Friday, 14 February 1986 The PRESIDENT (Senator the Hon. Douglas McClelland) took the chair at 9 a.m., and read prayers. The Clerk —Petitions have been lodged for presentation as follows: To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate of Australia. The petition of the undersigned citizens respectfully shows that there has been clear demonstration of public dissatisfaction with the mismanagement of the Victorian Otway forests, and we pray that: The Constitution of Australia be reformed to recognise significant expressions of public concern, e.g. petitions, by the formation of a committee to represent public requests. by Senator Vallentine (from 92 citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia respectfully showeth: That a Government decision to force, at the expense of viewers, the transfer of WIN TV (and any future local broadcaster) from VHF to UHF transmission, while excluding Sydney metropolitan T.V. stations from this requirement, will place in jeopardy the future of the Illawarra and South Coast region's only local commercial T.V. operator. Your petitioners request the Senate to protect the interests of the hundreds of thousands of television viewers within the area from Wollongong to the Victorian border served by WIN TV, by preventing the Government from taking this unwarranted and discriminatory action which disadvantages both viewers and advertisers on the South Coast to the benefit of the metropolitan networks. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Michael Baume (from 291 citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. The humble petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia respectfully showeth: 1. In this aging Australian society children are our most precious resource. 2. We request that any changes to the Child Care Act should ensure the protection of these children by providing for quality care by mothercraft nurses or other trained child care professionals. 3. We urge that funding provided under the Child Care Act should ensure the maintenance of the present standards of 75 per cent of award wages and conditions for approved child care professionals. 4. We also ask that available child care places be provided according to the needs of the children rather than through restricting access according to the work-related needs of parents. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Cooney (from 62 citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in the Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned shows: That the Bill of Rights and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Bill 1. Offer nothing more than is already available under Common Law, 2. Deny some Human Rights and do not include others, 3. Give dangerously wide powers to an unelected body, and 4. Could cause far more damage than they could possibly cure. Your petitioners request that the Senate should completely reject both the Bill of Rights and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Bill. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Walters (from 57 citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. The humble petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia respectfully showeth: That the proposed Australian Bill of Rights Bill 1985 will endanger the Federal system in Australia, the State and Federal criminal justice systems, the State and Federal Police Force, the state and Federal education systems, the independence of the churches and religious associations, marriage and the family, children, the unborn, the handicapped, the aged and the infirm, employer and employee relationships and Australian society generally. Your petitioners therefore humbly pray. That your Honourable House defer debate on the Bill for twelve months and circulate the Bill for twelve months for the widest possible debate, scrutiny and discussion, and your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senators Archer (from 77 citizens), Michael Baume (from 27 citizens), Bjelke-Petersen (from 58 citizens), Sanders (from 22 citizens), Walters (from 51 citizens) and Watson (from 80 citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. The humble petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia respectfully showeth their desire to stop the commercial exploitation of the kangaroo. Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that your Honourable House re-apply the ban on the export of kangaroo products. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Archer (from 178 citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia respectfully showeth: That the Australian Bill of Rights Bill is a harmful, dangerous and divisive proposal, the provisions of which are authoritarian and anti-democratic. Your petitioners therefore pray that the Senate rejects this Bill. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Haines (from 39 citizens). To the honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia respectfully showeth: That we oppose utterly the proposed Bill of Rights because this Bill will Transfer to government powers not given nor intended to be given by the Constitution Threaten our rights by making them subject to the will of this and any future Government Turn the Human Rights Commission into a political Star Chamber with unjustifiable power Abrogate Common Law and common liberty Set the State above the individual We the undersigned believe in democracy and freedom and earnestly entreat you to recognise that this Bill will undermine the fundamental basis of these. Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that the Senate in Parliament assembled should reject a Bill of Rights in this or any other form. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Sheil (from 90 citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled: the humble petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia respectfully showeth: That we deplore the proposed Bill of Rights because it adversely affects areas of the liberty and freedom of Australians. It will operate against: The States and our Federal system of Government Criminal Justice The Police Education Families Employer/Employee relations It will remove the power of the people through Parliament, by giving power to a new more powerful Human Rights Commission which is not elected, but can act as a Star Chamber. We do most earnestly wish to keep our system of Common Law. Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that the Senate in Parliament assembled should reject this Bill. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Sheil (from 241 citizens). To the Honourable the President and the members of the Senate in Parliament assembled: The petition of certain citizens of Australia shows that woodchipping and clearfelling will destroy the Otway Forests, Water Catchments and Jobs in tourism. Your petitioners therefore pray that you will protect the Otway Forests for the future and refuse any licence to export woodchips from the Otways by Senator Sanders (from 384 citizens). Senator BJELKE-PETERSEN(Queensland) —by leave-I present the following petition, which is not in conformity with Standing Orders, from 12 petitioners requesting that the Senate reject the Australian Bill of Rights Bill 1985: Senator F. Bjelke-Petersen C/o Parliament House, Canberra, A.C.T. 2600 Dear Madam, In the next session of Parliament the proposed Bill of Rights will come before the Senate to be debated, we would like to voice our protest at the proposed Bill. (1) Because of the haste with which this legislation was passed through the House of Representatives in view of the fact that it affects adversely areas of immense importance of liberty and freedom. (2) Because it is based upon the United Nations International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights which has been rejected by the United States of America and Great Britain but was accepted by the Warsaw Pact countries. (3) Because our Australian Constitution states that ``whereas the people'' give you, the government, these rights The Constitution limits the rights and power of government. The proposed Bill of Rights reverses this totally and states that ``we the government, give you the people these rights.'' This totally reverses the nature of government in this country. Our rights are now protected by current legislation, common law and the present Constitution. (4) Because it transfers the power of interpretation of legislation from the Parliament of Australia (the democratically elected institution) to the Courts (an unelected body of people). (5) Because the Bill of Rights will be administered by the Human Rights Commission which is an unelected body of people with powers which exceed the normal processes of law-no appeal, closed hearings, no legal representation. We therefore request that you vote to reject this proposed Bill of Rights. Petitions received. Senator PETER BAUME(New South Wales) —I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move: That the Senate- (a) having regard to the large extent of unmet social need in Australia and the essential role played by non-Government welfare agencies in responding to that need; and (b) noting that any diversion of funds from charities by way of taxation will lessen the capacity of welfare bodies to perform that function, urges the Federal Government not to include in any tax on fringe benefits the voluntary welfare agencies of Australia. Senator CHANEY(Western Australia-Leader of the Opposition) —I give notice that, contingent on the moving of a motion to debate a matter of urgency under standing order 64, I shall move: That so much of the Standing Orders be suspended as would prevent the Leader of the Opposition (Senator Chaney) moving an amendment to the motion. Senator MacGIBBON(Queensland) —I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move: That the Senate condemns the Hawke Labor Government for its neglect and contempt for rural Australia by failing- (a) to control the huge increase in costs borne by rural producers as a result of their economic policies; (b) to be honest and apply its policy of world parity pricing to fuel thereby passing on the benefits of lower prices to rural producers; (c) despite repeated warnings from the United States (US) State Department over the last 12 months, to influence the US in the introduction of its Farm Support Bill which provides a subsidy of US$52 billion over the next 3 years for US farmers to over-produce food which will be dumped on Australia's export markets; and (d) to take any effective action after the passage of the aforesaid Farm Support Bill to influence the application of the Bill by the US Administration so as to protect the interests of Australian rural producers. Senator KILGARIFF(Northern Territory) —I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move: That the Senate, in view of the- (a) concern of motorists and tour operators using the road between Ayers Rock and the Olgas, at the often extremely poor and hazardous conditions of the road; (b) substantial traffic being carried by the road; and (c) fact that the road is in the Uluru National Park, over which the Commonwealth retains control and for which it therefore should accept some responsibility, calls on the Federal Government to seal and maintain the road so that it is safe for the many tens of thousands of people who use it each year. Senator MICHAEL BAUME(New South Wales) —I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move: That the Senate- (a) notes with concern the admission of the Minister for Primary Industry (Mr Kerin) that about 50 per cent of Australian farmers are facing serious difficulties; (b) agrees with the Minister for Primary Industry that the farm sector will be further hit next year by the United States Farm Act; (c) calls on the Federal Government to accept the advice from its own Director of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Dr Stoeckel, to change its rural policies because `in the absence of alleviating policy initiatives the farm sector is confronted by severe financial stress' along with industries supplying it in country towns; and (d) requires the Government to repudiate the claim by the Minister for Primary Industry that protests by farmers at the state of rural industries have more to do with politics than a farm crisis. Senator RYAN(Australian Capital Territory-Minister for Education)(9.08) —by leave-All of us are familiar with the comprehensive report prepared by the Senate Standing Committee on Education and the Arts on the subject of a national language policy. That report has already been established as a basic document for all groups interested in the field. I advised the Senate in May 1985 that as Minister for Education I had taken on the responsibility of co-ordinating the Government's response to the report. I indicated then that I hoped to announce that response by September 1985. Some time has passed since that statement. We have not wasted the time. I have been actively exploring ways to develop a coherent and comprehensive national language policy, and to ensure that that policy is as balanced, as sensible and as practical as possible. That approach seems to me to be preferable to dealing piecemeal with the numerous recommendations in the Senate report. We have made progress in many of the fields the Committee discussed, but we want to respond to the report as a whole and to present a fully formed policy for the consideration of honourable senators. That policy will be ready in the next few months. My Department has been examining the development and implementation of a policy. I have in mind some supplementary procedures as well, which will ensure that the policy fully reflects the views of groups involved in this field and is properly co-ordinated with government programs in all the areas concerned. In finalising our recommendations and judgments, we will be consulting widely. We will invite comments about the policy as presented and will hold further consultations about methods for implementation. No group need worry that its views will be neglected or passed over. I hope that our preferred approach will attract bipartisan support. The issue of language policy is too broad and too sensitive to be the subject of partisan squabbling. We will outline our policy approach publicly and as soon as all consultation is completed. We then look forward to an open, objective and serious debate on its merits. I table the statement and move: That the Senate take note of the statement. Senator COLSTON(Queensland)(9.09) —On behalf of the Senate Standing Committee on Education and the Arts, as its Chairman, I thank the Minister for Education (Senator Ryan) for the statement she has made on the forthcoming response to the Committee's national language policy report. I am grateful also for the Minister's kind remarks about the quality of the report. Members of the Committee spent a great deal of time in its preparation. Time was taken in examining submissions, speaking to concerned groups throughout the community, conducting public hearings and in the production of the report. The Committee recognised that it should place before the Senate a report which properly reflected the extensive views put to it by those interested in many language areas. Once the Committee had submitted its report it looked forward to a response from the Government. It is not surprising that a comprehensive reply has not yet been presented by the Government, for it should be remembered that the Committee's work was carried out over two years. Admittedly, some time was lost when the Parliament was dissolved in 1983, but the duration of the inquiry gives an indication of the report's wide scope. Nevertheless, I would urge the Minister to bring forward the Government's response in the next few months, as she has mentioned. There is a keen interest in the community for progress to go now beyond the Committee's reporting stage. I do not suggest for a moment that the Minister and her officers have not made progress, but interested groups are eagerly awaiting some tangible evidence of the Government's consideration of the numerous recommendations in the report. On behalf of the Committee and the many people who provided the Committee with their experience and advice, I express the hope that the Government's response will be available before the winter recess. I am pleased that the Minister has indicated that she has gone beyond the Committee's report and is examining some supplementary procedures to enhance the policy which is being developed. The Committee, and I expect the Senate, is looking forward to the Government's response. Senator TEAGUE(South Australia)(9.13) —The Opposition recognises that the interim statement by the Minister for Education (Senator Ryan) has very much promised that the Government's response will eventually be positive and constructive towards the report of the Senate Standing Committee on Education and the Arts. The Minister's emphasis that the report is already established `as a basic document for all groups interested in the field', to quote her words, is I am sure well received by honourable senators. But the disappointment in interested groups throughout Australia and in the Senate lies in the slowness of the Government's response. The report was put down in December 1984, some 15 months ago, and the inquiry was begun in May 1982. Therefore, almost four years have elapsed, with public interest having been sustained throughout those four years. When the Minister said originally that she hoped to respond on the Government's behalf by September last year, hopes were again raised that this comprehensive response would be in the hands of all the interested parties some six months ago, but now when the Minister refers to a comprehensive response within the next few months, I take this to mean, and I believe the Senate can take it to mean, about three months from now, in early May. That would be exactly four years since the inquiry began here in the Senate. I appeal to the Minister not to have any more interim statements. I hope that every effort can be made to come down with a substantial report by early May this year. Patience has already been running thin and because of that, as the Minister knows, on Sunday there will be a major conference here in Canberra of interested groups from ethnic communities, language academics and others who will be seeking to confirm ways to press the Government to give priority to responding fully to the report and to implements its findings. I note particularly in this statement the Minister's promises. In order to meet the growing disappointment and frustrated expectation on the part of the public, the Minister has felt the need to invest her statement with hope and promise and to keep expectations high until we receive the whole response early in May. It is clear that we do not prefer, as the Minister said, to have a piecemeal, partial response but we look for a comprehensive response from the Government that will deal with all the 15 chapters and 117 recommendations. Further, the Minister has assured us in the statement that she and the Government will be consulting widely and setting up procedures which will ensure, to quote her words, `that the policy fully reflects the views of groups involved in this field'. I welcome that promise and I am sure that the conference at the weekend will take great heart from it. I know that our ethnic communities all around Australia are keenly interested in taking up the promise to involve them in consultation, as are language academics, applied linguists, modern language teachers' associations, linguistics associations, all teaching departments, teachers of English-there are several major chapters on English in the report-teachers of English as a second language and people involved in the adult migrant education program. Of course, the Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs (Mr Hurford) has put down the report entitled `Towards Active Voice' which already is the beginning of a response by the Government to some of the statements in the report. Those concerned with adult literacy will be wanting to take up the promise made by the Minister for Education in her statement. I believe that Aboriginal communities-their linguists, teachers, interpreters, translators and media people, all of whom are referred to in the report-will seek the consultation that the Minister has proffered today. The associations which speak for those with communication handicaps-the deaf and the blind-and those with speech disorders as well as the physically and intellectually disabled will be interested in what the Minister has had to say. Other people interested in the Minister's statement will be those involved in Australia's diplomacy, trade and foreign relations who use regional and international languages in their professional work. The teachers of second languages, perhaps more than anybody else, will want to take up the Minister's promise. As the Senate will know, about 100 second languages are taught in primary, secondary and tertiary education institutions and also through ethnic schools and ethnic community projects. Also, those in specialist professions such as translators and interpreters, some of whom are employed in government departments all around Australia, will want to take up the promise made by the Minister today. Last but not least, the Minister's statement will be of interest to librarians who have an active involvement with books and other resources in all the relevant languages which are of interest to those who use our libraries in the cities, suburbs and towns of Australia. I also believe that people involved in the media and the arts-not just persons working for the Special Broadcasting Service and ethnic radio-will find promise in the Minister's statement and will want actively to pursue what the Minister has said. All of the groups of which we are aware will want to play their part in a co-ordinated national language policy. The promises that the Minister has given them today will be taken to heart by many people in Australia. I would not like to predict the thunderous disapproval if there is further delay or if the response fails to live up to what the Minister said in her very good statement. The Minister is straightforward in acknowledging that the Senate report has become the basic document in this field. I thank the Government for this foundation acknowledgement. I am sure that not only Senator Colston, Senator Giles, Senator Robert Ray and Senator Reynolds, who now sit on the Government side of the Senate, but also Senator Peter Baume and Senator Reid, who now sit with me on the Opposition side, all of whom contributed so positively to this major report, agree with the remarks that I am making. The Minister has called for continuing bipartisan support from the Opposition side and that support is still there. However, I say again that we expect that there will not be any more interim statements but a positive, comprehensive response by about early May. If there is less than a full response I am sure that those people who will come from all parts of Australia to attend the conference at the weekend will devise a strategy to cope with the situation. Finally, I stress to the Senate and to the Minister, who is warmly sympathetic to the goals of the report, that one can test whether the eventual response will succeed or fail. I refer to the two global recommendations Nos 1 and 2 that precede all the other 100 or so detailed recommendations in the report. The Government's response will fail if it does not directly endorse the four guiding principles set out in recommendation No. 1. I will read that brief but global recommendation in full: Language policies should be developed and co-ordinated at the national level on the basis of four guiding principles, namely: competence in English; maintenance and development of languages other than English; provision of services in languages other than English; opportunities for learning second languages. The second part of this test comes under recommendation No. 2 which is: A national advisory council on language policy should be established, conferred with advisory, co-ordinating and policy research functions. The council should be broadly representative of all bodies involved with language policy but not so large as to function inefficiently and should report regularly to both Commonwealth and State Governments. This crucial, essential and fundamental recommendation needs to be implemented. The establishment of this council, more than any other recommendation of the report, will be the litmus test of the Government's positive response to the report. As the Minister knows, the Senate Committee has deliberately, and I think wisely, expressed this recommendation in general terms. We have not sought to bind the Government hand and foot in defining the constitution of that council. However, we see it as an essential body to be established because it will be the major vehicle for monitoring and advising on the implementation of all the 100 or so recommendations that follow. This national advisory council will be the guardian of a national language policy in the coming years in Australia. In conclusion, I thank the Minister for all of her positive promises and for the commitment to consult widely in these final weeks. I know that some drafts of the Government's response have already been circulated and found wanting in a number of serious respects. I again welcome the Government's response to those consultations-to go back and get it right. All of us in the Senate are patient to the extent that the Government will take note of those consultations and make sure that the response by early May will meet the challenge of the whole of the report. The challenge now is that that response be balanced, sensible and a practical implementation of what the Senate Committee has found. Senator CHIPP(Victoria-Leader of the Australian Democrats)(9.23) —I commend Senator Teague for everything he has said just now, which conforms with what the Australian Democrats have always believed about a national language policy. I hope that Senator Teague echoes the feelings of the Liberal Party of Australia on this matter. Senator Teague —I was asked to speak for the Opposition. Senator CHIPP —By whom? I know that Senator Teague is at one with Senator Peter Baume. We have discussed this matter. Senator Peter Baume will remember that when I put the idea of a national language policy forward some years ago, when the Liberals were in Government, one of its Ministers, Mr Hodges, scoffed at the idea and virtually said: `If we are going to have a national language policy, we may as well have a national music policy and teach every kid the saxophone'. That is the sort of view that that Minister had then. I know that Senator Peter Baume disagreed. Senator Peter Baume —Two of us spoke at that conference, I seem to remember. Senator CHIPP —I have already paid tribute-- The PRESIDENT —Order! Will the honourable senator address the Chair? Senator CHIPP —I am being provoked, Mr President. The PRESIDENT —In a most indirect way. Senator CHIPP —I have already paid tribute to Senator Peter Baume. If he wants another tribute, I will be happy to give him one. As spokesperson for the Democrats on matters of immigration and ethnic affairs I am not as kind as Senator Teague to the Minister. I think the Minister should be severely and trenchantly criticised for doing nothing on this very important point. That is the fact. She has had a brilliant report from the Committee. I pay tribute to all members of the Committee who brought down the report, which I am pleased to see the Government is now describing as a basic document. The Democrats do not agree with everything in that report, but generally speaking as a structure we commend it totally. One should ask the Minister at this stage, at least rhetorically, to what extent all ethnic communities have been consulted on the document. I am informed by several of them that they have had no discussions whatsoever. How can the Minister come into this chamber today and say that things are progressing when several significant ethnic communities have not had real discussions with the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs on this question. I enter this sour note into the debate. While Senator Teague might be better mannered than I am-there is no question that he is-I deliberately say that the Democrats are severely critical of the Minister on this issue for not doing enough in the time she has had. I am very critical also of the plans formulated by the Liberal Government and carried on by the Australian Labor Party Government for the Bicentenary. My mind boggles when I think of the hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money being wasted on tall ships and birthday parties. I believe that there has to be a wholesale revision of the expenditure of that kind of money before it is too late. As I have said before, there is one classic thing this Parliament could do for Australia to celebrate our 200th birthday. With the new concept of multiculturalism, we should have a national language policy intact by the bicentenary year. Senator Teague —That is a positive and constructive suggestion. Senator CHIPP —Thank you. I say to the Minister that time is running out. Instead of seeing tall ships coming in to whatever bay they are going to come into, I would rather be able to face 1988 with the knowledge that every kid in Australia was learning two languages. Senator Robert Ray —If he wants to. If she wants to. Senator CHIPP —He, she or it, will that do? I am concerned that unless a start is made soon on this that goal will not be achieved. Question resolved in the affirmative. Consideration resumed from 13 February 1986. The Bill. The TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN(Senator Colston) —When the Committee concluded last night it was considering the amendment moved by Senator Sanders to add words, to which Senator MacGibbon had moved an amendment to leave out certain words. The question is: That the words proposed to be left out of Senator Sander's amendment by Senator MacGibbon's amendment be left out. Amendment (Senator MacGibbon's) negatived. The TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN —The question now is: That Senator Sanders's amendment be agreed to. Senator PUPLICK(New South Wales)(9.30) —I want to reiterate the points I made yesterday and seek some clarification from the Minister for Community Services (Senator Grimes) about the four parts of the amendment being taken together. The Opposition certainly intends to vote against sub-paragraph (bd) and under those circumstances I presume it will have to vote against the entire motion if the four parts will be voted on together. Senator Sanders —You do not want to be a good neighbour? Senator PUPLICK —It is not a matter of not wanting to be a good neighbour; it is a matter of objecting to the honourable senator's attempt to compel me to be a good neighbour. The point I made yesterday to the Minister was that in relation to both sub-paragraphs (bb) and (bc)- Senator Chipp —It puts you in the Mile High Club instead. Senator PUPLICK —That works on the predication that I am not already a member. The comment that I made yesterday was in relation to the inclusion in sub-paragraph (bb) of the words `. . . including laws made by a relevant local government body'. Sub-paragraph (bb) refers to the use to which the land in question may be put and sub-paragraph (bc) refers to the design and construction of buildings. It seems to me that the Government is embarking on a strange course by accepting these amendments. It will be put in a situation where, say, in relation to the Sydney (Kingsford-Smith) Airport, it has to conform in all respects to the laws, so-called, made by relevant local government bodies, which in the case of Kingsford-Smith, are some seven councils as well as the laws of the State of New South Wales. I have no objection to conformity with the laws of New South Wales but I have some real worries. For instance, as I mentioned previously, the parking regulations-this touches on design and construction-are different in terms of each of the seven councils concerned. The access provisions are different in terms of local by-laws and local control over liquor and entertainment may vary from council area to council area. It will certainly vary substantially from one airport operation to another. I think this is made all the more significant by the operation of section 69 of the Federal Airports Corporation Bill whereby scheduled airports are removed from the general control of the Airports (Surface Traffic) Act. Under those circumstances I put a number of matters to the Minister to which I am sure he will be able to reply. But if these amendments will be dealt with by simply one vote I foresee that the Opposition will be placed in a situation of having to vote against all of them, including those parts which might otherwise have something to commend them. Senator GRIMES(Tasmania-Minister for Community Services)(9.34) —I fear that we are getting too excited about Senator Sanders's amendments. I think the Opposition misunderstands the situation. As I said yesterday the Government and the Minister for Aviation (Mr Peter Morris) were inclined to accept Senator Sanders's amendments even though I had some difficulty yesterday thinking on my feet about whether we could or should legislate to provide that people be good neighbours. On thinking about the matter and after listening to the speeches certain points have to be made. I think that honourable senators are a bit prejudiced about Senator Sanders's amendments. I know that he talks funny, has a beard, comes from Tasmania and apparently has a motorbike that reads Kama Sutra and so on, but that is no reason not to consider his amendments. What his amendments are, in fact, seeking to do is add to the statements of intent of the Corporation's activities which are outlined in the legislation. I think Senator Puplick should accept that they are amendments to sub-clause (2) of clause 7, which starts off by saying: The Corporation shall endeavour to perform its functions in a manner that . . . Then Senator Sanders makes his amendments. There was a lot of huffing and puffing in this place last night about paragraph (ba). People objected to the fact that Senator Sanders's amendment states: . . . the level of noise at airports is not such as to be detrimental to the communities near airports. The Commonwealth already has legislative power over aircraft noise-it has aircraft noise regulations-and aircraft overflying. People who come from the fine city of Launceston, as I do, receive endless letters about the noise of freight planes flying over at night. One writes to Mr Peter Morris and the Department and something is done about it. A couple of months later the letters start again and one writes again. This goes on all the time. All this amendment is saying is that while aircraft are on the ground, taxi-ing around and doing all those funny things they do, sure, they will make a noise, but that the Corporation should endeavour to ensure that the noise is not to the detriment of the communities near airports. Last night Senator MacGibbon put up the extraordinary proposal that because people buy their land or houses near airports after the airport is constructed they suddenly lose all their rights in this regard. That is nonsense. Senator MacGibbon —Don't be stupid. Senator GRIMES —That is what Senator MacGibbon said. He said that the amendment should not go up. He said it was outrageous to put up an amendment such as this because most of the people who live near airports bought their properties after the airport was built. Senator MacGibbon —Do you want me to speak again? Senator GRIMES —I do not mind. It suits me. Looking at the speaker's list on the human rights legislation, I hope that we will speak on this Bill forever. Senator Durack —You are more interested in this than human rights, are you? Senator GRIMES —Oh dear! Senator Durack, it is only 20 minutes to 10 in the morning. Do not start that sort of stuff at 20 to 10 in the morning. All the amendment is doing is saying to the Federal Airports Corporation: `We know that aeroplanes make noise. We know that all these joy-stick jockeys such as Senator MacGibbon, Senator Sanders and Senator Townley-that is, if he has not had his licence taken off him-jazz around the airports, do wheelies and so on. All we are asking is that you ask them to curb it a bit so that the noise is not detrimental to the communities near airports'. Senator Michael Baume said that we cannot have a word such as `detrimental' in a piece of legislation because it is not clearly defined. We have had debates in this place for hours on end on the meaning of the words `that' and `the'. When the late Senator Greenwood and Senator Murphy were here they used to argue and debate the meanings of what to the rest of us were pretty clear words. Of course we can put the word `detrimental' in a piece of legislation. The lawyers are paid big money to define what the words mean. We sit here and argue and define what they mean. Senator Michael Baume talks endlessly about things being to the detriment of Wollongong, takes points of order and gives notices of motion. There is a stack of legislation in this Parliament which says that sort of thing. As for the second part of the amendment-paragraph (bb)-Senator Puplick, in his usual manner, said that it is terrible because the amendment will mean that the Airports Corporation will have to take account of 19, 6, 9 or something different local government regulations. That is not true. The argument that he put that clause 69, taken together with the Democrats' amendments, would apply to State and local government traffic and road laws on airports is again not true. It is not the case. The regulation-making power in clause 72 (k), I think it is, enables the Corporation to regulate traffic on roads. Another provision in that clause which provides other controls over the conduct of persons in the carrying out of particular activities under the legislation clearly points out that clause 69, taken together with the Democrats' amendment, does not result in that situation where all the local government regulations around-about apply. The legislation also points out that as far as non-aviation buildings are concerned-and that is what Senator Sanders is talking about in his amendment; buildings not directly related to aviation-the Corporation and the people running the airport should take into account the laws and building regulations of the councils around the airport, provided that they do not interfere with the conduct of their activities and their responsibilities in conducting that airport. So, all in all, I do not think that the legislation would be catastrophically bad without Senator Sanders's amendment, but I do not think that Senator Sanders's amendment, in trying to clarify more and to add more to the functions and instructions that this Parliament gives the Federal Airports Corporation, should worry us. We should not be worried about putting that sort of thing in. In the end, I have even concluded that we should not be too worried about asking the Federal Airports Corporation to endeavour, in performing its functions, to ensure as much as possible that the communities and the airports are good neighbours. Senator Puplick —That is because you want to pick on the people of Launceston again. Senator GRIMES —It may be that that is a bit motherhoodish for someone such as Senator Puplick, who wants to define everything and cross every `t' and dot every `i'. But I do not think it hurts much if we write into legislation