By Stephen de Tarczynski
MELBOURNE, Jan 8 2008 (IPS)

On Jan. 1, Victoria became the first Australian state to implement a human rights charter. But while the charter has been heralded as a boon for individuals’ rights, a government-appointed human rights ‘champion’ argues that its focus is too narrow.

“The Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities formally protects 20 important rights and, by implementing this charter, we are sending a clear message about the way in which we in Victoria wish to live and be treated – with dignity and respect,” said Victoria’s Deputy Premier and Attorney-General, Rob Hulls, in a statement released just prior to the full implementation of the charter.

The adoption of the charter by Victoria is a first for an Australian state, but follows in the footsteps of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), which implemented its own human rights charter in 2006.

The main purpose of Victoria’s charter is to ensure that the state government makes laws fairly. Grouped under four key principles – freedom, respect, equality and dignity – government departments and public bodies are now required to observe the human rights of Victorians when laws are made, policies set and services provided.

“Victoria is at an historic stage in the protection of human rights in our community,” said Hulls.

According to the website of the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission – an independent statutory body that reports to the Victorian Parliament via the state attorney-general – the charter focuses on “getting things right at a planning and policy stage, rather than awarding compensation.”

And although the charter enables human rights arguments to be raised in courts and tribunals, a breach of the charter’s principles does not allow for an additional right to legal action. However, the Victorian ombudsman now has the power to investigate whether administrative action by government and statutory authorities undermines a human right.

Father Peter Norden, associate director of Jesuit Social Services and one of the appointed human rights “champions”, told IPS that he sees the implementation of a human rights charter by Australia’s second-most populous state as a beginning.

“I think it’s really required, probably, more at a national level than a state level,” he says.

With the newly elected Rudd government in power, Norden is hopeful that a human rights charter will be introduced federally. “Our previous federal government (under the leadership of John Howard) wouldn’t have been oriented in that direction. It could be that the new Australian (Rudd) government is and hopefully in time will follow the lead that the Victorian government has set,” he says.

Australia remains the only western democracy without a national bill of rights, although support for a federal charter of rights continues to garner support. Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser – like Norden, also a human rights “champion” – has spoken out on the need for Australia to enact a bill of rights that protects individuals and restrains governments.

Others, including Democrats Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, the New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties and Amnesty International Australia have also called for such legislation.

There have also been moves in other states, namely Tasmania and Western Australia, to introduce a human rights charter similar to those in the ACT and Victoria.

While acknowledging that Victoria’s charter requires politicians and public officials “to be mindful of the need to respect human rights,” Father Norden argues that its focus is too narrow.

“I would like to see the charter broadened to include social rights, like access to good healthcare and good education. But that, of course, would have huge implications in terms of budgetary consequences,” he says.

Norden says that Victorian Premier, Labor’s John Brumby, argued strongly against the inclusion of social rights in Victoria’s charter due to the “financial implications of including things like education, housing and health.”

Norden is critical of the unequal access that Victorians and other Australians have to healthcare and education. “Those who can afford to pay get access to good education,” he says.

“We have a two-tiered system of public education in Victoria and, dare I say, in Australia, and it’s largely the private school system where people pay fees that provides access to much better education and therefore access to the professions,” argues Norden.

Apart from making Australia “a much better place,” the inclusion in the charter of such social provisions would mean, according to Norden, that human rights would be better respected in Victoria.

“It would mean that there wouldn’t be a breakdown in society and there wouldn’t be the sort of social divisions that we see developing in Australia today,” he says.

But while human rights such as freedom of movement, expression, assembly and association, as well as certain protections such as privacy and reputation, must now be taken into account by Victorian governments and officials, these rights are not inalienable.

For example, security threats or states of emergency can take precedence over the rights outlined in the charter. Norden says that such extreme situations can warrant the limiting of individual rights “in order to ensure that the rights of the wider community are also protected.”

But he slams the imposition of control orders – whereby courts impose limitations on an individual’s liberty, such as restricting movement, association and privacy – on people who have completed their custodial sentence. Those placed on former Guantánamo Bay detainee, David Hicks, and others, including sex offenders, are viewed by Norden as an abuse of human rights.

He says that there are contradictions with the way the charter has been implemented.

Norden argues that the charter should be able to be used in a way that ensures that the rights of individuals placed under control orders are respected, so that people “can’t be held in quasi-prison environments for fear of what they might do in the future.”

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