17 October 2007, 00:00 in

Lawyers push for Australian bill of rights

From an ABC News article:

Human Rights lawyer Julian Burnside QC says the threat of terrorism has been used to curtail basic human rights.

“I think Australians have sacrificed a wide range of freedoms, apparently for security, and most Australians have no idea what rights have been taken away,” he said.

“Its now possible in Australia for a person to be jailed without a trial, for them to be jailed without knowing the evidence which has been used against them.”

Alliance chief executive Eva Scheerlinck says Australia is the only Western democracy that does not have a bill of rights.

Also see this article by John Kilcullen of Macquarie University.

To many it seems better to keep the courts free of politics and leave rights issues to the ordinary political process, in which politicians can be held responsible by the electorate — on this view the best safeguard of basic rights is the political culture of a democratic country. However, this does not protect very well the interests of any group or groups who are regularly in a minority (e.g. racial or religious groups). The main argument in favour of a constitutional Bill of Rights is that it will protect the rights of minorities more effectively than the democratic process will. On the other hand (and this was one of Madison’s original objections), people hostile to some minority will try to restrict and narrow the definition of rights when the Bill of Rights is being drawn up — and the more explicit the definitions the narrower they are likely to be.

Interesting stuff. I am not very knowledgeable about politics, but the more I learn the more things bother me.

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