what we actually intend. One of the problems with legislation that comes out of this Parliament is that, unlike the Congress of the United States or parliaments of some other democracies, we never state at the start of legislation what we are supposed to be about. As a result of that, we debate, in here and in the other place, and we produce great big bits of legislation-taxation, social security and handicapped persons legislation are classic examples-which set out the name of the Bill and the date of commencement, and then go straight into the clauses of the Bill. We all make pious speeches about what we intend and what the legislation will do, and it gets into the courts and the courts make decisions which are quite contrary to the intention of the legislation. What would be wrong with putting at the start of the legislation, as is done in the United States, what that legislation is intended to do-for instance, `The intention of this legislation is to set up a Federal Airports Corporation which will ensure that airports are run efficiently and in such a way as not to interfere too much with the activities of the local community'? If Senator Sanders does it in an amendment in this way, down in the body of the legislation, it is only because that is the way that we have to do it to keep in line with the way we draw up legislation in this place. So I ask honourable senators not to be too unkind to Senator Sanders and not to say the unkind things that they have said about him. Maybe he has actually introduced a principle in here that is all right. What will happen is that the Corporation will still be charged with ensuring that the airports are efficient, economical and safe, and that they do not indulge in undesirable activities. Any honourable senator who read the Canberra Times this morning could ask that the Corporation ensure that someone does not start a Mile High Club, as has occurred in Canberra. Senator Sanders —Certainly not in Launceston. Senator GRIMES —Oh, they would not do it in Launceston; but it is the evil denizens of Canberra who have done this. It is a bit poor to read that sort of thing in the Canberra Times first thing in the morning. Senator Chipp —What is evil about a Mile High Club? Senator GRIMES —I think it is pretty evil because I tried to get Senator Ryan to kick in $100 to go up with me and she said I was not worth $100 at the best of times. So I was badly disappointed early in the morning. It may well be that Senator Bjelke-Petersen, having opposed the Federal Airports Corporation Bill, will come in here and say: `I demand that the Federal Airports Corporation stop this terrible activity at Canberra airport'. We are actually extending the capacity of Senator Bjelke-Petersen and those other highly moral people in this place to come in here and regulate the activities of people at airports. Senator Chipp —You are not suggesting that she would go up there, are you? Senator GRIMES —No, Senator Chipp. I think if she reads that in the paper this morning she may well come in here and vote in favour of the Federal Airports Corporation. I think that this debate has gone on long enough. Senator Durack is very anxious to get on to the human rights legislation. We should accept the fact that these amendments have a good intention. They make us all feel good and they do not hurt the legislation; in fact they enhance it. For that reason, I concur with my colleague the Minister for Aviation, Mr Peter Morris, and say that the Government will agree to the amendments. Senator SANDERS(Tasmania)(10.42) —At this stage I wish to express my appreciation for the presentation given by the Minister for Social Security, the good Senator Grimes, who is one of the less troglodytic denizens of my home State of Tasmania. These amendments to the Federal Airports Corporation Bill are basically to ensure accountability and I would have thought the Opposition would understand that and would be in favour of it. They are simply to ensure accountability. Now that the Government has admitted that it wishes to be a good neighbour, I would point out something that it should already know: The good neighbour clause came from the Government's own policy, issued in June 1984, that the National Airports Authority should have the following objective: To make airports better neighbours to the communities which they serve- amongst other things. Therefore being good neighbours is part of the Government's policy. In the speech by the then Aviation Minister, Mr Kim Beazley, he said: By providing this kind of information- that is, information about economic activity and all that sort of thing- to the surrounding populations and by encouraging responsible participation in decision making, I hope that airports will be recognised as good, if somewhat noisy, neighbours. That was what the Minister intended. This was picked up by AMAC, the Australian Mayoral Aviation Council, which said at the beginning of one of its proposals in its presentations to me: Government policy as contained in appendix B of the NAA task force second report is to make airports better neighbours to the communities they serve. The AMAC came to me and I thought this proposal sounded like a good idea. I thought the Government might go along with it and it does. The Opposition does not want to be considered a better neighbour, but apparently the Government does and that is fine. That may explain why the Government is in government. We Democrats do not bow to special interest groups such as the AMAC or local government. Last night someone in the Opposition suggested that we were trying to curry votes from local government. We will never get one vote from anybody in local government; we know that. But if somebody comes up with a good idea, whether or not that person will vote for us, we try to take it on board, see whether it is a good idea and then use it. In this case that is what we have done. Senator MacGibbon gave quite a presentation. He asked me about my qualifications as a pilot. Senator Archer —No, he did not. Senator SANDERS —He implied that I had no qualifications. I understand that he is a pilot but they had to design a special aeroplane for him-it has only a right wing. I have been a pilot since 1950-some 36 years-and I have flown in Alaska, Canada, the United States, Mexico, Europe and Australia. I was a control tower operator in the Air Force and a bush pilot in Alaska. I had my own flying service and I have had experience on wheels, skis and floats. Senator Elstob —I bet you are not as good as Townley-he can fly under a fence. Senator Grimes —He can land on roads; he does it all the time. Senator SANDERS —Is that right? That is amazing. I was a flight instructor, a glider pilot, a glider instructor and a tow pilot. That is my experience, if Senator MacGibbon wishes to know. The basic point of Senator MacGibbon's argument was that somehow this legislation would inhibit his right to make noise over airports, as far as I could gather. He does not want his rights infringed in any way. It is a case of `I'm all right Jack', according to him. The point is that people do build around airports. No airport developer in his right mind will plop an airport in the middle of a high rent district. He will put it 20 miles out in the scrub some place. Then some real estate dealer comes along. Real estate dealers are about the only people in the community with a lower reputation than politicians and it is deserved because some unscrupulous real estate promoter will come along and say: `Ah, airport acres'. And he will subdivide it into quarter acre lots right underneath the approach path and thus there will be a whole bunch of people in there who will start to complain. I have seen this happen over and over again and I am sure Senator MacGibbon has seen it happen too. I do not want that to happen again. The way to keep that from happening is to make sure that one does not confront the local residents and to make sure that one is a good neighbour. Far from trying to make the aviation industry more restricted in this area, I am trying to make sure that the local councils and the local residents actually feel that the local airport is listening to their requirements and demands, so that they will not then just require the airport to shut down, as has happened in so many other places, as they will feel that they have some input into the system. Aeroplanes need airports, but Australia needs airports as well. That is what this whole Bill is about. Local government, the aviation industry, general aviation, pilots and local residents have to work together with some understanding to make our airports function, and function well, for the benefit of all. That is what this Bill will do. I feel that our amendments will help to ensure that airports are accepted by the community and will stay for many years. I conclude my remarks with those statements. Senator MacGIBBON(Queensland)(9.51) —I thought that last night we had the most lucid and logical explanation from members of the Opposition, particularly from Senator Puplick and one or two of us here in the Liberal Party of Australia, as to just what is wrong with this amendment. It must have been the lateness of the night that caused Senator Grimes to misunderstand what we were saying. I was talking on behalf of the whole community and my point was very simple. Unlike the Australian Labor Party, I was not talking about what was of interest to the Australian Council of Trade Unions, and unlike the Australian Democrats I was not trying to sew together a rainbow coalition of the disaffected and protest groups around the community. There is not much that Senator Sanders said that I wish to comment on, but I do make the point that if he did own, operate and maintain aircraft in Australia, he would realise what an enormous burden anyone involved in aviation in a private capacity or in a small way in this country carries. The harassment and the impediments placed on them by the Department of Aviation simply cannot be described and most importantly, with respect, Senator Sanders, there is no transferability of your experience in North America to the bureaucracy in Australia. It is a magnitude beyond anything that he could envisage in his wildest dreams. If Senator Sanders wants to talk about flying, he should go out and buy an aircraft. He should throw away his motor bike and fly for four, five or ten years in Australia and then we might be able to talk about the problems in the Department of Aviation. I would again like to put the positive point I am making because Senator Grimes has misunderstood it. The point is very simple-that people have bought homes around airfields knowing full well that the airfields existed. The same people who protest about a light aircraft flying overhead make no comment at all about a semi-trailer going past and pulling up at traffic lights, maybe with an exhaust manifold brake on that shatters the whole night. They accept that noise, but a much lesser noise from someone flying overhead brings a protest from the local community and a demand that the airport be closed and relocated. All I am asking is that the community recognise that the residents went there consciously of their own volition and I am asking people to be consistent. If it was good enough for them to buy a house there when they wanted to buy a house, they have to recognise that the aviation community is responsible and that it is doing what it can to minimise noise and other forms of annoyance to the community. I am just asking for consistency from the local community. I will put the argument in a different way. Can Senator Sanders or Senator Grimes give me one instance, just one, in the whole of Australia's history, where houses have been cleared in a residential area and an airfield established? That illustrates the point I am making. It has never happened. We have never cleared houses and put an airfield in a suburban area. We have always sited our airfields remote from the town and the town has grown out to them. The final point I make to Senator Grimes is that if he does not reflect on his actions here, he is opening his Government up to a liability, not of millions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars but of thousands of millions of dollars in relocating the airports of Australia into remote areas. Given the financial mess that this Government has got us into, I would have thought that was a pressing argument in itself. Senator GRIMES(Tasmania-Minister for Community Services)(9.55) —I will reply just briefly. I know some people are pretty thick. I think both Senator Sanders and I made the point this morning that we know that airports in general in the past have been constructed outside towns and that people have come to live around them later. Senator Sanders made the point that of course people complain about small planes flying over. I talked about the citizens of Launceston who write to me all the time complaining about freight planes going over every night. That does not mean, nor could it in anyone's wildest imagination mean, that the intention or result of Senator Sanders's amendment about noise would be that the Government would have to spend hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars relocating airports. Clause 7 (2) states: The Corporation shall endeavour to perform its functions in a manner that- Senator Sanders wants to put in: . . . as far as is practicable, the level of noise at airports is not such as to be detrimental to the communities near airports. Of course we know that there is noise near airports. Senator Sanders flies all the time around Tasmania. He gets great publicity for doing so. Senator Townley used to fly around Tasmania and get publicity for having to land on country roads and God knows what when he gets lost. Senator Sanders —He has a rural constituency. Senator GRIMES —That might be right, he is probably trying to visit his voters. The simple fact of the matter is that surely it is reasonable to suggest that if there is an airport-there are people living around that airport no matter when they came there-within reasonable grounds one of the functions of the people who run that airport should be to make sure that others do not make excessive noise or be stupid about it. The Federal Government has the same responsibility to make sure that people do not fly 747s above people's roof tops in an unreasonable way and disturb them. That is all Senator Sanders's amendment is saying. He is saying no more than that. His amendment is not saying that we are going to move airports and relocate them all over the country. As I said before, Senator Sanders and his colleagues actually read the legislation which was introduced last November. It was clear yesterday that Senator Archer and his colleagues had not read the legislation. Senator Chipp —Nor the second reading speech. He couldn't even read that. Senator GRIMES —Nor the second reading speech. They could not be upstaged so they had to come in here and say that the only thing they could do was to nit-pick and oppose Senator Sanders's amendment. Therefore, I am afraid that all that lucid explanation from Senator MacGibbon has not convinced me and has not convinced my colleagues. As Senator Sanders said, Senator MacGibbon has only one wing which means he goes round and round in circles. I think it is about time we stopped going round and round in circles and got on to some sensible legislation. Senator ARCHER(Tasmania)(9.58) - The Federal Airports Corporation Bill is probably the most over-regulated document I have ever seen as far as the establishment of a corporation is concerned. I think the Government needs to consider that the job it is giving the Corporation will be almost impossible because of the degree of Government intervention and interference which there will be. That whole clause 7 (2) to which the Minister referred is, in itself, a nonsense clause. There is nothing in that clause that is not covered elsewhere. Adding more nonsense to the clause does not make it more practicable or business like. We will never look to clause 7 (2) as a part of the legislation by which action will be taken. In fact, by drawing attention to additional factors this may well make the legislation more difficult to administer. I certainly believe the Corporation should be responsible to the Government. I believe it should be responsible to the people. However, I ponder how it is expected that the additional words will make it either any easier or better for the Commonwealth to operate airports or what benefit it will provide to local or State government, as I assume it is intended to imply. All the issues concerned are covered by legislation of a State or local government nature anyway. I do not see that anything in the whole of clause 7 (2) has anything to do with the legislation. I really feel that the Government ought to have a better look at the clause, as we have already said. So be it. Let it be on Government members' heads. Senator GRIMES(Tasmania-Minister for Community Services)(10.01) —That takes the cake. Someone has to point out that it does. We have introduced a piece of legislation to form a corporation which will be free from the dictates of the Public Service Board, the Department of Local Government and Administrative Services and other restrictive processes about which people on the other side are always complaining, and which will act in a commercial way. Now Senator Archer complains that this Corporation should endeavour to perform its functions in accordance with the policies of government, ensure the safety of persons, have a reasonable return on its assets, pay reasonable dividends to the Commonwealth and act in accordance with sound commercial practice. If members of the Opposition say that that is an example of terrible over-regulation, and government over-bureaucracy when we are trying to do the very opposite, it is no wonder that we are reading editorials in the newspaper saying `What the hell are they all about'? Honestly, that just about takes the cake. I do not think that Senator Archer can beat that, so let us not try. Amendment agreed to. Bill, as amended, agreed to. Bill reported with amendments; report adopted. Bill (on motion by Senator Grimes) read a third time. Debate resumed from 2 December 1985, on motion by Senator Grimes: That the Bills be now read a second time. (Quorum formed) Senator DURACK(Western Australia)(10.03) —The Senate has been anticipating the commencement of the debate on the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Bill and cognate Bills for two or three days. At long last we commence a very important and apparently-I make no apologies for this-very long debate on the package of legislation introduced by the Government which has become known as the human rights package. However, my main attention will be devoted to the Australian Bill of Rights Bill which, of course, is the centrepiece of this package. At the same time I should state that the Opposition will oppose the whole package. It is strongly opposed to the Australian Bill of Rights Bill and we will vote against it. We hope that the Senate will agree with our view and not that of the Government, whatever the Government's view might be because it seems likely that there will be changes in the Government's view if it gives way to pressures from a number of its left-wing supporters. At this stage, the Opposition opposes the Bills in their present form. Any changes that might be made by the Government would only further offend the Opposition, so there is not much chance of us reaching agreement with the Government on this matter. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Bill, transitional Bills and amending Bills-all parts of the package-will be opposed by the Opposition, but not because we are opposed to human rights. We are opposed only to the changes which are being proposed by the Government to the existing Human Rights Commission. If I have time, I will give some reasons why we oppose those changes. Of course, there has been a very lengthy debate about proposals for a Bill of Rights, both in this country and in many other countries. The human rights movement has gathered momentum, particularly since World War II, and there has been a good deal of movement on that issue in the United Nations. As part of that movement the United Nations adopted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1966, that being really the centrepiece of this international debate. But, of course, the question of a guaranteed Bill of Rights, however we refer to it, has a very much longer tradition that that. It goes back to the United States of America's Constitution and the various amendments to that Constitution which have become famous because of the widespread publicity and the application that they have had around the world over the last 200 years. As far as countries with our traditions of democracy, of a strong, independent judiciary and of common law are concerned, the debate has really centred upon whether it is desirable or necessary to have a constitutionally guaranteed Bill of Rights, in other words, a Bill which is an overriding law which all courts must obey despite what the parliaments-of course, in democratic countries these are fully representative parliaments-may decide the laws should be. Ultimately, the laws are judged not by a Parliament, not by the elected representatives, but by judges. There has been a great deal of debate and criticism about the extent to which judges become legislators. I suppose the high point of that movement was the Warren court in the United States with the really quite incredible number of judgments emanating from that court over a few years which made very major changes to the laws of the United States and which are having a widespread effect on the everyday living of the people of the United States. Of course, there has now been very great reaction to that sort of interventionist role for judges. That is one of the great concerns that have always been held by people who oppose the entrenching of a Bill of Rights in a constitution. Let me state that this Bill of Rights Bill does not seek to amend the Australian Constitution or to require all the parliaments of Australia, Federal and State, to observe its guarantees. It does not even do that for Federal laws. What it does is introduce directly into the Federal legal system, and indirectly into the State legal system as I will show, the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which, as I said, was drawn up in the United Nations in 1966. In my view, although no doubt there can be debate about this, this is a quite inappropriate way to introduce into our legal and political systems any notion of a Bill of Rights, of a guarantee of those rights to be binding on all parliaments at all times. This is simply a backdoor method of achieving the purposes of the proponents of the Bill of Rights. As I have said, the Bill does not achieve any guarantee. But in a somewhat devious, dubious way, in the process of time if the Government's plans are fully implemented, it will introduce in effect, if not as a guaranteed law, the rules of the International Covenant on Civil Rights and Political Rights. We have to ask ourselves two questions which are fundamental to this debate. The first is: Do we want to have a Bill of Rights? If the answer to that is yes, surely such a Bill of Rights should be drawn up with regard to Australian aspirations, needs and interests in 1986. We should not slavishly follow those provisions contained in the International Covenant, drawn up in the United Nations and greatly influenced by the many countries with no tradition of democracy at all that have set out these sorts of guarantees in that forum. I do not believe it is appropriate at all that Australia should seek to guarantee simply those rules. When the debate about human rights in Australia developed some years ago it was always intended that Australian parliaments should endeavour to reach agreement about the guarantees appropriate and relevant to modern Australia. All this international covenant contains is the lowest common denominator of rights that could be agreed upon in the United Nations, but certainly almost all the members of the United Nations did not then and do not now practise those rights. I will explain in a minute the deficiencies of this Bill in that regard. Secondly, if we are to have an effective and properly supported Bill of Rights should it be introduced in this devious and dubious way by the Parliament under the grossly expanded power that it recently received by a four to three majority of the High Court of Australia? We should not go about it in this way at all. It should be put to the people at a referendum. If we are to have a proper Bill of Rights the people themselves should decide whether they want such a Bill of Rights and whether they approve of the Bill submitted to them by the Parliament. Such a fundamental change in our political and legal system should not be made in a backdoor way; it should be done in a straightforward open way and the people should be asked about it. An excellent example of the Government's attitude is the way it has promoted this Bill of Rights. One of the centrepieces of its election promises before its election in 1983 was that it would introduce a Bill of Rights. When Senator Evans was Attorney-General he had his version of the Bill of Rights drafted. He circulated it to a few groups who he thought might give it some support or have some interest in it, but he would never make it public. When the election was called in 1984 he still refused to make it public despite a lot of pressure from this chamber that that be done. During the election campaign neither Senator Gareth Evans nor Prime Minister Hawke would unveil or reveal what their Bill of Rights contained. The very last thing this Government wants is any judgment by the people on what it is doing and what it is proposing in order to govern the people for virtually all time. The Government has drawn up legislation and it has deprived the people of making any judgment upon it. The way the legislation has been drafted and submitted will deprive the people-as far as the Government can achieve this-of ever making any judgment on it. The Government is trying in this legislation to prevent future parliaments, as far as it possibly can, from ever altering or making any judgment on its proposal for a Bill of Rights. This Bill states that Australian Federal laws are to be interpreted by courts-all courts, of course, either Federal of State-and all courts are to be bound by this law which will be like any other Federal law. The Government has tried to give it a guarantee by saying that the courts have to interpret all past and future laws and they have to adopt an interpretation which, as far as possible, is consistent with the Bill of Rights. That is the first thing they have to do. If they find they cannot do that and the law is inconsistent with the Bill of Rights that law will become invalid in due course. There are some differences as to when past and future laws operate but that is all technical stuff that I will not go into. This Bill of Rights has a very dangerous and strange provision that any future law passed by this Parliament will be governed by the Bill of Rights-it has to be interpreted, as far as possible, as being consistent with the Bill of Rights-unless there are express words of plain intendment which exclude the application of the Bill of Rights to that law. I think it is a dangerous assault on what has been a centrepiece of our Constitution that no parliament can or should endeavour to impose its views on its successors or bind its successors. Of course, whether or not this is a valid law will be decided in another place. I am not so worried about whether it is or is not a valid law. I am saying that it is certainly not politically and morally valid because it is quite contrary to the whole tradition of parliamentary democracy in this country and this is a classic example of how this Government went about changing, in this devious way, the nature of our Constitution without giving the people of Australia any say on it. As I have said, this Government would not even tell the people before the last election what it had in mind and what it had in store for them. It was too scared to have the people judge it. It is too scared now to have the people judge it. No wonder when we look at what it is proposing to be a statement of our fundamental rights. The rights that are contained in this Bill, which are based on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, are unexception- able rights. Whether they are very meaningful to Australia in 1986 is another matter because they have all been part and parcel of our legal and political system for 200 years. They have been developed in the British political and legal system for many hundreds of years. No parliament in Australia would ever openly and consciously remove the sorts of rights that are set out in the covenant. So for the Government to be making a fuss about guaranteeing them now in this way is really a lot of eyewash. Just when we want to talk about the relevance of these rights to modern Australia we find an article in the covenant which states that no person shall be held in slavery or servitude or be required to perform forced or compulsory labour. Has any Parliament in our political history ever been intent on breaching that guarantee? As I have said, this Government really does not add anything to the guarantees that we have enjoyed, that we are enjoying and that we will continue to enjoy as long as we have a healthy democracy in this country and as long as we have elections where people are able to make a choice between governments and where governments really tell the people what they propose to do after they are elected. The only threat we have to our system in this country is the way in which this Government and the Prime Minister who leads it tell the people that, if they are elected, interest rates will go down, there will be no capital gains taxes, petrol prices will go down and so on. They make these reckless promises. That is where the threat to democracy is in this country, not because Australian politicians are likely to be breaching these fundamental rules that we have all observed for decades and indeed centuries. Honourable senators should bear in mind that this International Covenant was drawn up in 1966 in the United Nations which is largely composed of dictatorships of the Right or Left and, as I have said, some of them are of a fairly murderous disposition. This International Covenant does not contain any clear right to own private property. There is some suggestion that the Covenant may be interpreted in that way but no clear and unequivocal right is laid down to own private property and not to have it taken away without compensation as the Wran Government has tried to do in New South Wales. Senator Puplick —And successfully did it. Senator DURACK —And successfully did it, and it has not yet paid any compensation. Nor does this Covenant contain any right for parents to send their children to the school of their choice. Although this Covenant is very long on the right to form trade unions, it does not guarantee any right of a person not to be forced into joining a trade union. We know perfectly well that the policy of the Australian Labor Party and of many governments in Australia has been to force people to join trade unions. There is no guarantee of that kind. Here we have three very good, clear examples of matters which are of great moment to Australians. Modern Australians hold very dearly to these principles and these rights of owning property, of getting compensation if it is acquired for some public purpose, of being able to send their children to a school of their choice or, for that matter, to go to a doctor of their choice. These are rights which are not to be dragooned either by laws or by overwhelming, strong-arm, militant union tactics to force people to join or to remain members of a trade union. There is no clear working whatsoever in this legislation to protect any of those rights. Yet here we have the Government saying `We want to have a guarantee of rights in 1986 which Australians are entitled to enjoy', yet it does not make any attempt to put it in the legislation. The way the Government is going about this presents difficulties for it but that is its business; it is not our worry. Our worry is that we will have imposed upon us a totally inadequate statement of the rights which fulfil the needs, interests and aspirations of modern Australia. If the Senate does not throw this Bill out, as we hope it will, the Opposition will be moving a number of amendments along the lines which have already been circulated. But I will not go into that in any more detail. There is another important objection to this Bill. I have already indicated how it will operate at the political and parliamentary level. Let me now deal with how it will operate at the judicial level. We will be asking judges of the Federal Court to decide the meaning of these extraordinarily broad general statements by which all legislation of this Parliament in future, and indeed past laws, will be judged. The judges will have to say whether our attempts in this Parliament to give effect to these guarantees are in conformity with these extremely generalised statements. I instance the phrase `right to life'-another one that is left up in the air. Article 18 reads: Every human being has the inherent right to life and no person shall be arbitrarily deprived of life. There is no indication whether that applies to human life before as well as after birth. Presumably it will be thrown on the judges to decide that question. That is one of the most, probably the most, sensitive and important decisions that have to be made, and of course it is the duty of this Parliament to make those decisions. It should not be thrust upon judges, who are unelected and remote from the affairs of everyday people. There are some other most extraordinary provisions contained in the Bill about the role of judges. There is a clause that reads: The rights and freedoms set out in this Bill are subject only to such reasonable limitations prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. Who will decide that? The judges will decide what limitations can be demonstrably justified. Who will demonstrate it? Will it be the Solicitor-General in argument before the Federal Court? Will he be the one to demonstrate it? It is not to be done by the Government, Ministers, parliamentarians or elected persons, but the Solicitor-General or the senior Queen's Counsel employed by the Government will have to demonstrate whether it is or is not justified in a free and democratic society. What a bonanza for the Bars of this country! What a bonanza the lawyers will get, as they do out of most legislation that comes from this Government. I cite another beauty which is even better. If the judges find that the legislation is in conflict with the Bill of Rights, they are asked to say whether any grave public inconvenience or hardship might follow from a finding of that kind. If the judges find that there is a grave public inconvenience or hardship, apart from finding that an Act is in conflict with the Bill of Rights, the judge can suspend its operation. He can say that a law which has operated for years will not operate any longer. Because it is in conflict with the Bill of Rights and cannot be demonstrably shown to be justified in a free and democratic society, its past operation will still be able to apply because of the grave public hardship and inconvenience that might follow. As for the future, the judge can suspend his decision to enable something to be done about it. Really! It is incredible that this power is being given to judges. These are the sorts of decisions we are making which go to the very heart of democracy. It is the elected representatives of the people here in Parliament who should be making those decisions, not the unelected judges. I have not the time to sum up my argument about the Bill of Rights. I must refer briefly to the Human Rights Commission. We are opposed to the greatly expanded role of the Human Rights Commission which this legislation gives. We are opposed to the fact that the Commission is to be turned by the Government into some great new souped-up bureaucracy. It is not to remain only a small advisory body as we set up when we were in government, a body with a small budget to advise government on human rights matters and whether legislation conformed with human rights requirements, and so on. The present Government has been greatly expanding the Human Rights Commission. Its budget over three years from 1983 to 1986 has trebled; Its staff has nearly doubled and there will be a huge increase in the future. The policy of this Government is to set up full time human rights commissioners and not to retain the important element that was in the existing Human Rights Commission involving part-time commissioners who were there because of their particular interest in, knowledge of the relations with people-disabled people, Aborigines or whatever. There may be people who are discriminated against or in some way not benefiting from the full enjoyment of life in common with the rest of the nation. Under this Bill the Human Rights Commission will lose that human touch. It has already been developing a somewhat unnecessary bureaucracy. It is showing signs of going that way and the Government is encouraging it with this great increase in expenditure, staff and so on. Already a human rights bureaucracy is being established. These proposals will just accelerate the process. The vast new responsibilities under this legislation will give an excuse for that to accelerate. We are to have virtually another department of the Commonwealth administering this legislation. There is already some legislation, such as the Sex Discrimination Act, and the Racial Discrimination Act, which has to be administered, but this Bill will greatly expand that whole role and that whole bureaucracy. The Bill also proposes that inquiries by the Human Rights Commission can be made into State as well as Federal laws. We are heading towards a major confrontation with the States as a result of this proposal, which is quite inconsistent with the Opposition's view of a federal system and its working. For all those reasons, many and various as they are, the Opposition will be opposing this whole package. If the Senate does not agree with us in that, we shall be moving some major amendments to the Bill in Committee. In that event, I believe that the Senate should be looking to refer the matter to a committee for further consideration. Senator COONEY(Victoria)(10.34) —I begin by offering to the Senate the following quotation: One of the major concerns of the Government is to preserve, improve and expand civil liberties in Australia insofar as the Commonwealth has power to do so. That is a quotation with which most people in this chamber would agree. Those words were uttered by Senator Durack on 20 October 1976, when speaking on civil liberties in Australia. With great skill and compassion he was doing what he could to preserve those liberties. Indeed, the then Government and the coalition to which he belongs have a proud history in this field. It was under that Government or its successors that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights was brought into operation. It is all very grand for Senator Durack to get up now and say, as he did today, that this Bill of Rights is full of defects. It is based on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which he now says is not apt for Australia. He