A Just Australia speech to the United Nations

21 April 2004

With Australia chairing this year's session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, the question arises as how we Australians can take a position of authority in this area.

In fact, the question on everyone's lips is "what is wrong with Australia?" This is not a reflection on the fine technical job that our diplomats are doing in keeping the debates at this six-week session moving through the agenda.

With Australia in the chair, it's clear how much is known worldwide about the human rights situation, and frankly it's embarrassing how much our good name has been run down.

As this session gets underway, there are over a thousand people in immigration detention in Australia, with over 450 detained for more than two years, and over two hundred for more than three years. A further 267 people are in detention on the island of Nauru, for more than 30 months, unless they were born in detention. 146 children detained by Australian policy, mostly long termers, mostly less than 12 years of age. And all of this is not some secret we have kept within our borders.

We Australians are now known in these world forums for places like Pt Hedland, Woomera, Baxter and Nauru. For the troops storming the Tampa, lies about children overboard, the sinking without rescue of 352 people from the so-called SIEV-X in our coastal surveillance zone.

I last attended a UN Assembly in 1988 in New York, and was very proud of how I and other Australians were received by people from across the world. We were part of a group of Western nations committed to improvements and to better human rights machinery, like the Convention on the Rights of the Child and initiatives for disarmament.

There was no doubt at that time that we were closely aligned with the United States, but we were independent enough to also embrace the United Nations, and to seek a role of leadership in promoting human rights. Our government's work towards an international treaty to provide greater protection to children was tireless and ultimately effective, with the adoption by the UN of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Australia was so identified with that convention that some nations referred to it as our treaty.

Back in 1988, I had the task of explaining what was then the Draft Convention in the Australian community, and encouraging support for ratification, which Australia did the next year, in record time. It simply did not occur to me that my country would ever get to a state of being so fundamentally in breach of this new Convention, through the mistreatment of children seeking asylum here.

At this forum, there have been some extreme comments made about Australia. In debates here we have heard that Australia has the worst human rights record; that we have a record as bad as Libya's. The problem is that even reasoned voices can point to continued inhumane and degrading treatment of the most vulnerable in Australia's care. There is way too much substance to the criticisms of extremists for my liking.

And how Australia can urge other nations to respect the rule of law, when we are in the Chair of a Commission whose rulings we regularly flout, is beyond me. Unfortunately it is not just me who is dismayed, with many delegates expressing their concerns about what a dangerous path Australia is taking.

Like many Australians at home, there are a number of delegates and representatives of non-government organisations here that don't take what is happening in Australia as seriously as they might. Because of our past reputation, because Australians are generally seen as pretty decent, we are given the benefit of the doubt. But as the full impact of the long term detention is understood, and with the years mounting, more and more are appreciating that this is not something that can be ignored. When people hear that there are still asylum seekers from that Tampa boat still in detention; that there is still no security in Australia for the refugees from Afghanistan and Iraq; and that there are still 150 children detained, then there is a growing anger.

We have described the efforts of tens of thousands of Australians to counter our Government's mistreatment of refugees, and this is making a big impact here in Geneva. I appreciate that it comes as a relief to many that Australians are not all as miserable as our Government presents us.

We need your international attention, support and statements of concern to remind us that there is a framework of international law and principle that should be guiding us when Australian decency is found wanting. Australians have given so much to this international system of justice over the years - now we need some guidance and criticism in return. I know there are many other Australians who are looking for this honest criticism now, to help us to change the practices that we find so offensive to our way of life.