Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I take this opportunity to thank the member for Lyne for enabling us to record the importance of this international organisation, Amnesty International. I have been proudly a member over something like 36 years. I was certainly engaged when the parliamentary group was formed, as was alluded to by the member for Pearce. I joined the organisation, strangely, because of the encouragement of people who, unexpectedly, would be my friends—the late Bill Wentworth, the late Dick Klugman, Tony Lamb, David Hamer, Alan Missen, Michael Hodgman. This was an organisation that could adopt the cause of fighting Right and Left dictatorships around the world and did so without fear or favour. Its core principles were of such fundamental importance. Who could disagree?—opposition to the death penalty, focusing on the use of torture, prisoners of conscience. Amnesty was a courageous organisation. I can remember Michael Hodgman railing against the advice they gave us that they would not adopt Nelson Mandela as a prisoner of conscience. Why? Because he would not eschew the use of violence in pursuit of his political objectives. They held so strongly to those sorts of judgments that they would take courageous decisions.

I was very proud of the parliamentary group formed by the efforts of Lenore Ryan from Victoria. She was brought here by Tony Lamb. I held early office, as did David Hamer, but one of our most courageous members was the late Alan Missen, who even went to the former Soviet Union and brought out some of the important records of people like Solzhenitsyn and the like to understand what was happening in that regime. We would take up the causes regularly and vociferously by visiting missions and talking to them about human rights issues. We had the opportunity, with the Bush visit to Australia—not George Jr, George Sr—to raise the issue of capital punishment in United States of America. As you can gather from my comments, I am very proud of this organisation. I have proudly worn its badge over a long period of time. Not everybody has been comfortable with that and the member for Werriwa spoke about that in part. I think Amnesty, when it gets caught up by some groups who say, 'It is such an important organisation—if they adopt our cause as well,' weakens its principal mission. Not every asylum seeker is a prisoner of conscience—some may be—but by running issues that others ought to be running I think Amnesty is diminished. I spent a lot of time travelling at various times. I was in Trafalgar Square and I saw some rallies being organised by Amnesty—and what were they on? Domestic violence. Domestic violence is abhorrent and people ought to run it as an issue, but it is not one of Amnesty's core issues, in my view; yet it is now one of those issues it takes up which detracts from its principal purpose.

If you get the impression that I agreed very much with the member for Werriwa, you are right. I am opposed to capital punishment. I abhor the use of torture. I believe we should work conscientiously in relation to prisoners of conscience. If we keep that focus, this organisation, which I have been part of for so long, will contribute positively not just for another 50 years but for tens of decades into the future, while ever there is a need, regrettably, to be working on those causes.

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