now says that this is not the sort of covenant we need for Australia and that we should have something different. Why did not those who preceded him in the coalition government take the same view? The history of this matter is very interesting. The United Nations was created on 26 June 1945 and on 10 December 1948 its General Assembly proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Australia is a party. The Australian Labor Party was then in government. What is interesting is that in the 1950s a commission on human rights with an Australian component was established. That Australian component was put there by Mr Menzies, the founder of the Party to which Senator Durack belongs. On this commission Australia sat with other nations throughout the 1950s developing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Senator Durack now disowns and says is not apt for Australia. We might ask Senator Durack why it was appropriate for Australia in the 1950s and 1960s to show interest in an international covenant but it is not appropriate for Australia now. Where has the big change taken place? On 16 December 1966, when Mr Holt was the Prime Minister and the coalition was in power, 106 countries, including Australia, unanimously agreed to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. What has changed since then? Did the coalition, which was then in power, tell the people of Australia what it was about? On 18 December 1972 Mr Whitlam, who was then in power leading an Australian Labor Party government, signed the Covenant. But when was the Covenant, which is now said by the Opposition to be an outrage upon the Australian people, ratified? It was ratified on 13 August 1980 when Mr Fraser was Prime Minister and-correct me if I am wrong-when Senator Durack was the Attorney-General. Was there then a cry from the then Government that the Covenant was an assault upon the liberties of the Australian people, that the document was useless and should not be ratified? What change has taken place between 13 August 1980 and now? Why did the coalition Government then in power attach the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as a Schedule to the Human Rights Commission Bill which was then passed, which Covenant it now turns its back on and says is inappropriate and proper only, if at all, for countries less blessed than Australia? The big question to ask-I will be interested to hear what Opposition speakers say about this matter-is: Why was the International Covenant, which according to Senator Durack has suddenly become a pariah, attached to the coalition Government's 1981 Bill? What in Australia has changed since then to make that Covenant inappropriate? When yells and screams are heard in this debate, I would be very interested to hear why the Covenant was attached to that Bill. Why did Senator Durack, who was then the Attorney-General, attach the Covenant which he now so strongly attacks to the Human Rights Commission Act. Senator Durack —It was a guide for politicians. It was not going to become an overriding law. It is completely different. Senator COONEY —Senator Durack has missed the point I am making. He said in his address to the Senate-he may look at Hansard later-and certainly made clear that the Covenant was a pariah in Australia, that it was useless and not the sort of document that should be adopted. He said that if we are to have a Bill of Rights it ought to be based on something more apt and appropriate for Australia. All I want to know is: Since 1981 when the Bill was put through, what has suddenly made this Covenant, which Senator Durack now attacks, so worthy of attack when, in those days-- Senator Durack —If you look back you will know that the State and Federal Attorneys-General were working on the development of an Australian Bill themselves. You should have carried on that work. Senator COONEY —I understand all that. Senator Durack —Ask your Minister why he did not carry on that work. Senator COONEY —I do not see that that goes to the point I am now asking, which is why under a government of which Senator Durack was a member and in which he was Attorney-General was there attached-it is there for all to see-to the Bill that set up the Human Rights Commission as Schedule 1, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Human Rights Commission Act has been sold all around the country. Its concepts have been put into operation to some extent by the Human Rights Commission which the previous Government set up. Senator Gareth Evans —It gave it power to investigate and report on breaches of the terms of the Covenant. Senator COONEY —I thank Senator Evans. He is absolutely correct. The previous Government gave the Commission powers to examine matters in the light of the International Covenant which, as I remember-perhaps Senator Evans can correct me-was not put to the people of Australia by way of a referendum or for discussion. Why is it that when the coalition goes out of government and the Labor Party comes in and tries to continue the work the coalition government was doing-let us be clear about that-the Bill has its genesis in what the coalition set in operation-- Senator Durack —The reason is that we preserved the power of the Parliament. We were not trying to destroy it, like you. Senator COONEY —Let us get on to that. Senator Durack says that we are going to destroy the power of the Parliament by setting up a Bill of Rights. He says that the sorts of rights we are setting up in the Bill of Rights which we are going to bring before the people of Australia will curtail the ability of this Parliament to pass laws. We disagree with that concept, but it is a worthy argument. As the next point of Senator Durack's argument he goes on to say that, anyhow, the Bill is not needed because the Parliament is already bound by tradition not to do those things. The concepts set out in the Bill of Rights are very elementary and no parliament would dare breach them. I again ask: What is the difference between being bound by tradition and by the lifestyle and culture we have in this country and setting out those concepts in documentary form? Does the honourable senator disagree with the Ten Commandments? They were written down. Would he say: `My God, why do we have the Ten Commandments written down'? We should not be following the Ten Commandments because they bind people in writing. They stop the Parliament from operating as it should simply because they are written down? One cannot have it both ways. One cannot say that there is a common law tradition in this country which stops the Parliament from breaching the laws that are set out, which is all right, and then say that the Bill is not all right because it stops the Parliament in writing from doing what it is already not able to do. In my view that is a quite inconsistent argument. The Opposition goes on to talk about the right not to join a trade union, the right to send children to certain schools, and what have you. The Opposition has said that these are elementary rights. The Bill of Rights provides that the rights set out are rights that can be enforced only against the Commonwealth and Commonwealth officers. As Senator Durack well knows, under this Bill they are not rights that can be enforced in any way against the ordinary citizen. Senator Durack —What would your Government do if the Human Rights Commission told it that a State law was in conflict and ought to be changed? Senator COONEY —If the Human Rights Commission said that a State law was in conflict, this Government could not do anything, because under the Act the Commission would have to report to the Attorney-General who would have to bring that report to the Parliament which, hopefully, would discuss it. If the Commission brought to this Parliament a report which said that electoral boundaries or divisions were not fair in the sense that each person was not guaranteed a right of voting which was equal to everybody else's right of voting, this Parliament would say that that was a bad sort of thing and that it ought to be adjusted. Let us consider the United States, which again is a common law country whose culture and aspirations the Opposition and Australians generally would say set the proper standards. Cases such as Baker v. Carr and Wesberry v. Sanders, which I have no doubt Senator Durack has read and read again, the Opposition I hope would see as setting out the sorts of concepts which ought to be brought into this country, particularly the one that everybody should have an equal vote before the law. Senator Durack —What would you advocate your Government do if you get a report which says that a State law is in conflict with the Bill? Senator COONEY —I will tell the honourable senator what I would advocate. In meeting its international obligations and enacting into law the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, it ought to make a law which would be enforced by the High Court of Australia-I will come back to that-obliging the States, as the Supreme Court of America obliged States such as Tennessee-to provide for fair elections based on one vote one value. I will take the honourable senator up on what he said about that matter. The honourable senator stated in his speech-I sympathise with it-that as long as we have fair elections there is no need for a Bill of Rights. If the Opposition would say that it, as a future government, is intent on putting into operation throughout Australia a fair electoral system, a lot of the sting would go out of this debate on the Bill of Rights. Senator Durack —What would Brian Burke have to say about that? Senator COONEY —If Brian Burke or any other Premier or politician of whatever colour advocates a situation in which people would not get equal rights, I hope I would have the strength to say that he is wrong. Senator Durack —That's not the point. Senator COONEY —What is the point? Senator Durack —What's Brian Burke going to say if you try to force your electoral system on him? Senator COONEY —The honourable senator has said-- Senator Durack —What would you propose the Parliament do? Senator COONEY —Does the honourable senator want to listen to the answer or not? Senator Durack said-these are his words or very close to them; honourable senators could look at Hansard later-that as long as we have fair elections there is no need for a Bill of Rights. The honourable senator would have to agree that there are parts of Australia in which fair elections do not take place and if he were fair dinkum he would say that there ought to be a Bill of Rights since that is in fact a situation which calls for it. That is the reverse side of the very proposition he put and flows from it. Senator Boswell —Where aren't there fair elections? Senator Haines —Queensland, and the upper House of Western Australia. Senator COONEY —That is right. Senator Durack is obliged, if his statements now and the statements he made in 1976 hold any water at all, to advocate that a lot more ought be done in reference to the upper House in Western Australia, and the Parliament of Queensland, as Senator Haines has said, to make them houses elected on a fair and equal basis. Perhaps then there would not be so great a need as there is at present for a Bill of Rights. I want to take up another matter now. By inference, Senator Durack-I am sure if one got him in the cold light of day and said `Do you really mean this?', he would say `No, I don't'-made a subtle but quite strong attack on the judiciary. By and large, the judiciary of Australia has served this country very well indeed and in the traditions of the great common law system of England. For a former Attorney-General, by inference, to denigrate the judicial system is not apt: In fact, it is not good at all. In effect, Senator Durack said that the judiciary is not capable of interpreting in a fair way words in an Act of Parliament. Senator Durack quoted words in a roundabout way, almost in a sniggering way, and asked how the judiciary can decide what is demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society, saying that this Bill will allow the judiciary to decide what is and what is not right in those terms. If we do not have this Bill, what do we rely on? One of the propositions that Senator Durack was putting was that we should rely on the common law. The common law is a magnificent thing. Of course, the common law is a judge-made law and has been very much so over many years. What is the difference between judges making the law through the common law procedure and through interpreting a statute? I would like the speakers who follow me to tell me how they make the subtle distinction involved in saying: `It is all right for judges to ``make'' our laws by way of the common law procedure but it is not all right for them to undertake the much more restricted task of ``making'' it by interpreting a Bill of Rights?' The two things just do not hold together. What is the difference between a judge making the common law through deciding cases-and we say the common law system protects our rights-and a judge giving an interpretation to the Bill of Rights enacted to protect those rights? Why should it be wrong for judges to interpret a statute aimed at protecting rights and yet all right for them to make laws again and again through common law procedures? Senator Durack said that surely the Bill of Rights should be drawn up in terms of the needs of Australia in 1986. The inference in that statement is that we should be selfish. An international covenant has been developed worldwide to try to establish a basis for humanity in the world, a basic set of rights. We as a nation of the world, should be able to say at the very least that we have legislation expressing rights that the world regards as basic. However, Senator Durack says: `We should not be looking after the rest of the world. Let the people in the East and West, in both ``good'' and ``bad'' countries, do what they will because we will not join in an international covenant to bring human rights to everybody'. We have to become an island. We have to be terribly selfish in Australia. We have to ignore the plight of somebody in Bulgaria, Central America, Pakistan or wherever. We will not enter into an international covenant which may give people around the world who are being tortured and maimed some comfort that at least there is a universally recognised minimum of rights and that certain countries at least can be identified as having legislated to protect them by law. Senator Durack says that we should forget about all that and that we should look at things simply and wholly in terms of Australians and Australians only. In my view that is a very selfish and very narrow attitude which is not worthy of Australia as a member of the international community. Australia, under the coalition Government, entered into the Covenant and in 1980, under Mr Fraser, ratified it. What has happened to the then Government's sense of propriety and sense of liberties since 1980? What has happened to its sense of international responsibility, to its sense of giving a lead to the rest of the world which, unfortunately, does not enjoy the sorts of liberties we enjoy here. Why should we, having brought this covenant to fruition, mainly under Liberal and National Party efforts, now turn our backs on the world? The reality is that we should not. The Bill of Rights has been misinterpreted around the country. It sets out a minimum of rights. In fact, Senator Durack says that it does not set out enough rights and that other rights ought to be added to it. I cannot quite gather from what he said towards the end of his speech whether he was saying that this Bill of Rights is no good at all because it sets out rights or whether he is saying that it is no good at all because it does not set out enough rights. Senator Gareth Evans —He is saying that he is self-contradictory and that is par for the course. Senator COONEY —That is so. I think we have to hear from the many Opposition speakers what the Opposition is saying. Is it saying that we should not have a right to peaceful assembly? Is it saying that there should be no freedom of association? Senator Tate —Article 9. Senator COONEY —I thank Senator Tate. Are we saying that we should not have freedom to adopt a religion or a belief? What is the Opposition saying? Is the Opposition saying: `We agree with what is set out there but there ought to be more put in'. The Opposition has to decide on what it says. Article 9.3 provides that any person arrested or detained on a criminal charge has a right to be tried within a reasonable time. Do we disagree with that? Do we disagree with the right of a person to communicate with a lawyer? Do we disagree with the right to receive legal assistance? Indeed, as regards common law rights, the common law does not guarantee a person a right to have legal assistance at a trial. I want to get on to another point on this matter. The Opposition talks about the common law. Who is the mother of common law? What is the origin of the common law? The common law comes from England. Let us just have a look at the situation in England. Without doubt, somebody will quote, in the context of this debate, the statement by Sir Harry Gibbs, the Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia- Senator Haines —They ought to have a look at what Lord Scarman in England said. Senator COONEY —I will tell honourable senators what Lord Scarman says. Senator Haines has no doubt read what Lord Scarman says. I quote Lord Scarman, when he talked about the English common law and its ability to protect the rights of everybody. He reached the conclusion that the common law `lacks a coherent basis of principle'. This is the great common law system, the traditions on which the Opposition is going to rely. This is a judge, a Law Lord in the House of Lords, the very peak of the common law. Senator Tate —Pinnacle. Senator COONEY —Thank you, Senator Tate-the pinnacle of the common law system. In relation to the common law Lord Scarman states: It lacks a coherent basis of principle upon which it can tackle the problems of human rights in a modern setting. To this extent the common law has failed. A new Bill of Rights- A Bill of Rights! Here is the Law Lord suggesting a Bill of Rights- . . . could establish guiding principles that would set standards for politicians, administrators and judges. Senator Durack —That is what we did with the Human Rights Commission. Senator COONEY —That reference, which Senator Durack no doubt knows but which I will repeat for him, comes from the ninth Wilfrid Fullager Memorial Lecture in 1980, and it is set out in the 1981 Modern Law Review at page 1, although the particular quotation comes from pages 4 and 5. But let us have a look at the mother of the common law system and what it has done. In 1950 it became a party to the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which was signed in Rome in 1950. That sets out rights very similar-no doubt the honourable senator has looked at them-to those set out in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. So here we are. The European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms sets out rights very much as is done in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights-but 16 years beforehand. Not only did England do that, but the mother of our traditions was party to a European Human Rights Commission set up under the convention; and not only that but took part in the establishment of the European Court of Human Rights. Indeed, that Court has overruled English courts. I will give honourable senators a couple of examples. I shall cite them. There is the Sunday Times v. the United Kingdom, 1979, 2 European Human Rights Reports, at page 245, and Maloney v. the United Kingdom, 1984, 7 European Human Rights Reports, at page 14, in which it was held that the way England dealt with the question of privacy certainly was not in conformity with the way that people who have an appetite for civil rights and liberties would like it to be dealt with. The European Court held the position allowed by the common law to be in breach of human rights. But we, a child of the English common law system, say: `No, even though the parent, the mother, has what is in effect a Bill of Rights, we are too good; we should not have that; we should reject it'. We say that we will not be like Canada, which has a human rights Bill, or like the United States. We will not be like that; we will go our own way. Of course, there is then an attack on the notion of any sanction to enforce the Bill of Rights. The sorts of countries that have a Bill of Rights but do not have any enforcement provisions are, I hope, not the sorts of countries that Senator Durack and the Opposition would adopt, take example from, because perhaps the prime example of a country that has a written Bill of Rights without any enforcement provisions is Russia. Are we going to adopt, as might be suggested-not directly by Senator Durack, but certainly by the sorts of arguments he puts-a situation such as that which prevails in Russia, or will we have a Bill of Rights which vindicates our position as a nation in the world that is seeking, with other nations, to bring about at least some universal minimum of justice, liberty and decency? Are we going to face up to our responsibilities in those respects? Let us make clear what the common law does do and does not do. The common law certainly does not guarantee the sorts of rights that are set out in this Bill. It does not guarantee a right to freedom of religion. It does not guarantee a right to participate in public life. It does not guarantee a right to peaceful assembly. It does not guarantee rights for children. It does not give people a right to vote. It does not do any of those things. In fact, the statement made by Sir Harry Gibbs to which I referred indicates just that, because the inference in what he said is that it is not the law, whether the common law or otherwise, that protects human rights but the character of the society in which we live. So let us make it clear right from the start of this debate that it is not the common law that ensures what we regard as our fundamental rights. I just want to add one quotation which, although not directly on the point, expresses fairly well what I have been saying about our international obligations and about our own profile. It is a quotation from Abraham Lincoln in his message to Congress in 1862. He said: In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free-honourable alike in what we give and what we preserve. This Bill of Rights, adopting the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, should be looked at in that light. That International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which has been so fiercely attacked here today, is a thing that gives freedom not to the `slave' of which Abraham Lincoln spoke but to those countries in which there are a host of modern slaves and in which people are systematically tortured. By doing that we assure freedom to the free. Doing that is an honourable thing-`alike in what we give and what we preserve'. Opposition senators will get up and castigate this Bill of Rights over the next few days. I simply ask every one of them-I will be interested to hear what they say-what they are going to do for the people tortured, no matter where in this world, or under what system. What will they do for the people who have the electricity applied to their sensitive parts, in places where people have torture and degradation heaped upon them? The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —Order! The honourable senator's time has expired. Senator HAINES(South Australia)(11.03) —I would hazard a guess that in all the five years that I have been a member of this place I have never before run into so much misinformation being spread around the community about any piece of legislation as that which has been disseminated about the Australian Bill of Rights Bill and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Bills which accompany it. The number of chicken littles who are running around this country claiming the sky will fall in if we pass this piece of legislation is extraordinary. Sadly, they are often masquerading as Christians and are behaving in a most un-christianlike manner, peddling lies and stirring up fear in the minds of ordinary, honest, reasonable people in the community. The letters that I have had from people who have been subject to this disinformation or misinformation campaign indicate the extent to which some people in the community will go to stop a piece of legislation going through. It is, I would suggest, a campaign that most totalitarian regimes would envy for its extent and success. Before I go into some of the concerns that have been expressed to me about this Bill, quite unnecessarily I might add, I think we need to look at its origin and just exactly what it does do as distinct from what some people think it will do. It results, of course, from the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and it is, in fact, a particularly weak piece of legislation. It follows not only the signing but also the ratification of that Covenant by the previous Fraser Government in 1980. It is not only Australia, of all Commonwealth or Western countries, which has signed and ratified this Covenant, despite the fact that the majority of letters that I get say things like: `It is based on the United Nations ICCPR which has been accepted by Warsaw Pact countries'-by the way, in the majority of letters it is spelt `Pack'-`and rejected by the UK and the USA'. Hence, they argue that it will lead to a totalitarian state. I suggest that some kind soul incorporate in Hansard a copy of the signatories and the ratifiers of this Covenant because then people will see that not only has Australia signed and ratified it, but so has the United Kingdom, which in addition is a participator in and covered by the European Covenant, which I suggest is a much stronger covenant. Canada ratified the United Nations Covenant on 19 May 1976. Prior to doing that, in 1960 it implemented the articles of the Covenant in its own Bill of Rights and it did that in a legislative form. By 1982 the Canadians were sufficiently satisfied with the working of it to allow it to be incorporated into their own Constitution. To the best of my knowledge, so far Canada has not become either a communist or a totalitarian state, although, when my Secretary was on the phone trying to explain this to a lady who rang up in some concern the other day, she did not get terribly far. The lady stopped in her tracks as she was not aware of what Canada had done. She was only aware of the distortions that had been given to her. However, she was not to be outdone. She stopped, thought for a moment and then said: `But Canada is not as free as it used to be'. A lot of these people really do not want to listen. For example, another senator, who I understand spoke at a very large meeting on this issue, put the points, went through the Article, pointed out that it was not going to lead to homosexual marriages under Article 13 and other bits and pieces that had been spread around the community, and when he had finished at the end of the meeting a man came up to him and said: `Senator, you have a wonderful way with words, but you did not fool me'. They do not want to know. They do not let facts get in the way of a good argument. Then we have the information that the Bill of Rights is going to seep into the entire community, that somehow it is going to set neighbour against neighbour, individual against companies and it is going to get its little tendrils into all sorts of dreadful areas, including interfering with States' rights. Apart from the fact that I happen to believe-and my Party supports me in this-that it ought to cover the States, for a variety of reasons, in fact it is a particularly weak Bill in that it only offers to protect individual citizens against jackbooting bureaucracies. I think it is important that that piece of information goes out into the community. It is one of the reasons, for example, why the much maligned proposed Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, like a lot of other commissions, and tribunals and so on that we have in this country, does not allow legal representation. It is, of course, intended to balance the individual against the much bigger organisations of Federal Government departments. I leave it to the imagination of honourable senators to work out who would be able to afford better and more lawyers in a fight between an individual and the Department of Social Security, for example. Even if it only covers Federal Government instrumentalities, this Bill goes some way to giving additional protection to ordinary individuals. Nevertheless, it is a concern of people who write and say that the Bill is to be administered by an appointed, as distinct from a democratically elected, body of people. I do not know what they think judges are, by the way, since most other pieces of legislation are interpreted by the courts which, of course, are made up of appointed bodies of people. Anyway, they are saying that it is to be administered by an appointed body of people with powers that exceed the normal processes of the law. They say it is a Star Chamber and an inquisitorial body. It has no appeal, they say, and can have closed hearings. It can call for documents and no legal representation is to be allowed. Senator Boswell —That is what the Bill says. Senator HAINES —It certainly does. I suggest the same thing applies to things like the Social Security Appeals Tribunal, the Repatriation Review Tribunal and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. To argue that there is no appeal from the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission ignores the fact that there is only one additional power given to HREOC under this legislation that does not already exist under the Liberal Government's Human Rights Commission, and that is the power to call compulsory conferences. It also ignores the fact, as I read the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977, that in section 5 there is an appeal mechanism. To argue that this is some kind of inquisitorial Star Chamber that is going to stop people from doing what they want ignores a number of facts, including the fact that all it can possible do is report to the Minister and suggest that some dictatorial bureaucracy is stopped from doing what it wants. To argue that HREOC is some kind of totalitarian communist inspired organisation not only overlooks the facts, it overlooks the important correlation between that Commission and a number of other existing bodies we have in this country which are established specifically to protect the rights of individual citizens against organisations that are so large that under ordinary circumstances they would not have the proverbial ice cream's hope in hell of getting anywhere. I now turn to one or two of the other misconceptions that are being spread around the community. I would like to pick up Senator Durack's comment about the fact that this Bill does not include the right to own property. That, of course, is because that is not covered in the Covenant, which he pointed out. We certainly would not have any particular objections to the Bill suffering, if I can use that word, a simple amendment to the effect that there is a right to own property. There are large numbers of people in the community-and I include the Returned Services League in this-who believe that this Bill actually takes away a right to own property and that somehow we have had that right in this country, if not since its inception, since Federation. In fact, that is not the case. Neither at State level nor at Commonwealth level have we ever had the absolute right to own property. At the Commonwealth level, section 51, Part 31, I think it is, gives us the right to have the Federal Government pay either an individual or a State just compensation if it acquires your property, but at the State level not even that applies. To argue, as the RSL does, that this Bill will take away our right to own property is an absolute nonsense and I suggest that some of these people acquaint themselves with State and Federal Government constitutions. The point, however, is that, even if we do put into this Bill the right to own property, unless we also extend it to the States, it is not going to stop somebody like Mr Wran from coming up with another Coal Acquisition Act of 1981. Unless the States are covered by it we can put in any property rights we like and it will not stop Premiers and dictatorial parliaments from treading all over ordinary people. I then come to the argument that there has been no time for discussion and examination of this Bill by the people, that it was rushed through the House of Representatives and passed in the dead of night, as if it was the first Bill, indeed, that was passed in either this Parliament or in any State parliament in the early hours of the morning and as if that necessarily makes it something sinister. Stupid, yes; sinister, no. Certainly we have had a Bill of Rights of some sort before the Federal Parliament since 1973. I would have thought that 12 years was long enough for 15 million people, or however many interested bodies there are among that 15 million people, to get to know what was in it. The Bills have all been different. This has to be the weakest of them. Unfortunately, the people in the community who have caught up with the legislation have got only as far as Senator Evans's Bill which was a much more grandiose scheme to extend various rights to people. They write to me, unhappily quoting sections from Senator Evans's Bill, and are not aware or have not been made aware-I suggest that they have not been made aware deliberately by the people peddling these stories-that this Bill bears no more relation to Senator Evans's Bill than does the nature of the current Attorney-General (Mr Lionel Bowen) bear any relation to that of the previous Attorney-General. People are saying such things as: `This Bill will lead to homosexual marriages'. The first time that I saw this I thought: `My God, what have I missed in this legislation? People are writing to me saying that Article 13 will allow homosexual-they do not say encourage-marriages. I turned to Article 13. It is headed `Right to marry and to found a family'. It says: Recognising that the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society- which again runs counter to the argument of all the people who say that the legislation is anti-family- and is entitled to protection by society and the State- (a) every man and woman of marriageable age has the right to marry a person of the opposite sex and to found a family. Anybody who can tell me how that can be interpreted to allow homosexual marriages has a mind more devious than my own. Just to muddy the waters a trifle I suggest that it is possible under current law for two people whose interests are of the homosexual variety to be married anyway, providing they are of the opposite sex. This Bill allows nothing that is not currently available to whatever strange minds are operating in the community. Having finished-- Senator Tate —Do they consummate the marriage? Senator HAINES —I do not really want to get into that sort of discussion. I do not have the time; nor is this chamber the appropriate place. Senator Chipp —They could, with difficulty. Senator HAINES —Be quiet, Senator Chipp. Senator Chipp —You are doing very well without my help. Senator HAINES —Thank you. We then get the argument that common law is sufficient for the protection of our rights. Let us go on from Lord Scarman for a moment. As Senator Cooney said, sooner or later we will have waved under our noses that famous piece of rhetoric from Sir Harry Gibbs which says: If a society is tolerant and rational, it does not need a Bill of Rights. If it is not, no Bill of Rights will preserve it. That overlooks the general point that we in this place do not make laws for when things are going right. Normal practice is to make laws for when things are going wrong or are likely to go wrong. Leaving that aside, Sir Harry needs to consider-following the comments of Senator Cooney about Lord Scarman-what the law lord said: When times are normal- and they very rarely are in the Senate- and fear is not stalking the land, English law sturdily protects the freedom of the individual and respects human personality. But when times are abnormally alive with fear and prejudice- I suggest that this definitely is one of those times- the common law is at a disadvantage: it cannot resist the will, however frightened and prejudiced it may be, of Parliament. We need to consider that. It is fine having legislation for when things go right. We really need legislation for when things go wrong. But even then the things that we think we have absolute right to, as with property rights, we do not necessarily have. Neither common law nor statute law, for example, provides us with full protection or gives us many of the rights that people such as those in the Returned Services League and others think we have. There is a common belief in the community that we have the absolute right to legal representation at a trial. The McInnes case knocked that assumption fairly and squarely on the head. There is an argument that we have a juristic right to protest. I suggest that Campbell v. Samuels eliminated that idea for all time. As far as the guaranteed inalienable right to freedom of worship is concerned, I refer honourable senators to the Grace Bible Church case. Finally, when we talk about how valuable common law is as distinct from statute law, I refer honourable senators to that absurd Victorian case last year when a judge, who-for very good reason-suppressed his name as a consequence, ignored existing State legislation and went back to a 1609 British common law decision that allowed a man to violate and abuse his wife. Senator Durack talked about the fact that the Covenant was established several decades ago and therefore we need to reconsider. What on earth are we doing going back 380 years to a common law decision? Senator Crichton-Browne —They were the days. Senator HAINES —Oh, that has to go into Hansard, Senator. They might have been the days for some people; they are not the days now. It is quite inappropriate for this sort of thing to happen. I come back to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Some people say that if the Parliament passes this Bill it will transfer the power of interpretation of legislation from parliament, they say, to an unelected body-first to HREOC and secondly to the courts. I do not know what they think has been happening in this country but to the best of my knowledge parliament has never had the right to interpret legislation. Certainly we have tried on occasions-for example, through extrinsic aids to statutory interpretation and the odd Acts Interpretation Act. Who pays attention to them? I suggest that not many of the judges interpreting the Trade Practices Act have done so; they apply their own interpretations. They have turned their own minds to it. The Parliament as an elected body, while it has the right to make laws, has never had the right to interpret them. We have never come up with a perfect piece of legislation, anyway, so there is always a role for courts and lawyers in settling exactly what is meant by legislation. