent of ‘The science is settled’.