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission is no less an unelected body than the courts. Indeed, the Bill makes provision to allow judges to sit on the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. It is not as if we were planning to leave the functions of the Commission to a clutch of people, brought in off the street, with no capacity to understand the legislation. People also write to me-I reiterate that they are ordinary, nice people in the community who have been evilly and unjustifiably misled by a number of people masquerading as moral, upright and Christian but are nothing of the sort-saying that this is a back door method of changing the Constitution, and that we ought not to pass it without a referendum. We do not have referendums to pass normal legislation. Senator Boswell —We don't alter the Constitution every day, either. Senator HAINES —We are not altering the Constitution, you silly person. We are passing legislation that will give ordinary people in the community some rights so that Federal government departments cannot trample over them. The legislation ought to be extended to States so that States and their bureaucracies cannot trample over them. We can alter the Constitution in this country only by a referendum. When the time comes for these rights to be incorporated in the Constitution a referendum is the only way to do it; so the honourable senator should not talk to me about this legislation changing the Constitution because, if he believes that it is, he is not fit to be in this place because he does not know the difference between a constitution and a piece of legislation. What a silly little person he is. This Bill is by no means perfect. Senator Durack touched in his speech on some of those issues. I have indeed already covered the right to own property. As I have said, we will be perfectly happy to consider a simple amendment that incorporates the right to own property. The Opposition's amendment is a half-page amendment that goes right outside the rest of the Covenant, and is singularly inappropriate. There is also a legitimate concern among Opposition parties and the community generally that, while there is a right to belong to an association, there is no additional right not to belong. Lawyers will tell us that the negative is incorporated in the positive and other sorts of legal things. My response to that is: `If that is the case, gentlemen, you will not mind if it is attached because it is not doing anything that you argue is not already there'. A simple statement that would allow people the right not only to belong to an association but also not to belong to it would find no problems with me or, I suggest, with my Party. The way that the Opposition wants to go about it, with an amendment that is extremely lengthy, is asking for trouble. However, I also point out that, while countries have the right to reserve from Articles in the Covenant, problems arise when those countries then produce legislation including Articles which are not part of the Covenant. That will make the chances of a High Court challenge so much greater. The inclusion of the right to own property, and the fiddling about with the wording of the right to belong to an association to allow it to cover people who do not want to belong to an association, may well lead to a High Court challenge, but I think the issue is probably important enough to countenance that. I think I have covered most of the other points. I want now to come to the main objection that we as a party have to this legislation-that the legislation does not apply to the States. This is particularly unfortunate when one considers Article 6. It seems wholly inappropriate for Australian newspapers to run indignant stories about rigging and unfair elections in the Philippines when we have the sort of situation that applies in Queensland. At least Marcos managed to get 46 per cent of the vote to force his way into Parliament. Queensland has a unicameral system-not even the protective measure of an upper House, however awkwardly elected that may be, as indeed it is in Western Australia-in which the National Party of Australia, by rigging the boundaries to the extent indeed that one chunk of an electorate is in the middle of another electorate and there is not even a little connecting link-and that Party does not even pretend that there is some reason for it-can get itself elected with 34 per cent of the vote. Senator Boswell —Fair go! What about the preferences? Senator HAINES —Terrific! I am perfectly happy to pick up that interjection. First of all, it is an indication that Senator Boswell thinks that a 39 per cent majority of first preference votes is okay to give a political party an absolute majority of seats in a parliament. Secondly, it indicates that he has not had a close look at the new boundaries in Queensland which drop that `appropriate' 39 per cent to what I consider a highly inappropriate 35 per cent of 34 per cent. So that we get it quite clear, Senator Boswell is quite happy to have a government elected when it gets only 39 per cent of the primary votes. I wonder then why we say the hysteria from the Liberal shadow Attorney-General in South Australia who complained that the Liberal Party might have to get 51 per cent of the vote before it got an absolute majority in the South Australian Parliament. The various people on this side of the House in the Opposition parties ought to get their act together-I add that this is as good an act to get together on as any-and include the States under the system suggested by Senator Tate's Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs. That is a more than appropriate way of extending the scope of this legislation so that it really does apply some rights to individuals vis-a-vis State and Federal governments and departments. That Committee suggested that at the very least a displacement provision mechanism should apply, that is, that the Bill be amended-and we shall move in that way-so that the States are covered by the legislation with the option of opting out of all Articles but Article 6. Senator Boswell can have a little riot about that. Article 6 relates to fair and just elections-something, of course, with which Queenslanders are not familiar, and I can understand Senator Boswell's fear of the unfamiliar. However, all I can suggest is that the rest of us have fair and just elections. We do not have to rig boundaries. I say to Senator Boswell that there is nothing to be afraid of except that his Party might lose government, so we are looking at vested interests as well as fear of the unknown. If I have any complaint at all about this Bill it is that it does not go far enough. In not going far enough, it may delude people into believing that they have rights that they actually do not have and, in so deluding people, it will perform a disservice rather than a service to the community generally. We will consider amendments to improve the Bill, the main one of which will be that relating to its application to the States. I look forward to enthusiastic support for that amendment from all people in this chamber who believe in freedom and democracy in Australia. Senator BOSWELL(Queensland)(11.32) —Today we are debating the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Bill 1985, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Amendment Bill 1985, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 1985 and the Australian Bill of Rights Bill 1985. It is probably interesting to comment on who are the great majority of people out in the community who are crying for this legislation. Who are the people who have had their rights shattered, ruined and taken away from them? It is certainly not the Returned Services League. It is not any of the church groups. It is not the Law Council of Australia, because it has great reservations about the legislation. It is not the National Farmers Federation; it does not want it. I have not heard one person who does want it except those from the left wing of the Australian Labor Party-- Senator Haines —And the Democrats. Senator BOSWELL —And the Democrats. I include even Senator Tate. When I read his expose in the Australian I thought I was reading that he was not for the legislation. When I read it I thought: `I quite agree with Senator Tate because he does not want it'. Poor old Senator Cooney then gets sent in on a fast wicket every time and has to defend things that he does not want to do. He is pushed in because he is a barrister or a solicitor. He comes in like a good ALP soldier. He does not want to do it and his speech indicates that. He has no sympathy with the legislation and nor has Senator Tate. Of course, they throw a few sops to the left wing of the Labor Party and to the Australian Democrats. Let us look at why the Democrats want to achieve what they call one vote one value-electoral justice. I can tell them that the best electoral justice Queensland will ever have is when the Democrats are removed from Queensland, I will concentrate on that in the next election. I will work at that, I promise, because 30 per cent of the Australian Democrats' senatorial vote comes from the bush. The last thing that rural Queenslanders want, on top of everything else that the Democrats have inflicted upon them, including animal welfare and a million other things, is a Bill or Rights. I will go to every radio station and every newspaper and will tell the rural people of Queensland that they are to get a Bill of Rights courtesy of the Democrats. Senator Chipp —We will pay your expenses; how about that? Senator BOSWELL —I hope you do. What the Labor Party has never been able to achieve in the ballot boxes in Queensland, it is now trying to achieve by bringing in overriding legislation. Let us get a couple of things straight because Senator Chipp does not really understand preferential voting. I put it on the record that the National Party got 39 per cent of the vote and the Liberal Party 14 per cent. If we add those together it gives us 53 per cent of the people not wanting an Australian Labor Party Government. Only 44 per cent of the voters in Queensland supported the ALP. So 53 per cent did not want a bar of the Labor Party and 44 per cent did. Five per cent or 3 per cent of the voters, or something of that order, were misguided people who wanted the Australian Democrats. That is what preferential voting is all about, but those opposite do not even understand it. We have been attacked and abused by the Democrats and the Labor Party because they do not want to understand the situation. The Government can see the Bjelke-Petersen Government leading a resurgence of the conservative forces in Australia and, if it can get rid of him in some way, it will take the pressure off itself. So what members of the Government cannot achieve out in the States, because of Robin Gray and Joh Bjelke-Petersen, they are trying to achieve in this Parliament. I would like to read a statement from a book entitled The Government of Queensland because it is pertinent to this matter. It states: Detailed examination of one distribution, Queensland for 1972, suggests that even close attention to the electoral map may fail to uncover adequate evidence of the gerrymander at work. This is not to say that the beast does not exist. It may lurk, like the yeti or the Tasmanian tiger, in the impenetrable thickets of thousands of polling booths. But for the moment it has defied capture. Detailed examination of Queensland in 1977 suggests the same conclusion. That book was not written by Sir Robert Sparkes, Joh Bjelke-Petersen or Ron Boswell, it was written by the Australian Electoral Commissioner. He was no National Party plant. He is the most prominent authority on electoral matters in this country, and the Labor Party put him in that position. He is its Commissioner. I recommend that everyone opposite get this book from the library and study it because the 1977 boundaries are the boundaries on which the Queensland Government went to the people. Colin A. Hughes says that they were fair, that he could find no gerrymander. Let us put it to rest once and for all: The Queensland Government win because the majority of Queenslanders wanted a conservative government-53 per cent as against 44 per cent who wanted an ALP government. If the Labor Party wants to get into government in Queensland all it has to achieve is 50.1 per cent of the vote in 50.1 per cent of the seats. I wanted to put that to rest because I am sick and tired of being attacked by the Democrats, being attacked by Senator Gareth Evans, who is not here, and being attacked by everyone else. What does this Bill of Rights and equal opportunity legislation do for us? Senator Chipp said that it would take the National Party 20 years to approve of this legislation. The National Party would not approve of it in one million years. It seeks to ruin the State parliaments of Australia. This Government was brought in on a promise to bring Australians together but, as I said in an interjection only a few minutes ago, it will put Australians against Australians. It will put Brian Burke against his own Party in Canberra; all the ALP Premiers will be fighting. It will be such an issue that it certainly will not bring Australians together. I would like to quote what the Law Council of Australia says about the legislation. It certainly does not support the National Party; it is bipartisan and has an equal number of supporters in the various political parties. The Law Council says: There is no obvious limitation to the exercise of that discretion and the potential exists therefore for the discretion to be exercised according to political motives. That is what the Law Council says about this legislation, and yet Government senators come in here and say that the people of Australia want it, they need it and their rights are being eroded. Australia is the freest country in the world. Every one of us in this chamber has spent hours talking to people who want to bring in friends and families, but they would not want to bring people here if we had no rights. This is the freest country in the world and yet the Labor Party, with the Democrats, is going to wreck everything that we believe in. It will put shock waves right through the whole legal system. Senator Maguire —Tell us about the right of assembly in Queensland. Senator BOSWELL —I will tell the honour- able senator about the slavery and servitude that the Human Rights Commission said existed in Queensland following a quick investigation. The Government has put tremendous powers in the Human Rights Commission, but it has put out a shocking report. It did not even go to the Government on whose behalf it was investigating. What confidence can we have in a Commission that would act in such a way. Even Chris Hurford, the Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, says that he has lost confidence in the Human Rights Commission. I would not blame anyone for losing confidence in the Commission. It threw Mr Neil Brown out of its office; it did not give much consideration to his human rights. One of the first things that this Commission, formed at a cost to the Australian public of some $7m, did was run a pop concert, of all things. It was nothing more than a public relations campaign so that kids would give the Human Rights Commission some credibility. What a disgusting thing for a Human Rights Commission to do. I hope that one of the Government speakers picks that up when addressing this legislation. I have never seen eroded any rights to marry and found a family. I have never seen rights to freedom of thought and conscience eroded. The right of participation in public life has never been eroded. Why do we need a Human Rights Bill? We do not need such a Bill. No one in Australia wants to have a bar of it, except for the crazy reason, as I have suggested to the Senate, that what the Labor Party cannot win in the ballot boxes it is now trying to take over by way of Commonwealth legislation. We should examine some of the powers that the Human Rights Commission has been given. First, it can investigate any Acts of any State parliament. If that is not a raping of State rights, I do not know what is. No longer can a State bring down legislation, no longer can a court put legislation into effect, unless it conforms to the Human Rights Bill we are debating today. Any State legislation can be referred to a Federal court. This is the beginning of the end for States rights and I say emphatically that when we are returned to government in three years, or whenever the next election is, this will be the first piece of legislation to head for the rubbish dump. The poor, unsuspecting person who normally votes according to his hip pocket nerve, who does not usually take into account legislation that flows through this place but just considers whether financially he will be better or worse off and casts his vote accordingly, has to watch out. He is the person who is having his Constitution stolen off him and removed from him. He does not understand it. I can tell the people of Australia that they will have to wake up. Their rights are being eroded and their Constitution is being moved away from them. If a Bill of Rights is required and if there is a great demand for a Bill of Rights we should go to a referendum. Let us put it before the people. Let us go out and debate it on the highways and the byways. We will give our side of the story, members of the Australian Labor Party will give theirs, the Australian Democrats will give theirs and we will let the people decide. It is our Constitution. The people out there own the Constitution. This Constitution does not belong to eight Democrats and so many Labor senators. It belongs to the people of Australia and it should only be changed by the vote of the people of Australia. Tremendous powers are being given to the Human Rights Commission by this legislation. There are tremendous changes to the judicial system. The Attorney-General can ask the Human Rights Commission to go out and investigate any matter in a State. The Attorney-General has the right, under this legislation, to tell the Human Rights Commission to go out and investigate any Act of Parliament in Queensland, Tasmania, Western Australia or Victoria. This can be used politically. It can be used against a government of a persuasion opposite to that of the Attorney-General. That is what this Government has done. It has elected a Human Rights Commission which can act as a court to investigate any Act of any State. Senator Sheil —And there is no appeal. Senator BOSWELL —And there is no appeal. If a person is brought before that court that person cannot have any legal representation. That person can be fined or imprisoned. Senator Cooney, who is a legal representative, stood up in this chamber and had the audacity to support this type of legislation. He should be absolutely ashamed of himself. That is what has happened. This Government has set up this Human Rights Commission which can act as a court and it can be politically motivated. It does not have to be elected. It is not politically free. It can get its riding instructions from the Federal Attorney-General. If Senator Cooney does not think that that is a breach of the Constitution and if anyone in the Senate has the temerity to stand up and say `We are not altering the Constitution', we should be charitable and say that he just does not understand the legislation or he does not want to understand it. What Senator Durack has said in his speech on the Bill of Rights and the Human Rights Commission is true. The Government has set up a court. That court can be politically motivated. It can interfere in every State not only with State Acts but also with local government Acts. Nothing sacred is left. If there is a chance of a State court not abiding by the Bill of Rights that case can be transferred to a Federal court. If I am wrong I would like one of the solicitors in this Parliament-there are plenty of them-to get up and tell me I am wrong because I have read this legislation thoroughly. I believe that I understand it thoroughly and I believe that I have reached the right conclusions on it. These Bills are terrible Bills. No one wants them. I do not believe that any of the Labor Party's State colleagues would want the legislation. I do not believe that any organisation, whether it be a church organisation or a Returned Services League-any organisation-wants these Bills. Yet they are being inflicted on the Australian people without the Government going out and putting it to a referendum. If that is the way the Government wants to play the game we will play it hard too. I believe that this is the biggest political issue at the moment. It passes the Government's promise, which it will not keep, to reduce fuel prices. All these things can be returned and the economy can be lifted when we get back into government. But this constitutional change without a referendum is base and it should never be allowed to go through. I will have great pleasure in voting against the legislation and I will be opposing it every chance that I get. Senator SHEIL(Queensland)(11.50) —I rise also to object to the Australian Bill of Rights Bill, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Bill and the associated Bills. I can remember when I first became a member of parliament that the human rights issue was a hot goer. The then senator Lionel Murphy had charge of the issue at the time. Succeeding governments have all tried to bring in human rights Bills of one sort or another. Every time it has happened it has generated enormous public hostility and it has made me wonder why on earth governments do this sort of thing. If we analyse it quietly and critically we can see why they are doing it. It is in order to grab power. That is what the whole thing is all about. These Bills have been altered, twisted, turned, re-presented, rejected and brought back again. The only reason for it is that governments know that, by the implication of the Bills, they will have an enormous increase in their powers. In this case the Government is seeking powers which are really outside the political and constitutional process. In my view, no government should clothe itself with powers that are not vouchsafed to it under its Constitution and that is what is happening with this legislation. One of the things I have noticed with these repeated human rights-type Bills is that every time governments bring them in they neglect to define what is meant by `a right'. I suppose we could say that there are two sorts of rights. There are human rights and there are legal rights. But when governments are talking about human rights they want to give people the rights to things such as food, clothing, shelter, jobs, health and social welfare and they want to call them rights. Let us suppose that we gave everyone the right to, say, shoes. Let us suppose that the Government felt in its heart that shoes were very important for people and everybody had to have shoes. Because of the difficult nature of supplying shoes to people only the Government could do it and people should not be left with the responsibility of providing their own shoes. There have to be shoes for children who grow up and change sizes all the time. There have to be shoes for girls and boys. When they grow up and are adults they have to have different sized shoes. Everybody has different sorts of feet and there are different sorts of fashions. This enormous and complicated problem cannot be left to the people with the massive distribution problem that it would have. If the Government took on the supply and distribution of shoes we would have something like Mao Tse-tung's China had where everybody got around in little black slippers and we would have the usual sort of mess. The point I am trying to make is that I do not think any government should give anybody the right to a thing. Rights, particularly human rights, exist around us all the time. We have them. They are moral principles by which we behave towards one another. If we, as a government, give people the right to a thing that means that everybody else in the community has to supply that thing for them. It gives the rest of the people a responsibility to supply the others. I think the impossibility of doing that sort of thing is immediately apparent. What is also immediately apparent is the enormous increase that would occur in governments' power. One of the important points I see about the Government defining these rights is that it is not governments that give people rights. I think it is the people who give governments rights. There has been a constant struggle over the years for people to curtail the enormous powers of governments. After governments have been in power for a while they try to accumulate more and more power to themselves and the people have a constant battle on their hands to keep out of the hands of governments powers that they did not vouchsafe to them in the Constitution. Almost every law we pass in this Parliament takes away the rights of somebody and gives them to somebody else. That is true of almost every Bill we pass. It is the people who give governments rights, not the other way around with the government defining people's rights. If we admit that the government has the right to define our rights, then we admit that we are giving the government the right to take away our rights. In other words, the government gets an immediate expansion in its rights. One difficulty is that anything that is not defined as a right is automatically assumed to be not one's right. So governments expand their powers over people yet again. We are forgetting the lessons of history and the interminable struggle for power between people and government. One has only to look at all the great revolutions in history, civil wars and so on, to see that they have been over human rights. Britain had a blood-curdling civil war between the Parliament and the people. Relative fought relative and the war continued for years. Parliament won the battle and the king wound up getting beheaded. That was over the powers of the king versus the Parliament. The United States of America had its war of independence. The cry there was: No taxation without representation. It also had a civil war and that, too, was over civil rights involving the issue of slavery. France had a revolution which wiped out the aristocracy. The cry in that revolution was `Liberty, equality, fraternity'. Russia and China have also had great revolutions with great loss of life-all to get rid of autocratic and aristocratic governments. All those civil wars and revolutions have been aimed at getting rid of aristocratic and autocratic governments. In other words, the power of government had become intolerable to people and the people fought it off. The rise of the great democracies in recent years has featured the curtailment of government powers. In all countries that have constitutions restriction of government power has been the great feature. The founding fathers who wrote our Constitution were well aware of the dangers of big government. The Constitution they wrote was of such form that nobody could ever take over our government here in Australia. In fact, it led to the development of our three-tier form of government involving State, Federal and local government, with the devolution of powers among the three. The fact is that while the Queen remains head of the government, head of our great institutions, such as the judiciary, the defence forces, the Parliament, nobody else can be the head. This is why the Australian Labor Party is always trying to denigrate the role of the monarchy; the Australian Labor Party does not like the thought of having somebody there who cannot be replaced. In this debate I have heard people speaking of freedom, but as with rights they have not defined what freedom is. It is a difficult word to define. I suppose it is like love, which is also hard to define because there are many sorts of it. There can be brotherly love, sisterly love, the love of a mother for a daughter, a father for a son, the love of a man for a woman. There are many different sorts of love just as there are many different sorts of freedom. For example, a Russian would have a different idea of freedom from a United States citizen. An Eskimo would have a different idea of freedom from an Indian. A European would have a different idea of freedom from an Australian. An Arab would have a different idea of freedom from, say, a Bantu. So they are all different. The men who wrote those undying words in the American Declaration of Independence-that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights and among these rights is the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness-were slave owners. So they had a different perspective from that which is usually attributed to them. Even George Washington, the founding father of the Republic, was a slave owner. He had a different idea, a different perspective too. Let us look at the different ways citizens of various countries and different regimes have established their rights over the years. It is instructive to look at how human rights are handled in the Soviet Union. Over there they have a Bill of Rights and give people the right to think their own thoughts, meet and speak in the streets and the right to this and to that. But it is said there that one has the right to each of those things provided one does not break any law. Then of course the Soviet authorities can pass a law that effectively robs all its citizens of their rights. That is one way people should not be getting human rights here in Australia. On the other hand, the USA has a Bill of Rights and defines the people's rights as the right to freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, the right to this and the right to that. But the Americans differ from the Russians because they say that no law shall be passed to infringe any of those rights. That is a better system, and if one looks at what has happened in the United States one sees that it is bound up with interminable litigation. Every time anyone has any trouble with anything there are court cases that go on for ever, and I understand that applies also to plea bargaining. That also is just not the Australian way. The Australian way on the other hand, and the way I prefer of course, is as has been discussed here-by the development of the common law which has grown up over some 2,000 years of precedent. It has been associated with the development of parliamentary democracy, the development of a free press and an independent judiciary. In other words, there is a whole web of circumstances that secure and guarantee our rights. This is why the immediate public hostility that occurs is manifested whenever Bills of this sort are brought before the people. People in Australia realise that they have no fear of their rights being infringed. There has been a lot of talk about rights of people in Queensland being infringed and our electoral system and street marches have been instanced. Well, street marches may have been necessary and useful in the days of the French revolution, but nowadays anyone who is any kind of a dissident and who has a problem can get any amount of publicity. Indeed it is easier to get publicity if one is a dissident than if one is part of the majority. The people of Queensland have shown again and again that they have no fear of their laws up there. They have not turned against their government up there, which they would do the minute they felt their rights were being infringed. So the reason that these human right Bills are generating public hostility is that the people know that they have their own rights, do not want them curtailed and do not feel they are in any danger, except danger from the government because government can only take rights away from people; they cannot give people rights. It has also been said in this debate that the right to own property has been left out of the legislation as also has the right not to join a trade union. I agree that they are great omissions from the Bill. They were left out, I understand, at the request of the Soviet Union who would not ratify the document unless those conditions were taken out. Lastly, there is another way in which people are given rights. I have mentioned the Soviet Union way, the United States way, and the common law way, but now we have the United Nations way and the use of treaty power. That is precisely what is happening with these Bills. As has always been the case, they ratify various international covenants on civil and political rights against various forms of discrimination. The United Nations consists of about 160 nations, of which only about a dozen could be classified as democracies. That counts the Philippines, which has just had an horrendous election, India and similar countries-only a dozen countries one could count in any way as being forms of democracy. The rest of them are totalitarian states, dictatorships, despotic or military regimes. They are all run in ways in which we would find completely abhorrent and could not stand in our administration. Yet all those nations sit in the UN cranking out different covenants, conventions and charters which contain clauses, terms and conditions which are completely inapplicable to Australia, although they all sound very good. I do not know why our Government would want to ratify those sorts of agreements for implementation in Australia unless, of course, its members want to big note themselves in front of the Third World countries and strut the world stage as if they are more enlightened members of government. By doing that and bringing in such Bills into Australia they are subjecting the people to enormous government control while they walk around saying that they are enlightened and are bringing freedom to the people. They are doing it in this way to try to bypass the people altogether and avoid the constitutional process. At the very least, as has been mentioned previously in the debate, the matter should be submitted to a referendum. The Bills were rammed through the House of Representatives, despite claims to the contrary made by the Australian Democrats. A time limit was put on the debate. Certainly, debate has gone on previously on different versions of the Bill. Senator Missen —Actually it has not been debated previously. It has been on the Notice Paper. Senator SHEIL —It has been on the Notice Paper, but the Government has always pulled it off because it has been too hot a potato to handle. It is now being presented to the Senate. I am sure that it has happened only because the Government, somehow or other, has secured the support of the Democrats. The Democrats have no members at all in the House of Representatives. They represent only about 8 per cent of the people, yet by wielding that 8 per cent of power-the balance of power in the Senate-they are responsible for inflicting these Bills on the Australian people. I, too, will go out and make sure that everybody in Australia knows that it is by courtesy of the Democrats that these fearsome Bills have been passed. I, too, regard this legislation as perhaps the most important legislation to be passed through the Parliament because it deals with human rights, our rights. After all, that is why we invented government in the first place-to secure our rights. we have always been aware that it is the power of government that is the danger, so we invented our Constitution and rules by which governments should operate. Over centuries, governments have always tired to increase and embellish their powers, which is exactly what the Government is doing now and exactly why the National Party opposes the Government completely. When we eventually get to government, if ever we get enough say, these Bills will be the first Bills consigned to the trash can of history. Senator MISSEN(Victoria)(12.10) —I rise to speak to the series of Bills before us, of which the main Bill is the Australian Bill of Rights Bill 1985. The remaining Bills, including the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Bill 1985, are ancillary to it and consequential upon it. I say at the outset that I oppose the package of Bills in its entirety for reasons which I will give. They are not the same reasons as the reasons of many people who have written to me and, I suppose, of many of the honourable senators who will speak in this chamber. However, I believe that my reasons why this package should not be passed are salient. I must say in the first place that I am appalled by the degree of public controversy, misconception and ignorance which this debate has engendered. It is a sad day for Australia, a country not comparable with Canada which has been able to agree upon a Charter which it has had as legislation for 21 years, which it has now put into its Constitution and on which there was a reasonable unity and agreement between the parties. Clearly, that situation does not now exist in Australia. whatever bipartisanship we had on human rights-we had a considerable amount in the 1970s-has faded away. Now is clearly not the time to try to pass such a controversial legislation as the Bill of Rights Bill. First, I want to get rid of some of the misconceptions about which I do not agree about the Bill. I take just one typical example. All of us have received dozens and dozens of letters, many of them in much the same form, and covering generally the same five points. Clearly, there is a very carefully organised campaign against the Bill. Unfortunately, in my opinion, much of it is misdirected. I shall quote from a letter I received from the Cross Roads Christian Fellowship organisation. Many of the most extraordinary claims are made by members of religious organisations. I am surprised that they have not read further before writing. The Senate had an investigation of the matter carried out by the Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs. We presented an exposure report before Christmas. The idea of the Committee was to present a document which would clear the air and remove some of the misconceptions. Its aim was not to make recommendations but to float various possibilities in regard to the general idea of the Bill of Rights. It appears that that document has hardly been read. The letters we have received show no cognisance whatsoever of the matters raised in that report. I find that deplorable. I shall run briefly through this letter from Cross Roads, which is typical of the literature we have received. The letter registers a protest against the proposed Bill and gives these reasons: `1. Because of the way it adversely affects the areas of great importance to my liberty and freedom this legislation should not have been so hastily passed through the House of Representatives.' That is one point that I think is justified. The handling of the Bill by the Government has been deplorable. First, the Government had the Bill which Senator Evans held back from public scrutiny. The result was that people thought that the Bill was much worse than it might have been. That was a very foolish action. The Bill should have been floated and made available for people to see and discuss. The later Bill, the Bowen Bill, that we are now discussing, is what I would call a Clayton's Bill of Rights. If one has to have a Bill of Rights and one does not really want to have one, one has a Clayton's Bill of Rights. That is rather an infringement and a shame, because Clayton's is a good drink, but a Clayton's Bill of Rights this Bill clearly is. It is an amendment on an amendment. It contains all the worst features of amendments and, as I will demonstrate later, contains matters which I think are unconstitutional. The criticism that the haste of the Bill's passage has led to further misconceptions and encouraged people to think the Bill is very extraordinary is one criticism with which I agree. The second reason stated in the Cross Roads letter for its protest at the proposed Bill is as follows: This legislation is based on the United Nations International Covenant on civil and Political Rights, was accepted by the Warsaw Pact countries, but rejected by such nations as the United States of America and Great Britain. That is a colossally stupid series of remarks. The legislation certainly deals with areas of great importance and is based on the International Covenant. However, that Covenant was not proposed only by the Warsaw Pact countries. It was signed in 1966 when the Western powers had control of the General Assembly. We have ratified the Covenant. We signed it under the Menzies Government and ratified it under the Fraser Government. We have brought into effect the Human Rights Commission, which I regard as a very worthwhile institution in this country. These things were done at the initiative of the Western powers when they had control of the United Nations. So it is absurd to say that the fact that some communist countries have signed the Covenant and, very disgracefully, have not carried it out, in any way detracts from it. Moreover, it is ridiculous to say that the covenant's implementation is rejected by such nations as the United States of America and Great Britain. Great Britain, for example, has appeared often before the European Court of Human Rights, which operates under a convention very similar to the international convention. The British Government, the home of `common law', has in the last 10 years constantly been dealt with by that court and as a result has had to change its laws. It had to change its laws in relation to the treatment of prisoners in Northern Ireland gaols. Also in regard to the thalidomide case and other cases where the British law was not adequate, it has obeyed strictly the interpretations which the European Court of Justice has placed on it. So it is absurd to talk about Britain's not signing the covenant, because it is certainly affected by a European one just the same. The United States is the home of a Bill of Rights. I am not a strong supporter of a Bill of Rights, but unquestionably there has been a Bill of Rights in the United States for nearly 200 years. One of the problems is that it has been so interpreted at various times that one never knows exactly what it means or whether this was the intention of its organisers. Because United States governments have not been able to get a high enough majority in the Senate-I think a three-quarters majority is required-they have never adopted the international covenant. Nonetheless, the United States has a Bill of Rights, and it has some of the defects which I will refer to later. The third objection is a piece of gobbledegook about our Constitution presently stating `whereas we the people give you the Government these rights' and limiting the rights and powers of government. It has been said that this situation has been reversed in the Bill of Rights because the Government will give the people the rights. I do not think there is anything in this point, but the fact is that a government has some powers to define rights and to enforce them. Of course, we are subject to Federal constitution which is one of the real problems which this Bill has to face. Senator Sheil —But you have not given us a reason for that. You just say that you don't think it is an important point. I think it is an important point. Senator MISSEN —I do not think so. Our Constitution was made by the British Parliament and originally was passed by the Australian people. The Bill of Rights and the Human Rights Commission are constituted by an Act of Parliament. It does not alter the Constitution in any way. I do not think anything can be made out of that point. The fourth objection is that this proposed Bill of Rights gives the power of interpretation to the courts-an unelected body of people-and takes it from the Parliament, which is democratically elected by the people of the country. I have great reservations about a Bill of Rights and how it may be interpreted by judges with conservative backgrounds and often a very restricted knowledge of the reality of life. However, I do not find the fact that the courts are not elected by the people to be objectionable. We are always ready, and have been since 1901, to see Acts of this Parliament overturned by unelected judges of the High Court of Australia. We recognise that and accept it. Many of the people who have complained to me are only too glad that a number of the Acts of the Australian Parliament and Acts of State parliaments have been found to be in breach of the Constitution and have been removed. If honourable senators believe, as I do, in a general division of power between the Executive, the judiciary and the legislature and believe that is under some challenge today, they should not be so worried by the fact that judges are unelected. Judges are therefore not affected by party politics; they are, to some extent, independent. If we believe in the rule of law and the judiciary, we accept that fact. The fifth objection is that the Human Rights Commission-another unelected body of the people-will administer the Bill of Rights, this Commission having powers outside and not subject to the normal processes of law, with no appeal, closed hearings and no legal representation. I am not going to go into that matter in any detail because it is not relevant to this Bill. However, one would never guess that from the correspondence one receives. The Human Rights Commission was set up under the Fraser Government in 1980. It will conclude, unless we do something, at the end of this year; and that is an important aspect. Nonetheless, the powers which it is given under this Bill are very similar to those which it has now. They would be extended in some respects but not by very much. The idea of such a body that does not use legal representation and all legal facilities is quite usual. We have applied this in many other areas. It is an administrative system of protecting rights. One hears objections to this, but if honourable senators read Senator Durack's admirable speech in support of the Human Rights Commission in 1979 they will find that it was accepted on all sides that we would have a body which was not a court but which carried out investigations. Of course, we must bear in mind that there has now proved to be some difference in the Government's proposals. It has been suggested, quite sensibly by some, including Mr Peter Bailey, the Deputy Chairman of the Commission, that there is some inconsistency in giving the Human Rights Commission the powers to deal with education and conciliation and also a power of adjudication and determination. He suggested those powers could be moved to the Federal Court of Australia. We are not in a position to criticise the Human Rights Commission for trying to make the best of those powers. If we put them together and they prove to be unworkable, we should change them. It is up to us. Moreover, the people on the Human Rights Commission were appointed by the Fraser Government. From Dame Roma Mitchell down they have done a mighty fine job. There have been some 10,000 applicants. The Commission has done jobs which would never have been done by any committee of this Parliament. The derogation of that work in the public mind in the last few months or so is quite disgraceful and should be stopped. That is not the point of this Bill. This legislation, which includes a Human Rights Commission and an Equal Opportunity Commission, is designed to change in the way the Government tried to change the Commission before the last election. The Opposition was quite opposed to that proposal because the Government was removing the part time commissioners, the people who represented various interests-the disabled, the migrants and the Aborigines-which would have left the control of the Commission entirely in the hands of bureaucrats. Senator Durack issued a statement then. We were ready to oppose that Bill but it was not introduced. There is a little more in this Bill because it is attached to the Bill of Rights, but basically it has the same powers as the existing Commission. The confusion by the people who criticise the Bill of Rights and the Human Rights Commission-I refer to people who have written letters-should be put aside and we should look at the proposals themselves. We realise that we have international obligations which, as I said, go back to 1966 and which we have tried to comply with by creating the Human Rights Commission. That was an administrative method of dealing with the implementation of the covenant. The Government is now suggesting that we should have a system of judicial enforcement. I am not at all sure that that at any stage it is necessarily the desirable way to go; I am certain it is not a desirable time to push it forward at the moment. People argue that we do not need to do anything about human rights because we have a wonderful country. That is all very well but the fact is that our country is a leader in the world of human rights. We must show that we apply the same principles to our internal affairs. Undoubtedly, there are problems of great importance in Australia, not the least of which was mentioned this morning-the state of electoral laws. If we do not have the basic, proper democratic government we will be in a great deal of trouble. There are problems in Australia. At present we are not covered by the existing remedy. For example, people say that we have a Constitution and that it provides all we need. If one looks at such things in the Constitution as what might be called `Bill of Rights' provisions-there are a few of them but they are rather sporadic-one sees that, except in one case, they relate only to the Commonwealth Parliament and they restrict it in its actions. The States can do what they like. When one talks about just terms and the acquisition of property it is highly desirable that the States' powers should be restricted too. In my opinion this cannot be done under the powers of this Bill. Unfortunately, we have never exercised this power in years gone by when we Liberals had control of States and could have seen that they imposed these terms on themselves. However, they have not done so. We must recognise that the Constitution at the moment provides for the Commonwealth, largely, to be restricted, so that it cannot impose itself as regards human rights. A Government in a State, provided that it gets a majority every four years or whatever the period is, can be a dictator. The problem there is that the Constitution is not good enough by itself to cover human rights. It is said that the common law is the magic thread. The common law has done a number of useful things in creating, particularly in the legal area, in the area of trials, some of the facilities which are available to people and which make for our freedom. But it has also had to be forced. People do not seem to understand that the common law is judge-made law. It is not the law which Parliament makes. In fact, Parliament has had to intervene to overcome deficiencies in the common law. Let us take, for example, the question of slavery. Slavery was not abolished by judges of the courts. The judges of the eighteenth century were busy protecting the interests of slave owners. It was Wilberforce and others in Parliament who managed to overcome this. So the common law has been very much a minor aspect in this matter. It has done some good things, but it does not protect us. This morning examples were given. I heard Senator Haines mention a number of examples where the common law-the judges' decisions-has been very restrictive, in some respects, of human rights. Parliament also is not the protector. Let us not mistake that. We know that this Parliament is busy with lots of things. We know that we have some committees which look into civil liberties aspects of some of our legislation. But could the Parliament have had a committee which could have handled the 10,000 applications which the Human Rights Commission has dealt with in the last few years? No, it is obviously not good enough to say that Parliament will do this, because members of parliament are restricted very much by their party loyalties and very often things are not done, and not recognised, and the individual rights of citizens are not sufficiently protected. They are to some extent; questions are asked and actions are taken in Parliament, but they are by no means good enough. The Bill, I have said, is a weak Bill. I do not hold the views of those who claim that it is some sort of social engineering. I do not know what that means; but they say that it is doing that. It is, as I say, a Clayton's Bill: If one does not want to have a Bill but feels one ought to have one, one gets this sort of Bill. The fact that it does not cover any actions in regard to State laws means that we are in a difficult position because, undoubtedly, many of the breaches take place in the States. In my view, the present rights of the Human Rights Commission do cover, though indirectly, the right to look into State laws, to compare them in making recommendations about Federal laws. It is rather indirect and it is rarely used. It may be distasteful but, undoubtedly, if we are to have a law which is effective, the Commission must also be able to look into State laws. I come to the next and major point in this matter. In my belief, the Bills, as they stand, are unconstitutional and will meet their Waterloo in the High Court of Australia. We may go through this whole stressful position of passing a Bill only to find that it goes by the board. I base this partially on my own views and also on views expressed in a very full document by the Law Council of Australia which says, after saying that the object of the draft is to give effect to certain provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: As has been noted above, the Bill also includes provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other similar documents. This may lead to problems of constitutional validity. That is one point. The Bill is called elsewhere a collage. It is a collection of different international covenants, and it therefore might not cover the situation. Further on in this document, the Law Council speaks of the redrafting which the Attorney-General (Mr Lionel Bowen) has done of the various terms of the International Covenant. He says that he is doing this for more presentational reasons, and so forth; but I think that the action has been disastrous. The Law Council says: The explanatory memorandum seeks to justify the technique in the Bill as being `inconsistent with the Australian attempt to produce an inspirational charter of rights in a simple declaratory style'. The Law Council believes that the result is unsatisfactory and it is preferable to tailor limitations to the specific needs of the right which has been guaranteed in the same way as the Covenant, particular provisions in the way which it requires. I should give one example; there are many examples that could be given. What I am contending is that the rights which are set out in this Bill are not the rights which can only be justified under the Covenant. If we do not have such justification, they cannot be taken. In regard to the rights which are set out, one which is highly applicable and interesting is the right in Article 10 of the Bill on peaceful assembly. Honourable senators will recall that what the Bill does is to say, just in simple words, that every person has the right of peaceful assembly. Instead of having specific limitations put on these rights, as the Covenant has, Article 3 is a general one which covers them all: The rights and freedoms set out in this Bill of Rights are subject only to such reasonable limitations prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. What on earth does that mean? How wide is it? A judge might think that something is quite justified, but it may not be at all. If one looks at the International Covenant, on the other hand, one will see that specific things are said there about the rights to such things as public safety, public order and so forth. Specific things are set out in this and other covenants which limit the right. So, by sleight of hand, the Attorney- General has changed the nature of the Covenant altogether. That is only one reason why the Bill may well be unconstitutional. The second reason is that Article 50 of the Covenant states that it must apply to all parts of Federal states without any limitations or exceptions. This Bill does not cover the States at all; it has excluded them. In fact, if one looks at one of the documents-I think it is the explanatory memorandum, section 15-one finds discussion of how it applies to States. This was so late in being taken out of the Bill that it was left in the explanatory memorandum. The fact is that if the States are taken out, it cannot cover all parts of Federal states. In my opinion, for this and for other reasons, it is likely that, as it stands, the Bill will prove to be unconstitutional. All this waste of energy and time and the stirring up of ignorance and malice and so forth will be for nothing. The fact is that this is one of the problems which we have. We have a Bill here which may well fall by the board. I have objection, too, to amendments which the Opposition is moving to add things to the terms of the Bill, particularly in relation to the rights which are being created. I have already referred to the one in regard to just terms. That is very desirable, but I do not think for one moment it can possibly be justified under the terms of the Covenant. The right in regard to not joining trade unions is also an excellent idea and should be implemented, but that cannot be done. If we do these things, if we move into the State powers in this way, they have to be justified under the Constitution, and I cannot see, therefore, how these amendments help the position at all. If they were designed to have the effect of making the situation more unconstitutional, I do not think that is the right way to go about it. I think that the Bill should stand or fall as it is. I hope it will fall at this stage, because I think it would be foolish to carry on with it in the way it is going. There is a great danger in the enforcement of human rights in terms of this Bill if it is carried. If the Bill is carried and it becomes a matter of long litigation in the High Court, what happens to the Commissioners for Race Relations and Sex Discrimination? In December, I asked them at a conference, what would happen if the Human Rights Commission disappears, because it would disappear at the end of this year. I asked: `How are you affected? Will you be cut off at the socks?' The reply was: `Yes, we will be cut off at the socks' and therefore what we achieved in the 1970s will be destroyed if this Bill goes on in this way'. I believe that there are great difficulties in the interpretation of a Bill of Rights. I have had reason to read recently a book called The Great Chill by Eve Powell, a most alarming book on what is happening to human rights in the United States. The Americans have not only an extensive Bill of Rights but also the First Amendment, which protects freedom of speech. Yet, if one takes the case of the man named Snepp, who was denied the right to say anything after he left the Public Service, inroads are being made by the courts in the area of what some would regard as the protection of rights under the Bill of Rights. That has been going on where there is a Bill of Rights. I think one is left in the hands of the courts and how they interpret these provisions. One does not know for years, until someone challenges them, what the restrictions on governments will be. I believe that our reputation as a country depends on how we handle civil rights. I believe that at present we are in the position where, unfortunately, there is no adult discussion on this, whereas the Canadians have managed that. In my opinion we should keep the Human Rights Commission for another five years. We should amend it, we should add State commissioners to it and we should alter some of its terms so that there are not the conflicts I have spoken of. I do not think we should embark at the moment on this particularly weak and useless document. What is being done by Australia is probably, unhappily, going to be to our discredit. Australia has a good reputation abroad. We have stood strongly for human rights. In this country we have weaknesses. I do not hide them and I never have. They are a matter of great worry. I think that we should be doing our best to interpret and to carry out the International Covenant. We have an obligation to do that and under the Fraser Government we agreed to do that. I think we should continue to do that. However, our reputation stands to be damaged by introducing a Bill of Rights which is defective and we should not try to foist that on people at this stage. Therefore, I oppose the Bills as they stand. I will not vote for some of the amendments, because I do not think they really add one iota to the discussion. I believe that the Government should take cognisance of the fact that, by pursuing this dangerous course, it might jeopardise the valuable achievements of the 1970s. The Government should think again about this course. Senator PARER(Queensland)(12.37) — Today we are debating a very important package of human rights Bills. Its importance is demonstrated by the great volume of correspondence it has generated and by the 30 or so speakers participating in this debate. Any legislation dealing with the rights of individuals, particularly against governments, is of fundamental concern to the people of Australia. The coalition rejects the package of human rights Bills. If the Bills are passed, we will propose amendments; but we also will seek to repeal this legislation when re-elected to government. The coalition's opposition to the Bills is quite genuine. We wish to put three simple propositions: Firstly, a Bill of Rights is not necessary to protect rights; secondly, a Bill of Rights is not sufficient to protect rights; and, thirdly, this Bill of Rights, as presented, will simply serve as a political weapon for the Federal Government to use to attack State governments of different persuasion. We have already seen embryonic attempts to do this by the Human Rights Commission. The fundamental question to ask about this legislation is why the Government has introduced this Bill of Rights at this time. Is it because a Bill of Rights is necessary to protect our rights? Surely not. There has been no public pressure for this Bill. In fact, the overwhelming public response to it from very respectable quarters, as well as from the fringes, to which Senator Haines and Senator Gareth Evans referred in Question Time the other day, has been entirely negative, and for some good reasons. I have not received one letter, and I presume neither have most other senators, supporting the Bill of Rights. The second point is that our democratic rights are protected already. We live in a parliamentary democracy. We can kick out governments, State and Federal, of which we disapprove. Anyone can stand for parliament. Anyone can criticise publicly the government of the day. Senator Colston —In which State do you live? Senator PARER —I was half expecting that interjection from Senator Colston on the other side of the chamber because of the comments made, both by people on his side and by the Australian Democrats, in respect of Queensland. Queenslanders are not stupid. They are a bunch of individuals, the same as people elsewhere in Australia. If they perceive that there has been an injustice in the electoral distributions in Queensland, that will be reflected in the ballot box. Senator Zakharov —How can it be? Senator PARER —I was intrigued by the fact that Senator Haines from the Democrats-who are the classic example of the pot calling the kettle black-has shown the greatest concern about the National Party of Australia gaining 39 per cent of first preference votes; yet they sit in this place making deals and playing God on the decisions of Australia with about 8 per cent of the vote. Senator Durack —What do they get in Queensland? Senator PARER —I think it was 2 per cent at the Redlands by-election. The civil and political rights of Australians have never been questioned and our legal rights are secured by the law. Unlawful government actions can be struck down in the courts. Senator Zakharov —Where have you been all your life? Senator PARER —I have always been amazed by the concern that people outside Queensland show for Queenslanders, but I do not see the concern within the State. Appropriate appeal mechanisms are in place. We have a burgeoning legal aid system and in the last 10 years we have seen enormous extensions of the protection of individuals against wrongful government actions, through freedom of information legislation, the office of the Ombudsman and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. Senator Robertson —A public accounts committee? Senator PARER —If the government of the day acts in ways which infringe our rights, let it suffer at the ballot box. I agree with the public accounts committee proposition. Senator Robertson —Why don't you do something about getting it, then? Senator PARER —Tell me how. Senator Robertson —Through the ballot box, as you just said. Senator PARER —I agree with the honourable senator that it should be done through the ballot box. Senator Colston —You cannot even get enough to have a cricket team up there. Senator PARER —I can recall that not so long ago the Australian Labor Party did not have enough members to have a reserve for a cricket team in Queensland and I suggest that after the next election it might be down to the size of a hockey team. The third point, which is not original, is that many countries not possessing a Bill of Rights are free, tolerant and great respecters of human rights. Clearly, a Bill of Rights is not necessary for the protection of human rights. Is a Bill of Rights sufficient as a protective shield for our rights? Will a Bill of Rights alone safeguard our rights? The answer again is no. Firstly, this Bill of Rights does not protect all the rights that we as individuals surely possess in this country. It allows us to marry, to have children and to practise our religion and it protects us against torture. Strangely, it allows us to join a union, but not a union of our choice. It says nothing of our right not to join a union. It fails to protect our very basic rights to own and use private property for legitimate purposes. Senator Haines has referred to both those items and she has said that she has some sympathy with the amendments proposed by the coalition. But, she goes on to say, in typical Democrat fashion, that she does not really like the sort of language in the amendments. So, we do not really know what she means, whether she agrees with us or not. In respect of private property I would like to quote from a letter by Eva Malonyay, Honorary Secretary of the Hungarian Council of the Australian Capital Territory, to the Canberra Times, in which she said: At a debate . . . Mr Peter Bailey, the deputy chairman of the Human Rights Commission, defended the Government with alacrity. He defended the Government in respect of the fact that the proposed Bill did not contain the right to own private property. The letter continued: He told us that the original draft of the UN Covenant (our model) contained this article, but the USSR's objection caused it to be deleted. Can honourable senators believe it? The USSR's objection caused the right to own private property to be deleted from a Bill of Rights which the Government is attempting to introduce into this country. Debate interrupted. Sitting suspended from 12.45 to 2 p.m. Senator CHANEY —My question is addressed to the Minister representing the Treasurer. In the light of the recent dramatic drop in farm values resulting from such factors as increased costs, largely attributable to this Government, and the Treasurer's anti-farm measures such as capital gains and fringe benefit taxes, will the Minister explain to farmers outside this building today how they can provide for their families, with an average farm income of only $6,700 per annum, when banks will not increase loans to those farmers because of the lack of security that their farms now provide? Senator WALSH —Farm prices, even in money terms, have dropped in different periods over the last 40 or 50 years. They have also dropped in recent times. They dropped from extraordinarily and unsustainably high levels. For some years, even in the more prosperous sections of Australian agriculture, the Bureau of Agricultural Economics has assessed returns on capital investment in farms as being of the order of 2, 3 or 4 per cent. In other words, the market price of land was unsustainably high. One of the reasons that the market price of land reached those levels was the intention and expectation of reaping untaxed capital gains, both by people already in agriculture and people purchasing land who had not previously been associated with agriculture. In other words, those pressures, supplemented to some extent by the availability of soft loans from the Primary Industry Bank of Australia which the then Government established in 1979, forced land prices up to unrealistically high levels. Farmers who bought land at that time-the great proportion of farmers who are currently in financial trouble in Australia bought land at that time-and in particular farmers in Queensland who bought assigned cane land-- Senator Watson —What about the relationship to commodity prices? You should know it, because you are a farmer. Senator WALSH —Shut up, squeaky. Therefore, a major reason that significant numbers of farmers are in financial trouble today is the lack of a capital gains tax in the past and consequential speculation in agricultural land in the expectation of reaping untaxed capital gains. The BAE estimate of average nett farm income for this year of $6,700 is, I think, the figure to which Senator Chaney referred. As I have said in the Senate on a couple of previous occasions this week, that figure cannot be equated with wages because, first, it makes no allowance for imputed income although to get a proper comparability with wages, there should be an allowance and secondly, because it makes no allowance for income derived off the farm. As I said yesterday, according to the Farm Investment Letter and the Livestock and Grain Producers Association of New South Wales, more than 25 per cent of farmers will be hurt-to use their term-by the quarantining of farm losses. To be hurt both the following conditions have to be satisfied. First, the individual must be in receipt of off-farm income in excess of $20,000. Secondly, he must also be conducting a farming operation which is a tax loss and has been a tax loss for a number of years. In other words, if more that 25 per cent of farmers are hurt by those conditions, something like 50 per cent of farmers would have to be in receipt of off-farm income in excess of $20,000. I do not know whether those figures are correct. They are vastly in excess of the recorded figures for average off-farm income, but they are the figures endorsed by the Livestock and Grain Producers Association of New South Wales which is the sponsor of the demonstration outside Parliament House today, a demonstration which has been disowned by the National Farmers Federation. Senator CHANEY —I ask a supplementary question. I note the Minister's answer, which helps to demonstrate why the Government has done so little to relieve the plight of farmers. Does the Minister suggest that the relatively low return on the value of rural land to which he referred in this answer is peculiar to Australia, or does he believe that similar returns have been received on farming land in those countries which have long had a capital gains tax, such as the United Kingdom and the United States? Senator WALSH —I am not so familiar with the average returns from agriculture in those countries. But I know, and can tell the honourable senator, that the two major causes of the escalation of land prices to ridiculously high levels, which took place about 1980 and for a year to two afterwards, were the availability of soft finance from the Primary Industry Bank of Australia and the expectation of untaxed capital gains from continually appreciating land prices. I also know that over the long term real agricultural land prices have not increased. Therefore, a capital gains tax tied to real gains will have no effect in the long term on the agricultural sector, except to eliminate harmful speculation in land prices by people seeking untaxed capital gains many of whom are outside agriculture, such as occurred in the early 1980s. For the benefit of the hooters in the Gallery I want it to be put on record that I have had personal experience as a farmer for 25 years. I still have some interest in a farm in partnership with my brother, but one of the reasons that that farm is not insolvent is that we reacted more rationally to particular circumstances than, unfortunately, is the norm in Australian agriculture. An incident having occurred in the Gallery- The PRESIDENT —If there is any other interjection from the Gallery I will see that the person concerned is removed. Senator COLSTON —Has the Minister representing the Minister for Territories noticed that the use of corporal punishment will no longer be permitted in New South Wales government schools after this year? Does the Government intend to take similar action to end this barbaric practice in Australian Capital Territory government schools? If so, when can an announcement be expected? Senator GIETZELT —I am aware of Senator Colston's continued concern about the use of corporal punishment in the school education system as I am aware of the progressive actions that have been taken by the Minister for Education in the New South Wales Government in abolishing corporal punishment in the State education system. Of course, the Federal Government applauds that decision. Within the framework of the Australian Capital Territory Schools Authority, however, a different system operates which gives each school in the Australian Capital Territory responsibility for making decisions about its operations including corporal punishment. This includes the responsibility for determining its own discipline policies and sanctions which may cover corporal punishment. Schools electing to use corporal punishment must follow strict guidelines established by the Authority. The Australian Capital Territory Schools Authority is mindful of the attitude taken by the Commonwealth Government. It is aware of our policy attitude that discourages the use of corporal punishment and urges schools to move towards its abolition. But we prefer to do that on the basis of persuading them to move towards the abolition of corporal punishment. I expect that most schools in a decentralised way would adopt that policy. Senator COLSTON —I ask a supplementary question. The Minister mentioned that the Government will use persuasion. I wonder whether the Minister could indicate what the Government intends to do if such persuasion is not effective. Senator GIETZELT —One thing that we will not do is use corporal punishment. I am sure that the authorities and the headmasters in each school are aware of the Government's policy. However, seeing that Senator Colston perhaps requires a firmer direction than is currently the case, I will draw the matter to the attention of the Minister with the suggestion that perhaps the matter might proceed further along the road from persuasion to direction. Senator MacGIBBON —I ask the Leader of the Government in the Senate: Why has the Government's much vaunted wages policy and agreement with the Australian Council of Trade Unions failed to prevent a week long strike in the coal industry? What action is the Government taking to end this strike which is costing Australia's largest export industry $20m a day and threatening its ability to succeed in an intensely competitive world market? Senator BUTTON —The much vaunted wages policy of the Government to which Senator MacGibbon refers has been, as is widely recognised, very successful in terms of the economic performance of the Government. The wages policy in globo is not really strictly relevant to the situation in the coal mining industry. The stoppage in the coal mining industry is in breach of the provisions of the prices and incomes accord. I am asked what the Government is doing about that stoppage. The Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations has been constantly in touch with the parties in an endeavour to obtain a quick settlement of the dispute. I totally agree with the implications in Senator MacGibbon's question about the importance of the strike in the coal industry for Australia's export trade. It is a most unfortunate decision by the coal mining unions to take industrial action which flows from a decision arrived at last year. The Government will continue to try to ensure that the dispute is resolved as quickly as possible. Again I make the point that I have often made in this chamber, that things of this kind which were commonplace under the previous Government are now things of considerable rarity in Australia and so they do stand out. Senator Boswell —But we could not get down to Canberra last week. Senator BUTTON —Senator Boswell says that he could not get to Canberra, but I do not know what point there is in his coming here anyway. The simple point is that a strike like this one, which is of the utmost importance, stands out. Even Senator MacGibbon was able to be aware of it as a result of that fact. But the industrial relations record of this Government in terms of industrial disputes is the best in this country for 17 years. That is something about which the Government has legitimate reasons to be pleased-not satisfied, but pleased. Senator Walters —Ask the farmers. Senator BUTTON —I am not helped by Senator Walters's gestures. The record is a source of pleasure, not of satisfaction, for the Government. We have a long way to go to turn around cultural and social perceptions about industrial relations in this country because we are recovering from a legacy of failed industrial relations practices over many years, most of them under periods of Liberal conservative government. That task is not particularly helped by some of the nitwitted attempts at an industrial relations policy which, I understand from the Press, the present Opposition is engaged in considering. Senator MORRIS —I direct my question to the Minister for Veterans' Affairs. It relates to the new determining system for veterans' pensions which has been in operation now for over 12 months. The Minister will be aware that all members and senators, myself included, have received a large number of complaints regarding delays in the system. Is the new system having the effect of reducing these delays and when will they reach acceptable levels? Senator GIETZELT —The Senate will be aware that for a number of years considerable problems have been associated with the determining system for pension applications. The recognition of that led the previous Government to refer to the Administrative Review Council a proposal that the system should be streamlined and improved. Therefore, the Senate took steps in 1984 with the starting point for the operation of a new system to be 1 January 1985. The purpose of the system is to reduce the unacceptably long delays in the system. It was not unusual for some applicants who were getting on in years to have to wait two, three or four years for their cases to be properly dealt with. The purpose of the new system was to improve the average of about a year's delay and to reach an objective of somewhere around 90 days from the point of receipt of the application to its being dealt with and a decision arrived at through the processes of the new determining system. We are now in a position in which we can see that that objective will be reached around the middle of this year. As at 1 July 1985 there were 41,000 applicants in the system. That figure has been reduced to 32,000 at the end of January. We are reasonably confident that, given the passage of the Veterans' Entitlements Bill by the Senate and the solution of the problem between the two Houses, in about July of this year we will have reached the objective of about a 90-day delay. In those circumstances I think the veteran community, veteran organisations and the Parliament will be very happy that the new system is working effectively. Senator MASON —My question is addressed to the Minister representing the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Does the Government agree with President Reagan's reported statement yesterday that there has been no hard evidence of fraud in the Philippines elections? Whether the Government agrees or not, what action has it taken to make an accurate assessment of the situation? As future events in the Philippines are likely to impinge on Australia's security, will the Government undertake discussions with the Government of the USA in the interests of both nations achieving an honest and accurate understanding of and public position on the situation? Senator GARETH EVANS —As Mr Hayden said earlier this week, the joint leaders of the international observer team organised by the United States Democrat and Republican parties noted that abuses and irregularities had occurred in the conduct of the poll. Likewise, Senator Lugar, the leader of the United States official observer team, said that his team had witnessed and heard disturbing reports of efforts to undermine the integrity of the official processes. These observer teams will not, however, issue final reports until the electoral process is complete and the result announced. We note further that in his statement on 11 February President Reagan said that the election had been flawed by reports of fraud and violence which the United States takes seriously. Obviously, the Australian Government is very concerned, as Mr Hayden said, by these allegations of fraudulent conduct of the election. In making its final assessment of the conduct of the election, the Australian Government will take into account reports from not only the United States and the international observer groups but also Australian Embassy officials who observed polling in a wide range of areas throughout the Philippines. The formal outcome of the election is still unknown as the official count is still taking place in the National Assembly. It is not yet appropriate publicly to make an assessment of the election or to make an assessment of its significance for Australian interests and policy. As to the last part of the question, the Australian Government maintains close and continuing contact with the United States on developments in the Philippines, including the election and subsequent developments. Obviously, we will be monitoring very closely the situation as it evolves and perhaps I will be in a position, like Mr Hayden, to make a more detailed response as events unfold over the next few days. Senator BOLKUS —My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Primary Industry. Has his attention been drawn to an article in the Australian newspaper of 31 December 1985 in which a Mr Peter Ryan, a wheat farmer from Canowindra, attributes his farm losses to increases in interest rates and fuel costs? Is the Minister in a position to indicate whether Mr Ryan's claims are accurate? Senator WALSH —I am aware of that article. I read it the day it was published or perhaps the day after and I have a copy in front of me now. It is correct that in that article Mr Ryan is quoted as saying that his present difficult financial situation, if not insolvency, is attributable to increases in fuel prices and interest rates and that the changes in those two items have caused him to lose $100,000 in 1984-85. The article also states that in 1980 Mr Ryan took out a $500,000 loan. If one assumes that none of that loan principal was repaid in the interim period and interest rates between 1980 and 1984-85-that period to which these figures refer-increased by 5 per cent, the interest bill would have increased by $25,000. The Bureau of Agricultural Economics says that on wheat farms on average fuel costs make up somewhat less than 10 per cent of total farm costs. The same article says that Mr Ryan's total farm costs were $450,000; so if it is an average wheat farm, $45,000 would have been paid for fuel. Of that $45,000, $18,000 can be attributed to fuel price increases between 1980 and 1984-85. Therefore, at the most-I say `at the most' because it assumes that none of that loan money borrowed in 1980 had been repaid-the cost due to rising interest rates and fuel costs would have been of the order of $25,000 plus $18,000; that is, $43,000 in total. Set against the reported loss of $100,000 in the year, Mr Ryan would have lost $57,000 even if fuel prices in money terms and interest rates had remained as they were in 1980. Particularly on wheat farms, incomes in any given year can be greatly affected by the yield but in that part of New South Wales in that year the wheat yield was average. Whether or not it was on Mr Ryan's farm is not disclosed. Needless to say, none of that analysis was included in the article published by the Australian. On the facts available in that article-none of which have been questioned, to the best of my knowledge-and on the 1984 results, that farm was headed for insolvency without any increase in the two items to which its financial plight has been attributed. It seems likely that a thorough examination would reveal that its plight had more to do with investment decisions made in 1980 or thereabouts than it did with changes inside Australia since that time. It is true that because of external factors Australian agriculture in general is facing very bad terms of trade-mostly because of the long-standing policies of the European Economic Community-which terms have now been exacerbated by the recent retaliatory action by the United States. Australian agriculture has known such periods before and, in reference to Senator Chaney's first question, this is not the first time that agricultural land prices, even in money terms, have fallen. Precisely the same thing happened in the 1970-71-72 period when of course the Liberal-Country Party Government was in power. It is fortuitous, or appropriate, that there was broadcast this morning on AM an interview with a farmer from the area in question, Canowindra in New South Wales. This farmer, Mr Bill Pollard, said of the people who organised the gathering here today: They've really lost touch with the farming community if they believe the things they are currently saying because not all farmers are in the dire straits that they claim they are . . . I would think that most farmers will make sufficient money to pay a little bit of tax this financial year. Senator Chaney —Mr President, I ask that the Minister table the papers from which he has quoted during his answer. The PRESIDENT —Will the Minister table the papers from which he has quoted? Senator WALSH —The paper is a sheet of handwritten notes. The PRESIDENT —Order! I draw the attention of honourable senators to the remarks I made yesterday about the length of questions and answers. If honourable senators' questions could be brief and Ministers' answers a little more brief it would help everyone at Question Time. Senator HAMER —Is the Minister for Industry, Technology and Commerce satisfied with the progress in the reduction of the number of car models being produced by Australian manufacturers in line with the objectives of the Government's motor vehicle plan? When does the Minister envisage the number of local car manufacturers being reduced from five to three? What impact will the fall in the value of the Australian dollar and the Government's proposed new tax on company cars have on the implementation and success of the Government's plan? Senator BUTTON —The first question is whether I am satisfied with progress in the reduction in the number of models under the car plan. The answer is yes. Secondly, I am asked when the number of manufacturers in Australia will be reduced from five to three. It is important to indicate that we never used quite that expression; we said that we saw the five companies forming themselves into three consortia or something of that kind. I cannot say I am satisfied with that progress but I cannot say I am dissatisfied at this stage. Progress is being made on that issue, and certainly it is being made on the model reduction issue. I cannot make any precise statement about the effects of the devaluation of the Australian dollar on the motor vehicle industry. It seems that for most of the calendar year 1985 the effects of the devaluation were accommodated by price reductions in respect of imported parts and components. That process came to an end late last year. A significant proportion of motor vehicle componentry is imported, and the effects have been quite differential. For example, General Motors-Holden's Ltd has probably suffered more than others as a result of its decision made before the devaluation to import six-cylinder engines from Japan. That has been a difficult decision for that company to accommodate. Had it made another decision it might have been better in a number of ways, but that is a matter for the company. The best thing that I can say about the effects of the fringe benefits tax package on the motor industry is that the industry has expressed some concern and in fact different sectors of the industry have expressed slightly different concerns. We are in discussion with them about those concerns. When the legislation is presented to the Parliament we will see whether those discussions have had any effect on the existing package. Senator McINTOSH —Has the attention of the Minister representing the Minister for Primary Industry been drawn to statements by the Prime Minister and the Minister for Primary Industry concerning corrupted world markets for agricultural commodities? Can the Minister estimate how important this situation is in terms of the debt servicing problems currently facing agriculture? Senator WALSH —I am not able to quantify the effects of the corrupted world markets on the income position and therefore the debt servicing capacity of Australian agriculture. It is indisputably true that the major cause of the change in farmers' terms of trade that has occurred in the last couple of years has been the oversupply of markets for the majority of Australia's agricultural commodities, which itself is attributable to what the Prime Minister and Mr Kerin call the corruption of world markets, particularly by the European Economic Community and more recently the United States. That adverse movement in the terms of trade has been offset to a significant degree by the devaluation of the Australian dollar. Nevertheless, the terms of trade have moved against Australian farmers quite appreciably. As I noted before, it is not the first time that that has happened. Something very similar happened in the early 1970s. There has been a longer term structural problem in the Australian economy, which was referred to as recently as last Monday by, at that stage, an ex-Liberal Party member of the Western Australian Parliament. He said that most of it was due to the National Party of Australia, as it is called these days. Of course, if one takes a long term view about the structure of the Australian economy, he is correct in saying that most of what is wrong with it is due to the National Party and that adverse effects of that long term structural problem are felt by sections at least of the agricultural sector. Indeed, Mr McNee said that day: If they-- he was talking about members of the National Party, which uses different names in different parts of the country-- had performed well over the 30 years they held the primary industry portfolio at the Federal and State levels, then the rural industries would never be the way they are now . . . Of course, he is absolutely correct. If the National Party had performed decently over the 30 years that it held the State portfolio in most States-or for a greater part of that period the State portfolio in most States-and for virtually all that period the portfolio in the Federal Parliament, the structural problems of the Australian economy which hurt farmers and other sectors would not be doing the damage they are. Senator Brownhill —There were no protests when we were in government. Senator WALSH —For the benefit of Senator Brownhill, I pass on to him the Liberal Party's advice. Mr McNee said: It-- again talking about the National Party-- wants to stop talking about tariff and remember that John McEwen was the architect of the tariff system. Senator WALTERS —Can the Minister representing the Attorney-General name the active members of the Human Rights Commission? Are there any inactive members and, if so, why? Senator GARETH EVANS —That is a question with a number of connotations. I think I had better sort it out with the Attorney-General before I offer a reply. Senator WALTERS —Mr President, I wish to ask a supplementary question. I am well aware that the Minister has knowledge of this. I wonder why he has to sort it out with the Attorney-General. The PRESIDENT —Order! No supplementary question is involved. Senator GARETH EVANS —Mr President, I am indebted to Senator Walters for her suggestion that I am in full knowledge of who is doing what and who is active, retired or inactive on the Commission, but I am afraid I am not. I will need to seek that advice from the Attorney-General. Senator McKIERNAN —Has the Minister for Education seen the article in the Melbourne Herald of 13 February which states that tertiary students are being forced to cut their courses to part time so that they can get the dole? Can the Minister advise whether this is the case? Can the Minister inform the Senate of the number of students receiving assistance under the tertiary education assistance scheme and the amount of money which the Federal Government grants to students? Finally, is TEAS the only form of financial assistance available to tertiary students? Senator RYAN —The article referred to in Senator McKiernan's question has been drawn to my attention. I point out to Senator McKiernan and other honourable senators that it is estimated that in 1985 106,750 students received TEAS benefits and that that payment cost $262m. This year it is estimated that 113,900 students will receive TEAS benefits at a cost of $302m. So it is evident from those figures that our Government places a high priority on responding to the problems faced by young Australians and to assisting those young Australians who are pursuing tertiary studies. In 1987 an age-related scheme of financial assistance will be introduced for young people aged 16 to 20 years with differential rates of allowance for 16 and 17-year-olds and those aged 18 and over. This development will mean that there is no financial incentive at all for students to seek unemployment benefit rather than tertiary assistance. The person quoted in the article is Mr Chris Kirwan, a student counsellor at the Melbourne College of Advanced Education. Mr Kirwan has claimed that not enough research is going on into student finances. I would like to point out to the Senate and to Mr Kirwan that in recent years there have been three major surveys of student finances together with other commissioned studies. My Department's own publications in the studies of student finances series now amount to four volumes of over 550 pages. Moreover, other studies of student issues, such as attrition rates, have also examined student financial problems. I think it is strange that Mr Kirwan, who has made the complaint, comes from the Melbourne CAE when another student adviser at the same college, Mr Vince Callaghan, is a member of the advisory committee for one of my Department's studies in this field. I think it is clear that our Government has considerably increased the level of TEAS and significantly greater numbers of students are now eligible for and are taking the TEAS payments. I say in conclusion that students would be ill-advised to cut down to part time studies in the hope of being able to be eligible for the dole because they will then be extending the period it would take them to get their degree and have that very valuable asset. I would also point out that the availability of casual employment has increased considerably and that students are in a much better position now than they were in the recession of the Fraser years to supplement TEAS payments with casual work, which, of course, has been traditional amongst Australian students. Senator BROWNHILL —My question is addressed to the Leader of the Government in the Senate. The Australian Council of Trade Unions President, Mr Simon Crean, said in a recent newspaper article that, if employers try to block its three per cent productivity claim, the ACTU would commence a guerilla campaign to achieve its objectives. Why has the Government not shown any concern about the ultimate attack on the basic freedoms of Australians and the frontal attack on the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission? Is not the trade union attitude totally inconsistent with the rule of law and government by those elected to govern? Senator BUTTON —I have not seen any statement by Mr Crean, but, in saying that, I am not asserting that it was not said in any sense; it may well have been. I am not intending to embark on a philosophical discussion about the basic freedoms of Australians. I would just remind honourable senators about what was said by the President of the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, Mr Justice Maddern, at the start of the national wage case proceedings a week or two ago when he said that those proceedings would be adjourned if any industrial action was taken in respect of any matter, including superannuation. That is the appropriate pronouncement from the appropriate figure in respect of this matter. The Government has made it quite clear that it does not support industrial action in respect of this or any other matter and will continue to do so. But the sanction, as it were, is appropriately in the Arbitration Commission and that is where it has been exercised by the President. Senator GILES —Will the Minister representing the Minister for Social Security please give an indication of the Government's response to the recent decision of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in the case relating to the payment of special benefits to unsupported school students? Senator GRIMES —The Minister for Social Security has informed me that the Government has decided not to appeal to the Federal Court of Australia against the decision to which the honourable senator refers. The four students who appealed to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal will, therefore, be paid arrears of special benefit as directed by the Tribunal. The Department has issued an instruction to apply the terms of the decision to all similar cases and the guidelines of the Department have been amended accordingly. This is in line with the Government's commitment to provide adequate income for people who need it. As honourable senators may know, the Government recently announced a new unsupported youth allowance for people under 18 with no other means of support, whether they are in education or whether they are looking for work. This allowance, together with a range of other Priority One initiatives, will place the treatment of unsupported youths under 18 on a regular basis. We believe that resolving the crisis of youth unemployment and youth poverty-I might add left as a relic of the policies of the previous Government-is one of our greatest challenges and we will continue to attack it in this way. Senator MICHAEL BAUME —My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Primary Industry. Will the Government repudiate the public statement made by the Minister for Primary Industry, Mr John Kerin, in Hobart after this week's Australian Agricultural Council meeting that current protests by farmers had more to do with politics than with farm prices, and that their aggravation was not necessarily related to their current financial situation? Was the Minister for Primary Industry reflecting Government policy? Does it indicate a governmental rejection of last week's appeal by the Director of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Dr Stoeckel, for the Government to change its rural policies because `in the absence of alleviating policy initiatives, the farm sector is confronted by severe financial stress' along with industries supplying it and country towns? Senator WALSH —The farm sector is confronted with some severe financial stress, though not nearly as severe, I suggest, as the financial stress suffered by people who were sucked in to invest money through Patrick Partners about 15 years ago after that firm went bust when Senator Baume was a partner in it. He denies of course that he was a Patrick partner, but the Masterman Report on page 41 says: On the evidence before me I am satisfied that Mr Baume continued to be a partner of Patrick Partners subsequent to February 1975 and indeed continued to be a partner up to the date of the partnership closing- Senator Chaney —On a point of order, Mr President: The Minister has been asked a question on a matter of considerable significance to the Australian community. He is simply indulging in personal abuse by his refusal to answer. I suggest that you ask the Minister to answer the question or sit down. The PRESIDENT —Order! I would ask the Minister to come back to the terms of the answer to the question. Senator WALSH —Certainly, Mr President. I was about to do that, but it is very instructive reading the Masterman Report. I suggest that anybody who is interested should do so. The Patrick Partner asked me whether the Government would repudiate the best Minister for Agriculture that this country has ever had, and the answer is no. Senator REYNOLDS —I address my question to the Minister representing the Attorney- General. In view of the tragic family shooting which occurred in Canberra yesterday, will the Attorney-General's Department move promptly to implement legislation in the Australian Capital Territory similar to existing legislation in New South Wales and South Australia covering domestic violence, which allows people immediate injunctions preventing partners from approaching or communicating with them? Furthermore, can the Minister advise what action the Federal Government can take to introduce similar legislation under Commonwealth family law so that there is protection for all Australian women across the States regardless of the failure of some States-particularly, I regret, my home State of Queensland-to recognise the urgency of such protective legislation. Senator GARETH EVANS —I have of course seen the report of this week's appalling shooting in Canberra. While it may be that events of this kind involving extreme pathological behaviour can never be completely avoided, it is the case that the Attorney-General intends to reform the law of the Australian Capital Territory relating to domestic violence to ensure that more effective protection is given by the law to persons affected by domestic violence-for example, by providing for the making of summary restraining orders-and to ensure that the perpetrators of such violence, when it does occur, are adequately dealt with. Outside the territories, the difficulty for the Federal Government is that it has no constitutional power over domestic violence or de facto relationships. This is a matter of State responsibility. In New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania, the laws have been changed to allow for the making of an order where actual or threatened personal injury or damage to property is likely to occur unless an offender is restrained by the court. A breach of the order is a criminal offence. The focus in all five States is to use court orders to prevent and deter further acts of violence while also improving protection to victims. The State laws cover both married and de facto spouses. Where the Commonwealth has the constitutional power in the area of marriage it already has in force legislation of a similar nature. Under section 114 of the Family Law Act the courts can grant an injunction restraining certain behaviour of one party for the personal protection of the other or of a child of the marriage. Another provision allows attachment to the injunction of a power of arrest without warrant in a case of actual or threatened breach. A further provision specifically preserves the concurrent State legislation in areas where that exists. State police assistance is, as a result, available to prosecute offences under State domestic violence laws. I summarise it by saying that the Commonwealth policy is to ensure operation of these criminal procedures to deal with domestic violence, but also to leave open the civil remedies under the Family Law Act. It is not to have the Family Court deal with domestic violence as a criminal offence, as that court's philosophy is to promote conciliation. I will raise with the Attorney-General the need to exert as much pressure as is possible on State and Territory Attorneys-General to give high priority to reform in an area where this is so obviously needed and to the provision of adequate resources to effectively enforce existing legislation. Senator VANSTONE —My question is directed to the Minister representing the Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations. Has the Minister seen an article in the Adelaide Advertiser today headed `Shortfall ``Canberra's fault'' ' in which the State Minister of Employment and Further Education, Mr Arnold, blamed Federal Government delays in launching its apprenticeship training scheme, with which some of South Australia's 22 youth employment scheme programs are linked? Are the State Minister's comments correct and, given that the training scheme is a part of the Government's Priority One program, does the Government agree that while it might be doing a terrific job promoting the Prime Minister, it is doing a lousy job in implementing its training scheme? Senator WALSH —I am afraid that I have not read today's Adelaide Advertiser. I am not sure that it is even in the building. Indeed, I must also confess that I do not normally read the Advertiser on any day. My attention has not been brought to that claim by Mr Arnold. Consequently I do not know, and so far as I know no briefing has been supplied to my office by Mr Willis. Apparently he does not read the Advertiser either, or perhaps it has not arrived. Senator Vanstone asked whether Mr Arnold, was accurately reported by the Advertiser. I do not know that. If he was, was his claim correct? I do not know that either, but I know that some of his claims are not always correct. Senator VANSTONE —Perhaps I may ask a supplementary question. Given that the training scheme is part of the Priority One program, supposedly the Government's No. 1 priority, what action will the Government take to ensure that Ministers are capable of answering questions in Parliament on its Priority One program? Secondly, will the Government make available all correspondence between the South Australian Government and the Federal Government on this complete failure? The PRESIDENT —Order! The first part of the question is not a supplementary question. The Minister clearly can answer the second part. Senator WALSH —I am not sure that I completely heard the second part of the question, but I think that this is an adequate answer to it: I understand that Mr Willis has this matter in hand and is taking the appropriate action. On the first part of the question-- The PRESIDENT —Order! The Minister is clearly out of order. Senator SIBRAA —My question is directed to the Minister for Veterans' Affairs. No doubt the Minister will be aware of previous questions dealing with the small group of Australian prisoners of war imprisoned in nazi concentration camps during World War II and of the fact that their experiences have now been made into an award winning documentary film entitled Death Wears a Smile. As an interdepartmental committee has been looking for 12 months at the question of compensation for these men, can the Minister advise the Senate when this report and its recommendations will be made public? Senator GIETZELT —It is true that an endeavour has been made by Australian ex-servicemen who were placed in concentration camps in Germany and Czechoslovakia during World War II to seek some form of reparations or compensation from the West German Government. It was not until 1982 that the previous Government, the Liberal-National Party Government, decided to make representations to the West German Government in respect of those matters and it received no assurances that compensation would be paid. However, since the change of government in 1983, Mr Hayden and I have had several discussions with respect to this matter and an inter-departmental committee has been established under the chairmanship of the Department of Foreign Affairs with representatives from other interested departments, such as the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Department of Finance and the Department of the Treasury, for example, as well as the Department of Veterans' Affairs. The IDC recognise that there is a substantial case for some form of compensation for the dwindling number of ex-prisoners of war who were placed in concentration camps because they were considered too unreliable by the nazis for ordinary POW camps. Their unreliability by nazi standards was determined by their attempts to escape and to organise against the nazi regime. There is no question but that some equity should be available to Australian ex-servicemen. The Government believes that there is a prima facie case for some form of compensation. The difficulty is that the West German Government is not sympathetic to the proposals. Constant endeavours are being made to try to shift the West German Government in this respect. All I can tell Senator Sibraa is that the Government is determined to press on with the matter. We are not prepared to accept the negative attitude that is being taken by the West German Government. We are hopeful that some progress will be made, even if finally it has to come down to some form of ex gratia payment to the dwindling number of Australian prisoners of war. As Senator Sibraa suggests, the film Death Wears a Smile shows the degree of persecution, torture and other inhuman activities that were carried out in the concentration camps. We believe that there is a very genuine case for the West German Government's accepting some responsibility for reparation in these matters. Senator BOSWELL —I refer the Leader of the Government to the Government's intention to raise the level of preferential tariffs to developing countries until they are only 5 per cent under the general tariff rate. Is the Minister aware that this action will cause many agricultural imports, such as wool packs, agricultural chemicals and many other rural commodities which are imported from countries classified as developing countries, to increase in price? Will the Minister review the decision so that Australian primary producers will not be further hurt by increased government tariffs? Senator BUTTON —To begin with the last part of the question, I say that no, the Government will not review the decision. It spent a lot of time arriving at it and gave it a great deal of consideration. So it will not review the decision. In fact, if one examines the decision, one will see that there will be no review for five years. As long as this Government is in office that position will remain. Insofar as the impact on commodities is concerned, particularly products, I concede that that may be the case. However, one has to balance the benefits and the detriments of a decision such as this which goes across an enormously broad range of products. I think that if Senator Boswell examined the total list of products which were affected he would find that there would be considerable benefits to those whom he says will suffer a detriment as a result of the changed tariff preference treatment for the products he mentions. As a Government we cannot go around catering to the needs of every section of-- Senator Withers —Ragbag constituency. Senator BUTTON —Senator Withers said `ragbag constituency'. I was not going to say that. Let me say that I have always admired Senator Withers's style and his capacity and facility for expression, although I have rarely agreed with his ideas. I say to Senator Boswell that the Government cannot alter decisions of this kind which are across the board decisions. They have received the approval of industries across the board in Australia and have been negotiated with nations which import or have imported into Australia under the preferential tariff system. There has been broad support for the changes that have been made. The simple point I make is that it is a decision which affects the general welfare of Australian industry and not one on which we have the capacity to yield to sectoral pressures. Senator CHILDS —My question is directed to the Minister representing the Minister for Social Security. Is the Government concerned about the problems facing the unemployed who are renting privately? Will the Minister tell the Senate what measures the Government is taking to assist financially the unemployed in meeting rental costs? Senator GRIMES —The Government is concerned about those who are renting privately-both the unemployed and pensioners-and has been for a long time. For that reason we extended rental assistance to the unemployed. I believe that this measure will do much to alleviate the pressures faced by long term unemployed people who are unfortunate enough to be in the private rental market. We also hope that they will be assisted by increases in the amount of housing funds available for public housing, for which many of these people are eligible. From May this year rental assistance of up to $10 a week will be available to unemployment and special beneficiaries aged 18 years or more who pay private rent and who have been in receipt of such benefits for at least six months. It will be payable to those under 25 years only if the beneficiaries are not living with parents or guardians. The initiative will assist in reducing pressure on emergency relief agencies. We have found private renters to be a very high proportion of their clients. In targeting this assistance to the long term unemployed and in restricting the eligibility for younger unemployed people living at home, the Government has been concerned to ensure that the maximum benefit is paid to those most in need and likely to have a high proportion of their income devoted to rent. We are very conscious of the fact that now, as in the days when the Henderson Commission of Inquiry into Poverty did its investigations, one of the greatest determinants of poverty in this community is the cost of housing and of rent generally. The extension of rent assistance to the unemployed will cost about $10m this year and about $59m in a full year. This decision will be reinforced by the Government's recent decision to alleviate poverty traps as part of the tax reform. The abolition of the separate income test on rent assistance will mean that those in private rental accommodation will not lose 50c of rent assistance for every dollar they earn. So, although this measure is only a relatively small start, this is a very expensive, important and high priority area in alleviating the problems faced by the long term unemployed. Senator MACKLIN —I refer the Minister representing the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs to the `Rules Relating to Grants for Assistance to or for Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders', particularly clauses 13 (1) and 13 (11). Is the Minister aware that they give power to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs to remove elected officials, officers and employees if, in the opinion of the Minister, those people are not fit to be elected officials, officers and employees? Is this little more than blackmail? Is it simply another attempt by the Government to muzzle Aboriginals who are critical of the Government's implementation of its own policy, as happened with the destruction of the National Aboriginal Conference? Senator RYAN —I really cannot accept the implications of the last part of Senator Macklin's question. However, I will provide Senator Macklin with the information that has been passed on to me by the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs regarding the `Rules Relating to Grants for Assistance to or for Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders'. In the past when an Aboriginal organisation has formally accepted the terms and conditions of an offer for grant funds, the Commonwealth, as one of the contracting parties, has in most cases been obliged to continue funding the organisation until the end of that financial year. Under the former conditions for grants there was no provision to withdraw funding if it were found that during the year the financial control of the organisation had fallen into the hands of a person or persons with a proven record of mismanagement or misappropriation of grant funds. The new provisions will enable the Minister to withdraw funding if such a situation arises. I am sure all honourable senators will understand that a Minister must take all possible steps to ensure that all public funds are properly administered and acquitted. Senator CROWLEY —My question is directed to the Minister for Industry, Technology and Commerce. I notice from the G. J. Coles and Co. annual report an item reporting an increase in the cost to the company of workers compensation throughout Australia from $5.1m in 1981 to $19.7m in 1985, which is approaching a 400 per cent increase. Coles, which has a total work force of nearly 80,000 people as at 1985, is the largest non-government employer in Australia. While it is difficult to get exact figures on the numbers of accidents and injuries to Coles workers, I doubt whether there has been an increase of the same magnitude. The PRESIDENT —Order! The honourable senator is giving too much information. Senator CROWLEY —I am getting there, Mr President. The PRESIDENT —I hope the honourable senator does. Senator CROWLEY —Can the Minister say whether a similar increase in the cost of workers compensation has occurred in all industries. What criteria are used to establish costs of premiums? As this is a dramatic increase in on costs, is the Government able to take any steps to address this matter? Senator BUTTON —If I can advise Senator Crowley, it is not good to spend one's vacation reading Coles annual reports, particular if questions such as this are asked as a result. I am not aware of the particular situation of G. J. Coles in terms of workers compensation premiums. Of course workers compensation is not a matter for the Federal Government; it is a matter for State government workers compensation legislation and schemes. There is a national compensation scheme for Commonwealth employees. There is not a national compensation scheme although one was sought by the Whitlam Government. That legislation was finally rejected as a result of a ghastly coalition of insurance companies, lawyers, politicians and other beneficiaries of the existing system. Changes are taking place in workers compensation regimes in various States and the Government has encouraged State governments to make those changes. I think the most significant change has taken place in Victoria. Although the change has resulted in an increase in premiums to some companies it has generally resulted, I believe, in a substantial reduction of premiums in most industries. It is my understanding that Senator Crowley's State of South Australia is pursuing similar legislation. I hope that New South Wales will one day pursue similar legislation. Workers compensation premiums are an enormous factor in wage on-costs. The best that the Commonwealth Government can do is put pressure on State governments to change their legislation to try to rectify this matter. I do not think that at this stage the present Government is in a situation to embark on another exercise with a national compensation scheme. Senator GARETH EVANS —On 12 February Senator Sir John Carrick asked me as Minister representing the Attorney-General a question about the Chamberlain case. The Attorney- General's answers are as follows: The first part of the question was: Has the Government had any discussions with the Northern Territory about the proposed inquiry? The answer is no. The second part of the question was: Does the Government intend to discuss with the Northern Territory the nature of the proposed terms of reference? The answer is no. The third part of the question was: Is the Government in the process of preparing optimum draft terms? The answer is no. The fourth part of the question was: Does the Government intend to offer the services of a judge of the Federal Court of Australia? The answer is: If a request is received from the Government of Northern Territory the Commonwealth will provide the services of a Federal court judge. Finally, Senator Sir John Carrick asked: Does the Government consider that an inquiry must have the full powers of a royal commission? The Attorney's answer is: This is a matter for the Northern Territory Government to consider and as yet it has not announced the terms of reference. It is the Attorney- General's view that royal commission powers would be appropriate. Senator GARETH EVANS —Yesterday Senator MacGibbon asked me a question about the defence co-operation program with the Philippines. The further answer which I undertook to provide is supplied by the Minister for Defence and is as follows: On Tuesday the Minister for Foreign Affairs made it perfectly clear that no decisions will be made on the future of our relations with the Philippines until after the highly confused political situation there is clarified. On present indications this may be some time. However, when the clouds clear we will examine the full range of our bilateral contacts with the Philippines, including the defence co-operation program, in the light of the circumstances which emerge. That examination will draw on the full range of advice and information available to the Government from a wide range of sources. The honourable senator may be assured that it will consider all the relevant arguments, including the one that he advanced in his question. Senator RYAN —Earlier this week Senator Archer asked a question relating to the state of the housing industry. I now have information in response to that question. In 1984-85 152,700 dwellings were commenced, an 11-year high. Dwelling commencements were maintained at a high level in the September quarter of 1985 and dwelling approvals data indicate that this level held through the December quarter. Some decline is now expected but the forecast of 140,000 dwelling commencements in 1985-86 still holds. The Government acknowledges the effect that interest rates are having on the availability of housing finance. It is essential to keep money supply growth under control and to support the Australian dollar. Clearly this policy is working. We recognise that high interest rates and tight availability of housing finance are likely to cause housing activity to decline starting in the March quarter. However, we must get the fundamentals right. The housing industry can then look forward to a bright future under the Hawke Labor Government's strategy for growth. In the meantime the Government is closely watching the situation and, if necessary, will consider appropriate remedial policies for the housing industry. Senator GRIMES —Yesterday Senator Teague asked me about the estimated savings in social security overpayments as a result of the six point strategy announced on Wednesday by my colleague Mr Howe. Mr Howe advised me that, for obvious reasons, the figures are estimates only. They relate to a three year period calculated as follows: Better review and collection procedures would save $70m; improved collections from continuing clients would save $5m; administrative arrangements enabling arrears to be collected closer to payday would save about $19m. Total gross savings are therefore $94m. Costs including machinery, staffing et cetera would be $10m and this would give a net saving of about $84m. These figures do not include savings from the amnesty which cannot be quantified. It is reasonable therefore to say that savings over three years would be of the order $90m. Message received from the House of Representatives intimating that it had agreed to the amendments made by the Senate to this Bill. Senator GRIMES(Tasmania-Minister for Community Services) —by leave-On behalf of Senator Button I give notice that, contingent on the moving of a motion to debate a matter of urgency under Standing Order 64, he shall move: That so much of the Standing Orders be suspended as would prevent the Leader of the Government in the Senate (Senator Button) moving an amendment to the motion. Debate resumed. Senator PARER(Queensland)(3.10) —Before lunch I had been referring to the lack of provision in the Australian Bill of Rights Bill 1985 for individuals in Australia to own private property. I referred to the remarks made by Mr Peter Bailey, the Deputy Chairman of the Human Rights Commission, who defended the Government from the point of view that this provision was not in the Bill. On 1 December 1985, Mr Bailey told people in a debate in Canberra that the original draft of the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the model we have before us, contained this Article, but the objection of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics caused it to be deleted. The USSR's objection has caused the provision for people to own private property to be deleted from the Australian Bill of Rights. The Bill also says nothing about the right of parents to send their children to a school of their choice-and this at a time when the Government is making it harder for people to start new private schools or extend existing ones. So this Bill protects only some of our rights. This is not surprising, because when one comes to define rights, it is inevitable that rights will be limited. It is interesting to note the rights that it leaves out. It would appear that the Government is denying that we have such rights as the right not to join a union. If so, how can the Government be serious about its concern for our rights? The Bill, of course, can be repealed by any future government. It will be repealed by us when we go back to government. So the rights the Bill refers to are transitory rights. They are to be protected only while this Government remains in office. How can such rights therefore be said to be guaranteed by this Bill? Such a claim is absolute nonsense. Secondly-and this point again is widely made-no Bill can make people tolerant of the rights of others. The Chief Justice, Sir Harry Gibbs, is well aware of this, and the Government should be aware of it. Thirdly, many countries which have a Bill of Rights are very oppressive regimes with scant regard for basic freedoms. The Soviet Union has a terrific constitution, with all sorts of democratic guarantees built into it. It has been called a model constitution. So much for a Bill of Rights guaranteeing human rights. Clearly, no Bill of Rights, and certainly not this Bill of Rights, can protect our fundamental freedoms. This legislation is not sufficient for rights. Why, then, do we have this package of Bills before us? Quite simply, it is a political tool for the Government to attack State governments that it wants to hurt politically-and it hounds these governments through the Human Rights Commission, of course. There is a secondary reason for the Bill. It panders to the burgundy socialists who want to feel warm inside and to be seen to be caring. Senator MacGibbon —Do you mean the white wine whingers? Senator PARER —That is correct, Senator. But the main reason for the Bill is political. The Human Rights Commission-the new Australian thought police, as it has been described by others-already has a reputation of meddling in affairs in which it really has no concern. It already acts in a quasi-judicial way. For example, in answer to a request from a Labor senator last year, the Commission was used to examine the Electrical Trades Union strike in Queensland as a political weapon. The role of the Human Rights Commission will be strengthened under this legislation, and it will be used to score political points against opponents of the Government in accordance with the Bill of Rights. The Human Rights Commission last year refused access to a senior respected politician who happened to disagree with things it was doing, without giving him the decency of a fair hearing. In conclusion, the Bill is not about protecting rights; it is about thought control and political point scoring. This Bill is not necessary to protect rights, nor is it sufficient to protect rights. It will arm bureaucrats with a mechanism to embarrass State governments for political purposes. The Federal Government has already used the Commission in this way and it will do it again and again. We in the coalition are opposed to the Bill of Rights and will seek to repeal it on being returned to government. Senator PUPLICK(New South Wales)(3.14) —I rise to speak to this package of legislation-the Australian Bill of Rights Bill 1985, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Bill 1985 and cognate Bills. It is perhaps an interesting point to observe that despite the range of opinion and the range of views which exist within the Liberal Party and National Party Opposition on a number of issues, including issues related to human rights, to equal opportunities and to a number of related matters, nevertheless we are all at one in believing that this is a flawed piece of legislation and it is not the correct course of action to be pursued in a legislative sense by the Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia. We believe that the Australian Bill of Rights Bill 1985 is in fact not the most effective way to protect and safeguard the rights of ordinary Australian citizens. Let me say that, as a non-lawyer, I am singularly unimpressed with the argument frequently trotted out that the common law protects the rights of all citizens. Clearly it does not. In Australia, the principle that most people would wish to adhere to, that of equality of voting rights, was indicated by the High Court of Australia in McKinlay's case not to have any constitutional or legal protection. The State has the right to impose civil conscription, and the discussion of this in the Human Rights Commission report on the Queensland Electricity (Continuity of Supply) Act 1985 is worth reading. There is no right for the protection of private property. One often hears the claim that this is protected under Commonwealth law, nevertheless the High Court in the Teori Tau case in 1969 said that this protection did not apply to the Territories. We have seen in 1981, with the passage of the New South Wales Coal Acquisition Act, that it certainly does not apply within State jurisdictions. One would have thought that jury trial was something protected in Australia. Nevertheless, as His Honour Mr Justice Deane commented recently in the case of Clyne v. the Director of Public Prosecutions: The guarantee of trial by jury which is contained in section 80 of the Constitution has been drained of most of its strength by the combined effect of legislation of the Parliament and decisions of the Court. One would have thought, for instance, that the right to practise religion freely in Australia existed. It does not. The High Court, in the case of the Grace Bible Church Inc. v. Reedman, decided in 1984, made it absolutely clear that that was the case. Indeed, Mr Justice Millhouse, in the South Australian Supreme Court, referring to South Australia, stated: The citizens of this State do not have rights which may not be overriden by Act of the South Australian Parliament. He was referring to the question of freedom of religion. One would have thought that the right of privacy existed in Australia. It does not. The High Court in the Victoria Park Racing case in 1937 said, basically: `If you want privacy, build higher fences'. In the case of the Church of Scientology v. Woodward, decided again by the High Court in 1982, it was made clear that there was no right to privacy established in Australia. Lastly, one should draw attention to the judgment of His Honour Mr Justice Dunn in the Queensland Supreme Court in the case of Fischer v. Douglas, in which he said: In Queensland, because of the sovereignty of Parliament, the subject does not have guaranteed rights. Those who describe themselves as the champions of civil liberties frequently speak of such liberties as though there were no such thing as the sovereignty of Parliament; and, when they address themselves to the uncomprehending and the emotional, they may consequently mislead their audience. I do not want to mislead any audience by indicating that civil rights are adequately and properly protected in Australia at the moment. They are not. The question before us is: Is the Bill of Rights the correct way to protect those rights? I, in association with all members of the Opposition, would argue that that is not the case. The case I want, therefore, to put before the Senate is not that civil rights do not need protecting, but simply that they need protecting by a more effective method than the proposed package of legislation which comes before us today. I believe that if one looks at the experience of the effect of the Racial Discrimination Act and the Sex Discrimination Act, one sees that it indicates the way in which Parliament ought to address itself, not in a global sense but in a series of case by case circumstances, to issues as they arise and be sensitive to the fact that different rights need protection by different mechanisms. In the time available to debate this legislation, one cannot go any further than to state that as a general principle, without going into the specific details of how that ought to be achieved. Again, if I may comment as a non-lawyer, the one thing that I am most concerned about as a consequence of the Bill of Rights, if it were to be enacted, would be the transfer of power and responsibility from the elected parliament into the hands of the judiciary. If one wants to see this discussed, I think in its most clear fashion, it is worth turning to a debate which took place in the House of Lords on 29 November 1978. The House of Lords had before it a report from a select committee on the establishment of a Bill of Rights for Great Britain. For those who want to criticise the International Covenant on the basis that it is not signed by the United Kingdom, it is interesting to note that the House of Lords, hardly an institution regarded as the revolutionary champion of all that is new and wonderful, nevertheless by vote resolved that the provisions of the European Convention dealing with civil and political rights should in fact be enacted into domestic legislation in the United Kingdom. That vote, which was carried by 56 votes to 30, is recorded clearly in the House of Lords. Let me take a couple of extracts from the House of Lords debate. I think the most significant contribution made in the House of Lords debate was that made by Lord Diplock, a very distinguished British judge, who said: It is inevitable in a modern society, in which judges have to interpret social legislation about which strong political views are held on either side, that this tends to bring judges into the political arena . . . If we are to pass a Bill of rights . . . it is inevitable that the tendency will increase, because a Bill of Rights in that form compels the Judiciary to make political decisions. I do not want to see the judiciary making political decisions. They are not elected to make political decisions and, if I may say with the greatest of respect to them, when one considers their background, social standing, education and attitudes, I do not think they are qualified to make political decisions. To that extent I believe that, so long as that responsibility lies with an elected parliament, we should not put it off into other people's hands. Lord Hailsham, the very distinguished British Lord Chancellor, in his contribution to the debate indicated something which I think is of very considerable significance when one looks at the package of legislation before us. Lord Hailsham said in the debate: The Sex Discrimination Act is about 75 pages long and the Race Relations Act, three of them in the last 10 years, are about another 80 pages long. I would prefer a single sentence which said that people of all races should be treated alike and for the judges to view those cases as and when they arise. But, then, I am a lone voice speaking in the wilderness and everyone is very conservative, except me. I think it is a telling and interesting point that the sheer complexity of legislation tends to be more likely to obscure and make difficult the protection of rights than in fact to guarantee the protection of rights. I turn, therefore, to the United States and indicate by reference to the American Bill of Rights the extent to which the influence of the judges has caused the Bill of Rights in the United States to be interpreted in a way entirely different from that which was intended by the politicians who wrote the Bill of Rights in the first place. Despite the dictum, I think, of Tommy Cochranes that the Supreme Court follows the election returns, nevertheless there are a couple of points to be made. The American Bill of Rights-the first 10 Amendments to the United States Constitution-was enacted in 1791. Article 1 provided that there should be no establishment of religion and that there should be no congressional legislation to abridge the right of free speech. None of us would object to that. But under the rulings of the Court, the concept that there should be no established religion, in the case of Abington v. Schempp in 1963, saw the Court rule that it was unconstitutional to have Bible readings in schools. In the case of Murray v. Curlett, again in 1963, it ruled that it was unconstitutional for schools to have prayer sessions. On the issue of free speech, Congress shall make no laws abridging free speech, but in the case of Roth v. USA in 1957, the Court ruled that as a result, legislation against obscenity and pornography was in breach of the First Amendment. Indeed, in United States v. Reidel in 1971, it ruled that it was unconstitutional to prevent the transmission of pornography through the mail system. Article 2 of the Bill of Rights indicates that United States citizens are to have the right to bear arms, the need for what their Constitution refers to as a well-armed militia. In United States v. Cruikshank, decided back in 1876, and in Miller v. Texas in 1894, gun control laws have been struck down by interpreting a statute of 1791 in terms, perhaps relative to 1791, but certainly not relative to contemporary American requirement and practices. The Eighth Article of the Bill of Rights in the United States contains a prohibition against what it calls cruel and unusual punishment. Nothing could be more cruel and unusual than the behaviour of the judges, who in 1972, in the case of Furman v. Georgia, struck down the death penalty and in 1976 in the case of Gregg v. Georgia, restored the death penalty. Nothing had happened to change the wording of the Eighth Amendment, but the composition of the American Supreme Court bench had changed and the attitudes of the judges had changed. If anything was cruel and unusual it was the process of abolishing the death penalty by judicial fiat and then restoring it by judicial fiat. In 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment to the American Constitution was added-the so-called equal rights and due process amendment. Under that we got to the stage where in the case of Roe v. Wade in 1973, the due process amendment and the right to privacy were taken to be sufficient for the court to declare that laws preventing abortion were unconstitutional. Again, if one is looking for twists and turns of judicial interpretation, under the Fourteenth Amendment, in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, the court ruled that racial segregation could occur, sep- arate but equal, it said. It took them until 1954 in the case of Brown v. Board of Education to determine that separate and equal was no longer a valid doctrine. The legislation had not changed. The Bill of Rights had not changed. The Fourteenth Amendment had not changed, but the judges had changed. If one looks, finally, at the Nineteenth Amendment, which deals with voting rights, a poll tax was upheld in 1937 in the case of Breedlove v. Suttles, and literacy tests in 1959 in the case of Lassiter v. Northampton Election Board were upheld. They were all struck down in the landmark cases to which reference has already been made-Baker v. Carr in 1962 and Reynolds v. Sims in 1964. The recitation of that is simply to demonstrate that in a piece of legislation as complex as the Bill of Rights we are requiring the judiciary to make a number of political decisions. There is neither certainty, nor indeed is there the sort of adherence to precedent over a long period of time, that one would want in terms of the question of the protection of fundamental human rights. This is not to say by any means that international instruments dealing with the protection of human rights cannot serve as extremely valuable guides for interpretation. A point which Senator Durack made, largely in response to gross and unfair provocation by Senator Cooney, was to indicate that the attachment of the International Covenant as a schedule to the earlier piece of legislation was intended as a guide and was intended to establish certain principles, not to enshrine them in law. As a member of the Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs, I participated in the investigation and the reporting of a reference dealing with the Bill of Rights. That report, entitled `A bill of rights for Australia? Exposure report', indicated the experience of the United Kingdom. I will read paragraph 6.6 of that report, which deals with the way in which the United Kingdom has modified its domestic law as a result of rulings by the European Court of Human Rights and has done so in order to bring about some conformity to those laws, but has not been required or compelled to do so. It has done so because its intention has been drawn to deficiencies in its domestic law and the Parliament of the United Kingdom has acted to give effect to changes in order to safeguard more adequately the rights in question. The report states: 6.6 Findings of the European Court of Human Rights have contributed to various changes in the domestic laws and practice in the United Kingdom. These have included amendments to Prison Rules (Golder's Case); a change in Scottish Education Department policy in regard to corporal punishment (Campbell and Cosans' Case) and proposed legislation in the United Kingdom to enable parents to exempt a child from corporal punishment (Tyrer's Case); enactment of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 (Sunday Times' Case); enactment of the Employment Act 1980 to amend trade union legislation to protect the right to freedom of association (Closed Shop Case); enactment of the Mental Health (Amendment) Act 1982 (X v. UK); changes to legislation regulating homosexual conduct (Dudgeon's Case); enactment of the Interception of Communications Act 1985 to implement a Government White Paper (Malone's Case). The jurisdiction of the European Court has also produced a greater awareness of human rights considerations in the United Kingdom in the drafting of legislation. There we see clearly indicated in a Senate Committee report a more effective method of protecting and safeguarding human rights, dealing with them on a case by case, example by example, basis, without the whole paraphernalia of a Bill of Rights and the whole paraphernalia of an attendant lot of judges and lawyers at work under the sort of regime that the Bill of Rights, as proposed by the Government, would establish. I turn to the legislation which deals with the Human Rights Commission. Let me say first and clearly that the Human Rights Commission was a creation of a previous Liberal-National Party government, and a good creation at that. I also say that the official policy of the Liberal and National parties is for the maintenance of the Human Rights Commission. I will read into the record the section of our Policy on Law and Justice dealing with this-a policy on which we went to the last Federal election. I quote from page 4 under the heading `Human Rights and Liberties': We- we refers to the Liberal and National parties; we both co-sponsored this document- believe that human rights and civil liberties are best preserved and advanced by the effective operation of our parliamentary and judicial traditions rather than the creation of new institutions or an entrenched Bill of Rights. Indeed the most effective way of enhancing freedom at the present time is to have fewer and more simplified laws. The past four decades has seen an incredible increase in the volume and complexity of legislation which has largely become unmanageable and unintelligible. We believe that this process must stop. Insofar as new laws are required, Parliament should lay-down general rather than highly detailed guidelines leaving the courts to apply the object and purpose of the legislation to specific cases. We will take firm steps to reduce the volume of legislation and will review existing legislation with the object of repealing and simplifying a great deal of it. The Human Rights Commission should be substantially an advisory body within its charter and should not be allowed to become a great new bureaucracy which itself may pose threats to the rights and liberties of some sections of the community on the pretext of enhancing the rights of others. More reasonable and humane standards of expression and behaviour are better achieved by education and social pressure than legal sanctions. I turn to several points in that document. Laws ought to be simpler and more easily understandable. This is a point that was made in a House of Lords debate by Lord Hailsham. The courts should be guided by the expression made by Parliament as to the purpose of law. That is the reason why, when the Liberal-National Party Government enacted the Freedom of Information Act, it put for the first time into that Act a series of sections at the beginning stating the objects and the purposes of the Act. That was why when we were in government we amended the Acts Interpretation Act to require the courts to have more regard to the express purposes stated by the Parliament in the legislation, in the explanatory memoranda and in the relevant second reading speeches of Ministers. In our policy document we state that the Human Rights Commission should be substantially an advisory body. We are committed to retaining the Human Rights Commission and we believe it should be retained fundamentally in its existing form. We do not believe that it should be turned into a body having essentially all full time members and participants. We value the role played by the part time members who bring to the Commission a degree of expertise and of special knowledge and interest which we think is particularly valuable. We do not believe in expanding the Human Rights Commission, in particular when one looks at the Minister's second reading speech, to get into such areas as adjudication on International Labour Organisation conventions. The Minister mentions ILO Convention No. 111 of 1973 dealing with equal opportunity. That in itself raises a whole different issue. That raises the issue of the extent to which it is proper to allow the continuation of Executive power to bind Australia to international instruments and treaties without reference to the elected Parliament for ratification. That is a matter which several honourable senators have addressed from time to time and on which there are notices on the Senate Notice Paper proposing a method whereby the Senate at least, as the House representing the constituent States of the Federation, should have a role in approving or disapproving of Australia's entry into international treaty obligations exclusively by Executive action. I believe that the Human Rights Commission has some achievements to its credit. In its publication of this month entitled `A Summary of the Activities and Achievements of the Human Rights Commission', it is interesting to note that to December 1975 the Commission had received 9,882 complaints. It had received 7,353 complaints about racial discrimination, some 1,300 complaints about sexual discrimination and an additional 1,223 complaints made under the Human Rights Commission Act. It is therefore clear that the Commission in its present form, in the form in which it was established by the Liberal and National parties, has been able to play a significant and useful role in the promotion and protection of human rights under the existing Human Rights Commission Act, under the existing Racial Discrimination Act and under the existing Sex Discrimination Act. Senator Peter Baume —Who appointed the commissioners, do you know? Senator PUPLICK —The commissioners were appointed by a previous government. They were appointed by a Liberal-National Party government and it was our practice in government to appoint to bodies such as the Human Rights Commission only those persons who we regarded as fully competent and qualified to undertake the considerable responsibilities vested in them. I believe that from time to time the Human Rights Commission may have strayed from what we would regard as the straight and narrow. I am looking at a publication entitled `Teaching for Human Rights' by Ralph Pettman, which publication is endorsed by the Human Rights Commission. One would want to be reasonably critical of the text of this particular publication. I do not like the section on page 96 which describes the existing Australian economic and social system. It states: A system like this, that places its first priority upon personal achievement and competitive success, taking only a secondary interest in communal welfare, leaves many individuals at risk. That is absolute nonsense and garbage. We ought to have a system in which the first priority is on personal achievement and competitive success. I know that Senator Ryan does not believe in that. She also believes in the destruction of the decent Australian education system so I am not really concerned about her views. While one can make the odd criticism about the work of the Human Rights Commission, from time to time any organisation such as the Commission will find that it is the centre of some political controversy or vigorous public debate. Nevertheless, the previous Liberal and National Party Government established it to do a job which, in my submission, it has done well and competently. I and the Opposition do not believe, therefore, that it needs to be tinkered with. We have a clear policy commitment to preserve it and to confine it to an advisory role because, exactly as I said about the judiciary, it is not the role of judges nor of the human rights Commission to undertake activities which enforce human rights other than those which are guaranteed, protected and directed by the Parliament. That is what members of Parliament are elected to do. That is the responsibility that they have to discharge. It is simply not right and proper to seek, by enactment of the Bill of Rights Bill, or indeed by expansion of the Human Rights Commission through the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Bill, to take out of the hands of this Parliament fundamental responsibility and accountability for ensuring that human rights are adequately protected. Therefore, we oppose both pieces of legislation. Finally, we will also seek to test the bona fides of the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Democrats by proposing a series of amendments if this Bill passes the second reading stage and if the Senate does not send the legislation to a committee for further examination. We will invite the Labor Party and the Australian Democrats to take cognisance of a couple of fundamental claims: The claim not to be coerced to join a trade union and the claim not to be coerced into allowing one's property to be stolen by the State. We will see just how selective or otherwise are members of the Labor Party and the Australian Democrats about the protection of human rights. We will ask them to explain why the right not to join a trade union and the right to hold private property are not of equal value to the right to express one's opinion by demonstrating in the streets or to express it by use of freedom of speech clauses in the Bill of Rights. In other amendments we will deal with such rights as those to undertake research and scientific study and we will see whether the Government and the Democrats are serious about protecting rights or whether their selectivity about rights is a function of their political ideology. We oppose this Bill, not because we believe that civil and human rights do not need to be protected, but because we believe that they need to be protected in a far more effective, serious and responsible fashion than is proposed by the Government in this package of legislation. Senator BJELKE-PETERSEN(Queensland)(3.44) —I speak today on the Australian Bill of Rights Bill and cognate Bills because I believe that they are some of the most dangerous Bills to have been introduced into the Parliament since Federation. I certainly intend to vote against them. I cannot understand why the Government should decide to bring in this outrageous legislation. This Government is known throughout Australia for causing high interest rates, fuel prices and unemployment and it has been responsible for farmers-as we saw today outside Parliament House-small business people and motorists all over Australia becoming irate. Now we have another very large group of irate people across the nation who are furious about the Australian Bill of Rights. At least 1,200 letters have been sent to my office. I am sure that all other honourable senators will have had many letters about this matter. I spoke at a meeting in Toowoomba on the Bill of Rights. I suggested to the people there that they did not need to send letters to coalition senators because the coalition had made its situation quite clear. We have said that we will oppose the Bill of Rights and associated Bills. The Australian Labor Party has said that it will support them. So the people at the meeting knew where the Labor Party stood. I suggested that they should send letters to the Australian Democrats because, at that time, the Democrats had not made their stand on this matter. Today we heard Senator Haines say that they knew where they were going and that they would support the Bill of Rights. I believe that the Bill of Rights will lay the foundation for a massive shift of power in Australia. The hypocrisy of the Bill is such that it threatens the very rights and freedoms that it purports to protect. It is a blueprint for a socialist reconstruction of the federal system of government, the education system and the judicial system and will limit fundamental liberties such as freedom of expression. There has been no public demand for the Bill of Rights. I cannot understand why the Government felt that it had to bring it in. There has been no public dissatisfaction with current legal and legislative protections of rights and no evidence has been put forward that human rights are under attack. The Federal Government gave Australians no time to consider this legislation, which is supposed to protect their civil liberties, before bringing it into the House of Representatives. The legislation was available for less than a month before it was rammed through the House. The House was given only one day to consider the Bill of Rights and the Government had Parliament sit until 3 a.m. to ensure the prompt passage of the Bill. Inadequate time was also given to State governments, legal bodies, community organisations and other interests to assess the implications of these changes. The Bill omits many important rights. Labor members of Parliament voted against Opposition amendments in the House of Representatives which were intended: First, to confer the widest possible protection on the family; secondly, to protect the right of people to own property, or to be protected from acquisition of private property on other than just terms; thirdly, to protect individuals from discrimination at the work place by reason of their decision not to join a union, or generally to protect their employment opportunities when they freely elect not to be members of a union; fourthly, to protect the right of Australians to freely and fully utilise their natural wealth and to dispose of it as they see fit; and fifthly, to protect the rights of parents and guardians to choose private schools for their children and the right of individuals to establish direct private educational institutions. According to the Constitution which was framed to protect people from power hungry governments, the people have given certain limited powers to the elected government and only in clearly defined areas. The Bill of Rights assumes a reversal of roles with the Government and its appointees, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, being not the servants of the people but their masters. Such an exchange of powers should be, constitutionally, only by the expressed will of the people-that is, by referendum. Tragically the Bill of Rights, by claiming to implement the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, can be forced upon Australia by the misuse of external affairs powers. Much of the International Covenant, I regret to say, reflects communist influence, such as the omission of rights to own private property or to protection from compulsory acquisition of property or government interference in the use of land or housing. These omissions appear to be intentional and it is significant that none of these protections appear in the Australian Bill of Rights either. Mr Hawke and Mr Bowen know only too well that if the Australian public were asked whether they want a Bill of Rights for Australia, such a proposition would be resoundingly defeated, and deservedly so. I received a letter from the Returned Services League-I have no doubt that many other senators have also had correspondence from the RSL-which said: Where is the clamour from the majority of Australians for reform and protection of our rights? Where is the threat to our society that government must legislate? Are Australians' rights and freedoms so threatened as to need such a radical change to our system, such an intrusion into the balance between the States and the Federal government. The League, through its 270,000 members and in association with other ex-service organisations, says that it has not witnessed such demand. Public debate about the issue of a Bill of Rights for Australia has gone on since the early 1900s-ever since Federation-always with the same outcome. The majority of Australians have squashed the idea. The Australian Labor Party has had the introduction of a Bill of Rights in its Party platform since 1969 while the National and Liberal parties have maintained their opposition to it on the basis that Parliament and the judiciary are the best defenders of civil rights. It does not follow, either, that because a country has a Bill of Rights that country is safeguarding its citizens against infringement of those rights. Russia has a Bill of Rights but one could not say that the citizens of Russia enjoy freedom of expression or association. The Bill of Rights is based on an international covenant and the High Court of Australia has given power for the legislation to override any section of the Constitution it feels it needs to in pursuit of its legislative goals. The Bill purports to implement certain provisions of the Inter- national Covenant on Civil and Political Rights but it has omitted in a number of places even some of the Covenant's protective qualifications. It would seem that if an existing right is not specifically included, we do not possess it. What rights do we really now possess? I do not think it would hurt in this discussion to detail some of them. We have the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion and expression; the right to own property; the right to utilise our natural wealth and talents and to dispose of them as we see fit; the right to marry and found a family; the right to rear our children and instruct them in the religion of our choice; the freedom of choice to join a union or an association or not to join a union or association; the right to question those who invade our rights and to invoke the protection of the courts; the right to a public and fair trial; the right to confront and question those who accuse us; and the right to call witnesses and refuse to testify against ourselves. It seems to me that we have so many rights that we do not need a Bill of Rights, and by introducing such a Bill I feel that we are trampling on the rights that we already possess. Sir Robert Menzies said: To live in a common law country is in itself the very best guarantee of the rights of the individual. The Covenant at least attempts a definition of existing rights-for example, rights existing under law, conventions, regulations or customs. Article 2 of the Bill, however, restricts protection to only those rights existing under a law. A whole range of United Nations conventions is being forced onto Australians without consultation with the people, the effect being that existing laws and freedoms are being negated by new regulations. In a sense, by accepting the incorrect notion that the Commonwealth has the authority to guarantee our rights and freedoms, we have already abandoned our claim to possess those rights as a matter of course. I refer to the rights that I have just detailed. We do have those rights under our Constitution. I read an interesting editorial in our local South Burnett paper headed `Rights . . . or Wrongs'- Senator Button —You probably wrote it, too, as well as reading it. Senator BJELKE-PETERSEN —No, I did not write it but it does accord with what I think, and it will do the honourable senator good to hear exactly what it says. Senator Button —I will bet you get another one next week, too. Senator BJELKE-PETERSEN —I hope that it writes about my speech. I shall send it a copy and hope that it will be written up well in the local South Burnett paper. This is what the editorial said: Once you begin to define people's rights there is a danger you will limit them and that alone is reason enough to question real reasons for the Bill. Consider the situation where, under the Bill, a complaint is made against you to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission. This proposed Bill empowers the commission to make you attend an inquiry, maintain secrecy about the person making the complaint; deny you the right to be represented at a hearing by legal counsel; and could require you to produce any documents, whether private or otherwise. In addition, the commission could also deny you the right to not answer questions on the basis of self-incrimination ($1000 fine or three months in jail). In cases where the commission makes a decision against you and you want to appeal to the courts . . . forget it because no appeal rights exist under this so-called bill of rights, a direct breach of existing common law rights regarding the presumption of innocence, the right to remain silent and the right to legal counsel. The bill ensures a right to ``join'' a trade union but not the right to ``not'' join one. There is also no right to that fundamental part of our society-the right to private property. However, I did hear Senator Haines say that the Australian Democrats might agree to a little amendment to put that in. It was very nice of her to say that; it is about the only thing the Democrats said this morning that I agreed with. The editorial continues: The `Bill' makes it easier for activists to engage in wholesale social engineering, and it is a direct assault on our basic traditions. The writer of the editorial in the South Burnett Times deserves commendation. Senator MacGibbon —A mature mind. Senator BJELKE-PETERSEN —A mature mind indeed. Common law traditions enshrine all the traditions and rights that the Bill is supposed to protect, so if the Australian people accept that the Government has the power to grant them rights, they simultaneously open the way for the present or a future government or a government body such as the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission to regulate, modify or interpret those rights according to its own ideological commitment of the day. The Bill is intended to override the protection of the Constitution and that highlights why I maintain the need for the whole issue to be put to referendum so that the people can decide whether or not they want a Bill of Rights. Constitutionally the Federal Government possesses no powers other than those given to it by the people, which, of course, is a very good thing. The current misuse of the external affairs power is an exception and the only means by which these powers may properly be extended is by referendum, which is exactly what the Federal Government should be doing, as I have already said. However, this Bill of Rights assumes that the Federal Government has the constitutional power to give rights to people. Of course, it has no such power. Indeed, it would be an intrusion into areas outside the power delegated to it to do so. To be quite blunt about it, the Bill of Rights seeks to demolish our federal system of government, destroy the Constitution, wipe out States' rights and centralise all power in Canberra. I think that we on this side of the Senate realise that it is the policy of the Australian Labor Party to do away with State governments. In fact the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) mentioned that in some of his Boyer lectures. The rights of all State governments and local government councils will come under direct attack from the Federal Government under the new Bill of Rights and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Bill 1985. This Commission will have the power to compel State and local government employees to appear before it, to answer questions and to produce documents under pain of imprisonment or fine without automatic right to legal representation. Masquerading as protection, the Bill will expose the ordinary citizen to the almost unlimited potential of the Commission to deprive him or her of privacy, liberty, freedom of speech and, ultimately, of the many privileges that we take for granted in a free society. This Bill and the associated Bills give far too much power to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. I was rather hoping that the Australian Democrats would join the Opposition in voting against these Bills so that this new Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission would not be needed. But I regret that they have said they will not go along with us. Senator MacGibbon —The Labor Party wants their support. Whatever the Labor Party wants, the Democrats do. Senator BJELKE-PETERSEN —It seems to me as though that could be the answer. Religious freedom is not guaranteed. It is omitted from Article 8, restricted in Article 5 to profession and practice within a religious community and qualified in Article 9 to be the right not to be coerced into adopting a religious belief. I believe that the latter is a very different thing from religious freedom. Parents' rights are not guaranteed. The only place where parents are mentioned is in the last sub-section of Article 14 in the Rights of the Child and then it only states: The Liberty of parents . . . to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions is to be respected. I do not think we need a Bill of Rights to grant us the right to be married and to found a family. In fact, a family is not even defined. I do not believe that we need a Bill of Rights to grant our children the right to freedom of expression without interference and regardless of frontiers, whatever that means-that is in Article 7-and the freedom of association, Article 11, at an age to be determined by some quasi-judicial human rights commission. The Attorney-General (Mr Lionel Bowen) has said that we should not worry about the commissioners that the Government will appoint to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. He said: `We will make sure that they are nice people'. I do not think that Mr Bowen is a very nice person to bring in a Bill of rights anyway. In fact, I have said around Queensland that I class it as a Bill of wrongs. That is something that I really feel very strongly about. The handing over of power to a commission which is not elected by a democratic process undermines the whole structure of our society. I can understand the passage of such a Bill of Rights in Warsaw Pact countries where the people do not enjoy the freedoms that we take for granted. But for any government to bring forward this kind of suggestion and term it `rights' is to gravely misjudge the common sense of our community and reflects badly on the intentions of the governing body involved. The Bill of Rights legislation is completely unnecessary in a country such as Australia. It merely outlines rights and freedoms which have already existed in this country and, beyond that, it takes away many of the rights which we have known as a matter of course. I oppose the Bill of Rights on the grounds that it is being introduced and forced on the people of Australia against their will. We do not need it and most people do not want it. Senator Button —What about the right to equality of voting power, Senator? That is a right which is fairly important, isn't it? It is not very important in Queensland, is it? Senator BJELKE-PETERSEN —I believe that in Queensland we have a system-- Senator Button —You are different from everybody else, I know. Senator BJELKE-PETERSEN —I believe that the system that was originally brought in to Queensland by a Labor government many years ago certainly gives people-the 1,500,000 people, I might mention, who live away from the south-east corner of Queensland-a right to reasonable representation by their members of parliament. Look at the large areas that the honourable member for Maranoa (Mr Ian Cameron) and the honourable member for Kennedy (Mr Katter) represent in the other House. Gracious me! I do not know whether Senator Button realises that the area of Kennedy and Maranoa is about seven times the size of Victoria and Senator Button is one of twelve senators who represent Victoria. I feel that people are entitled to have reasonable and fair representation. That is what I believe they get in Queensland and that is why so many people from other States want to come and live in our State. I just leave that matter with the Senate. I believe that this whole issue should be put to a referendum so that the people of Australia can be the best judges of what they want. I oppose this legislation and I condemn the Labor Government for the underhanded way in which the whole process of its introduction has been handled. I conclude with a quote from Sir Harry Gibbs, the Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, who on 12 December 1984 said: If society is tolerant and rational it does not need a Bill of Rights. If it is not, no Bill of Rights will preserve it. Senator MacGIBBON(Queensland)(4.9) —I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned. Motion (by Senator Grimes) proposed: That the Senate do now adjourn. Senator REID(Australian Capital Territory)(4.10) —I would like the Minister for Community Services (Senator Grimes) to convey a question to the Attorney-General (Mr Lionel Bowen). I am doing this at the adjournment stage because I wish also to incorporate in Hansard two letters so that they may be included with it. I have had recent correspondence with the Attorney- General about what amount to delays in court procedures in the Australian Capital Territory. He responded to one of the matters I raised but I do not think he has found a solution. The matter related to a judgment in the Supreme Court. It was well over 12 months from when the case was heard but no judgment had been given. That, of course, is very distressing for the parties involved. The two letters I wish to incorporate today each relate to the functioning of the coroners court. I have copies of those letters from which I have deleted the address and the signature of the constituents because I do not believe it is necessary or reasonable for those details to be made public. One refers to the death of a daughter on 24 June 1985 in relation to which there has still been no coronial inquiry and the girl's parents have not been able to obtain a death certificate or get the matter completed or to find out why the matter has been so delayed. I am sure the Minister will appreciate how distressing this must be. I am sure he will also appreciate that there must be some occasions when the coronial matters are complicated and take a long time to resolve. If that is the case, I think there must be some means by which parents or other relatives could be advised of what the problems are and how long the delays are likely to be. The other letter relates to an inquest into the death of the mother-in-law of a constituent who wrote to me about the matter. The death occurred in December 1984 and the relatives were complaining particularly of what occurred at the court on 21 October 1985. They were told to be at the court at 9.45 a.m. At 4 p.m. the same day they were told that the matter would not be dealt with that day. Again, in the circumstances of being reminded so closely of the death of the relative, it was a very distressing occasion. Is it that the coronial section of the court is not adequately staffed? Is it that the police in that area are not able to maintain the work load? I ask the Attorney-General to look into the functioning of the coroners court. If he finds that a lack of police efficiency is causing these delays, I ask him to take up the matter with the Special Minister of State (Mr Young) and ask him to intervene. It seems to me that the problems which are being faced by people indicate that this matter needs to be examined. I hope that he will take action of that matter as quickly as possible. I seek leave to incorporate in Hansard two letters, one addressed to the Chief Magistrate of the Australian Capital Territory Law Courts and the other to the Attorney-General, so that without my having to read them in detail the information will be available to the Senate. Leave granted. The letters read as follows- Mr Cahill Chief Magistrate ACT Law Courts PO Box 370 CANBERRA CITY ACT 2601 Sir, I am writing to you with a complaint of procedures at the Coroner's Court held on Monday 21 October 1985. My wife was informed by letter, dated 9 October 1985, that an inquest into the death of her mother would be held on Monday, 21 October 1985 commencing at 10.00 am. I decided to attend the hearing on my wife's behalf and duly arrived at the Coroner's Court at 9.45 am, only to be told that nobody could tell me in which order the cases would be held, and that I would have to wait until the case was called. At 4.05 pm, after all of the other cases had been dealt with, the Detective investigating my Mother-in-Law's death (Det. J. Matheison) entered the courtroom, only to be told that the case would have to be re-scheduled for a date to be fixed. I was informed verbally the following morning by the Coroner's officer, Sgt. J. Nolan, that the medical evidence for the case had in fact been heard, and that the remainder of the case would have taken no more than 10 or 15 minutes. I was told verbally in August of this year, that toxicology tests in relation to my Mother-in-Law's death were done on 16 July 1985, some seven months after her death, but that the date of the inquest could not be set until the toxicology report was prepared, and the toxicologist (who I understand now works in Sydney) would be available. The earliest date was 21 October 1985, some 10 months after my Mother-in-Law's death. My Mother-in-Law died in December 1984, and under the circumstances, I hope you can appreciate that this had a very detrimental effect on my wife, both mentally and physically. Without an inquest, we have no death certificate, and without a death certificate we have had delays in the administration of my Mother-in-Law's estate. These delays do nothing except aggravate the mental health of my wife. Now, my wife and I find we have to wait again for another inquest, with no guarantee that the case will be heard anyway. Surely cases could be scheduled in order of date of death, but with simple cases scheduled first. Most of yesterday appeared to be taken up with a case involving two deaths as a result of a traffic accident which occurred on 26 March 1985, 3 months after my Mother-in-Law's death, and judging by the number of witnesses and solicitors involved, it appeared to be a relatively complex case. Mr Cahill, I am sick of waiting, my wife is getting sick from waiting, when can we have our case heard? Yours sincerely cc to: Attorney General, Senator M. E. Reid, The Hon, S. M. Ryan, Mr John Langmore, MP, Commonwealth Ombudsman The Hon Lionel Bowen MP Attorney-General Parliament House Canberra, A.C.T. 2600 Dear Mr Bowen, I am writing to you concerning the operations of the Coroners' Court in the ACT, or more specifically the non-operation of the Court. Following the death of my daughter in Royal Canberra Hospital on 24 June 1985, a coronial enquiry was necessary to establish the cause of death before a death certificate could be issued. As some seven months have now elapsed it is reasonable to expect that what should have been a reasonably simple administrative task would have been completed by the coroner by now. That is not the case and I am advised that there is something of a backlog of cases in the Coroners' Court. As you can no doubt appreciate a delay of this nature is quite upsetting for parents and relatives of the deceased. There is also the problem that funeral benefits and so on cannot be claimed unless a death certificate is available. I understand that in certain cases this has led to bereaved relatives suffering unnecessary financial hardship. Being an officer of the Department of Finance, I am well aware of the resource constraints that face public sector managers but I would seriously question the competence and managerial ability of any public service manager and, indeed, Minister who allowed the situation to deteriorate to the extent that it obviously has in the case of the operations of the Coroners' Court in the Australian Capital Territory. I urge you to immediately institute the necessary remedial action. I am sending copies of this letter to Senator Margaret Reid, Mr John Langmore, Mr John Spender and to Mr Graham Downie of the Canberra Times. Yours sincerely, Senator LEWIS(Victoria)(4.15) —On Tuesday, 11 February, I placed on notice a question asking, firstly, how many serving and former Royal Australian Navy personnel have died from cancer or cancer related diseases since July 1984 and, secondly, how many of these personnel served at any time at naval shore radio stations with high-powered radio transmitters. The Navy is what one might call a closed ship, and I say that without intending to make a pun. But I understand that at present the Navy is buzzing with concern about a number of men who have died in the last 12 months or so of cancer. On investigation I understand it turns out that they have all worked at some time or other at naval shore radio stations which have high-powered radio transmitters. This has caused Navy personnel suddenly to start to panic about whether there is some relationship between cancer and the nature of their work. This has also caused those who had worked on radio stations to panic as to whether there might be some direct relationship. I do not want to cause any panic in the community generally or in the naval community-quite the contrary. I do not intend in any way to raise this matter as scare tactics. It may very well be that such deaths have only to do with the normal proportion of people in the community who at a particular age would die of cancer anyway. I also wish to make clear that I have no knowledge of what types of cancer are involved, so I am not able to say whether they are the same sorts of cancers and that there appears to be any relationship. On the contrary. This matter has been raised with me and I have endeavoured to pour cold water on the questioner by pointing out to him that three females of my acquaintance have died of cancer in the last 12 months. That may relate to the age of those females and percentages within the community. Nevertheless, I understand that there is grave concern among naval personnel who have served at shore naval radio stations with high-powered radio transmitters. I understand that it has been common practice to place an unconnected neon tube near radio masts as a transmission warning and that these tubes light up during transmission-a good warning of transmissions in progress but also illustrative of the power of such emissions. In posing the question, what I seek from the Minister for Community Services (Senator Grimes) is some assurance that the Government will cause to be undertaken a thorough investigation into the naval and ex-naval personnel who have contracted cancer or cancer related diseases to see whether there is any service related cause of high incidence of cancer, or particular forms of cancer, among serving and ex-naval personnel who have served at such naval radio stations, and whether there is a higher incidence among such personnel than among other naval personnel and ex-naval personnel. Even that, of course, would not resolve the issue. There may be other service related causes. For example, I understand that it is common knowledge that in the past in most Australian warships asbestos was extensively used in lagging and insulation to reduce sweating of steel. I wonder whether there is any indication that the incidence of asbestos related cancer is higher among ex-naval personnel than in the other services. In fact, some comparisons should be made between ex-naval personnel and perhaps other people in similar healthy groups, such as former Air Force and Army personnel. Of course, the fitness standards for entry to the three Services would place the general health of these serviceman above the national average. I am also reminded of other causes of exposure that cannot be ruled out in view of recent Swedish research into low level radiation and non-ionising radiation, such as overexposure to radiation emissions from cathode ray tubes, visual display terminals and radar emissions. It may be that the overall environment of living in a ship provides a combination of hazards that have not been identified. On the other hand-I hope that this is true-the number of recent cancer related deaths which have caused these ex-naval personnel concern is simply coincidental and some investigation will indicate that naval personnel are not exposed to any more hazard than is the population as a whole. I ask the Minister to seek from his colleague the Minister for Defence (Mr Beazley) information from both the United Kingdom and United States authorities to ascertain whether their navies have conducted any research in these areas and, in general, to undertake some in-depth examination of this issue as expeditiously as possible in the hope that these concerns will be relieved. Senator GRIMES(Tasmania-Minister for Community Services)(4.19) —in reply-I will certainly pass on the requests of both honourable senators and I think both issues are important. As a medical practitioner, I have memories of the treatment of medical practitioner witnesses by the courts over the years. I vividly remember one of my colleagues giving up two days work to go to Sydney to give evidence at a coroners inquiry only to be told, having sat there for four hours, that the matter had been adjourned and he could come back in a month's time. Similar things have happened to me. As Senator Reid implied, when this sort of thing happens in a coroners court, it is just not acceptable. Such courts should be conducted with expedition and sensitivity, and people should not be treated in the way people were apparently treated in this case. I shall seek the answers she requires from the Attorney-General (Senator Lionel Bowen). Senator Lewis raises more difficult problems. I suppose that the easiest problem to investigate of the problems Senator Lewis mentioned would be whether or not naval personnel have a high incidence of asbestos-related tumours. Mesothelioma is a very distinct tumour. The incidence of it could be detected. Any significant increase in incidence is likely to be related to asbestos. The possibility of high energy radio and communication waves causing carcinomas has been looked at overseas and is being looked at now. In some towns in the United States close to sources of such radiation there have been suggestions that there is a higher incidence of certain forms of carcinoma. I will certainly get the Minister for Defence (Mr Beazley) to answer the questions raised by Senator Lewis about the possible increased incidence amongst Navy personnel, in particular, shore-based Navy personnel. But, as Senator Lewis implied, one would need to go elsewhere to get further information because of the very small population group involved. I am always reminded of the past and the relationship between disease and environmental factors. Not only cancers are involved. They are but one example. The relationship has been drawn to the attention of the medical profession by people outside it who have noticed co- incidences of this type. Thalidomide was one example, as was the incidence of cancer amongst the watch dial painters caused by radiation early in this century. Both were drawn to the attention of the medical profession by people outside it. For those who are interested, I mention that the coincidence of kuru and the eating of human flesh in New Guinea was obviously known by all the people who had lived in the area for 40 years, but it took the medical profession and the medical investigators about six years to believe them. So it is important that we investigate such claims. I will refer the matter to the Minister for Defence. Question resolved in the affirmative. Senate adjourned at 4.23 p.m. The following papers were tabled: Air Navigation (Charges) Act-Regulations- Statutory Rules 1986 No. 14. Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court Act-Rules of Court-Statutory Rules 1986 No. 8. Banks (Shareholdings) Act-Regulations-Statutory Rules 1986 Nos 10, 11, 12, 13. Commonwealth Employees (Redeployment and Retirement) Act-Regulations-Statutory Rules 1986 Nos 4, 5. Customs Act-Notice 1986 No. 1, pursuant to sub-section 164 (5A), dated 31 January 1986. Excise Act-Notice 1986 No. 1, pursuant to sub-section 78A (5A), dated 31 January 1986. Export Control Act-Orders 1985-No. 12-Prescribed Goods (General) (Amendment). Family Law Act-Rules of Court-Statutory Rules 1986 No. 6. Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act-Regulations-Statutory Rules 1986 No. 1. Merit Protection (Australia Government Employees) Act-Regulations-Statutory Rules 1986 No. 3. Public Service Act-Regulations-Statutory Rules 1986 No. 7. Rural Industries Research Act-Regulations- Statutory Rules 1986 No. 2. Seat of Government (Administration) Act-Ordinances 1985-No. 69-Health Authority. Superannuation Act-Regulations-Statutory Rules 1986 Nos 9, 15. The following answers to questions were circulated: (Question No. 101) Senator Bolkus asked the Minister representing the Minister for Defence, upon notice, on 20 March 1985: (1) Is the AN/GSC-39 v (1) terminal (formerly designated AN/MSC-611) which was scheduled to be completed in August 1982 (see Hansard, 20 October 1981, p. 2255) now operational; if so, when did it formally become operational; if not, when is it now scheduled to become operational. (2) Has the AN/TSC-54 terminal at North West Cape been removed; if so, when was it removed, and to where was it removed; if not, is there a scheduled date for its removal and to where is it planned to be removed. Senator Gareth Evans —The Minister for Defence has provided the following answer to the honourable senator's question: (1) Yes, on 9 July 1984. (2) Yes. It was decommissioned in August 1984 and was shipped by merchant ship to the Satellite Communications Agency at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, USA, on 15 February 1985. The four diesel emergency generators that were part of the AN/TSC-54 system, however, remained in Australia and were transferred to the RAAF on 6 September 1985. (Question No. 550) Senator Colston asked the Minister for Education, upon notice, on 16 September 1985: What action has been taken or what action does the Government intend to take in response to the recommendation in paragraph 4.124, Part 4 of the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission Report for the 1985-87 triennium? Senator Ryan —The answer to the honourable senator's question is as follows: The recommendation proposing a review of courses in advanced education forms part of the advice of the Advanced Education Council (AEC) of the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission to the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission itself. Before providing advice to Government on the development of tertiary education in 1985-87 the Commission took into account the views put to it by each of its three sectoral councils. In this case the Commission provided specific advice to the Government on this particular AEC proposal. The Commission took the view that a major review of this type would not be timely given the need for advanced education to provide for major growth during the next few years. It did however invite the AEC to monitor developments in course structures and awards. In response the AEC established a working party on course related matters and is continuing to monitor developments in this area. Moreover the Australian Educational Council has taken steps to establish the Australian Council on Tertiary Awards which has taken over the work of the former Australian Council on Awards in Advanced Education and also has a comparable role in respect of TAFE awards. The new Council's wider charter will enable co-ordination between the advanced education and TAFE sectors in the nomenclature used for awards and in the standards of courses leading to those awards. (Question No. 714) Senator Bolkus asked the Minister representing the Minister for Health, upon notice, on 27 November 1985: (1) What will be the status of individuals while administrative decisions or errors are being challenged, and will the onus of proof be reversed so that individuals are guilty or at least inconvenienced until proven innocent, and denied benefits while the information contained on their social security files is being re-examined for errors under the proposed National Identification System. (2) How is it possible to ensure that individuals receive only one ID card. (3) Will it be possible to develop tamper resistant ID cards; if so, how. (4) Does the presumption of validity surrounding ID cards in actual fact magnify the potential for crime, particularly as an integrated information system may allow a far wider range of benefits to be gained than under the present multifaceted system. Senator Grimes —The Minister for Health has provided the following answer to the honourable senator's question: (1) to (4) I refer the honourable senator to my answer to Question No. 713. Senate Hansard 11.2.86 (p. 123/124). (Question No. 715) Senator Bolkus asked the Minister representing the Minister for Health, upon notice, on 27 November 1985: (1) Will there be a definition of what constitutes personal information under the proposed National Identification System. (2) Who will be responsible for protecting personal information. (3) How will privacy be guaranteed in the handling and transfer of information, such as ensuring that the media of communication are secure. (4) How will situations such as random matching be prevented where searches of an individual's record can be undertaken without a specific request and without an individual's knowledge. (5) What procedures will guarantee an individual the right of access to challenge and correct their personal information. Senator Grimes —The Minister for Health has provided the following answer to the honour- able senator's question: (1) to (5) I refer the honourable senator to my answer to Question No. 713. Senate Hansard 11.2.86 (p. 123/124). (Question No. 716) Senator Bolkus asked the Minister representing the Minister for Health, upon notice, on 27 November 1985: (1) How will identities be verified, and will this rely on existing forms of identification such as birth certificates under the proposed National Identification System. (2) What mechanisms will exist to prevent the creation of false identities or multiple identities. (3) How will identities be verified in the future, particularly if access is to be granted to personal records. Senator Grimes —The Minister for Health has provided the following answer to the honourable senator's question: (1) to (3) I refer the honourable senator to my answer to Question No. 713. Senate Hansard 11.2.86 (p. 123/124). (Question No. 717) Senator Bolkus asked the Minister representing the Minister for Health, upon notice, on 27 November 1985: (1) What principles will govern the collection of information to ensure that records will be correct and up to date under the proposed National Identification System. (2) Will similar criteria be used for transferring information between organisations to retain accuracy. (3) Will guidelines be developed to control the storage, handling and output of information such as releasing information in a personally identifiable form. (4) How can access to information be controlled, and that control policed. (5) What guarantees will be provided that access to a wider variety of agencies be restricted in the future. (6) Will there be legislation to define the rights of access of particular agencies to a national data base and on what occasions would access be justified. (7) Will criteria be developed to establish the eligibility of public and private sector organisations to share information. (8) What mechanisms will exist to prevent linkage of government data bases to private sector organisations and to prevent the establishment of private sector data bases which include the ID number. (9) What are the responsibilities of the record keeper to an individual, particularly when personal information is passed to a third party. (10) How will abuses of the system be detected, such as an organisation accessing information which it is not entitled to have. Senator Grimes —The Minister for Health has provided the following answer to the honourable senator's question: (1) to (10) I refer the honourable senator to my answer to Question No. 713. Senate Hansard 11.2.86 (P123/124). (Question No. 718) Senator Bolkus asked the Minister representing the Minister for Health, upon notice, on 27 November 1985: (1) Under the proposed National Identification System how would an identity card, in practice, catch tax evaders and how will this be more effective than action on trusts and $2.00 companies. (2) Are existing systems capable of improvement to combat tax evasion and social security fraud; if so, in what way. Senator Grimes —The Minister for Health has provided the following answer to the honourable senator's question: (1) to (2) I refer the honourable senator to my answer to Question No. 713. Senate Hansard 11.2.86 (P123/124). (Question No. 737) Senator Reid asked the Minister for Education, upon notice, on 2 December 1985: (1) How many courses available at the Canberra College of Advanced Education have- (a) diploma accreditation; and (b) Degree accreditation. (2) Is the Nurses Education course to be a degree course; if not, what aspects of the course disqualify it from such accreditation. Subsequently on 3 December 1985 during the debate on the States Grants (Nurse Education Transfer Assistance) Bill 1985, Senator Reid asked for a list of diploma courses at the Canberra College of Advanced Education. Senator Ryan —The answer to the honourable senator's question is as follows: (1) Of courses finally accredited and on offer at the Canberra College of Advanced Education in 1986, 34 have been accredited as degrees and four as diplomas. One degree course and one diploma course are on offer but have not yet been finally accredited. The diploma courses are: Diploma of Applied Science in Nursing Science. Diploma of Teaching. Diploma of Teaching in Further Education. Diploma of Teaching in Technical and Further Education. Diploma of Applied Science in Community Health Nursing (not finally accredited). (2) The Canberra College of Advanced Education applied to have a basic nurse education course approved at the degree level. At its October 1985 meeting, the Australian Education Council resolved that the basic award in nurse education in colleges of advanced education throughout Australia should be a three year course leading to a diploma. The Canberra College of Advanced Education has received approval to offer a diploma level course as the basic award in nurse education. Since what is being developed is a national system of college-based nurse training, the approval for the CCAE course is in line with developments in the States. Basic nurse education will be introduced into the advanced education sector at diploma level in all States. Courses are approved for offering at a particular level before they are submitted for accreditation consideration. The accreditation of basic nurse education courses and their recognition at diploma level reflects the content and structure of each course as a whole in relation to the nationally accepted Guidelines for the National Registration of Awards in Advanced Education as issued by the Australian Council on Territory Awards. Individual subjects within proposed courses are not accredited.