Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

One of the great privileges of being the member for Goldstein is that you're able, every time you mention the name, to honour the legacy of a suffragette, a woman by the name of Vida Goldstein who fought for the right of women to be able to vote, buy property and enter marriages on the same terms as men. She embodies part of Australia's human rights legacy because she is part of the continuing journey of our great country towards a greater perfection of pursuit of justice, freedom and fairness for all.

Of course, this great country has so many legacies that we can be proud of. Everybody thinks about New Zealand as the first country that allowed women the right to vote, but we were the first country in the world to allow women the right to vote and to stand for parliament so that you, Deputy Speaker Wicks, could reign over us at this very moment. We have a proud legacy of confronting our difficult past with regard to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and taking pathways to address those past injustices. Nothing could be clearer than the 1967 referendum which allowed for the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as full citizens of this country to be counted in the census. We have continued on that journey every step of the way in making sure we recognise the fullness of everybody's equal dignity and worth.

That doesn't come by accident. It is because we're a country built on the rule of law and a respect under the common law for people's basic rights. Those were the values that were embodied in the establishment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. If you go back and look at the UDHR and its development—and not many people have done this, but for my sins I have—you will see how it was ultimately the battleground for the great contest of ideas between collective and individual rights. The Soviet Union under Stalin, and many of the other collectivist countries, wanted a very different declaration focused on how to achieve their objectives around collective aspirations at the expense of the individual. But, in the end, Western liberal democracies won, in what was a principal document which paved the way for many peoples' conception of human rights. People forget that one of the big fights in the development of the UDHR in 1948 was over the concept of free speech. You had the Soviet countries that wanted to shut down any form of speech which merely offended some sections of the community. It was Western liberal democracies who stood up, particularly Australia, and we have a notable history of standing up for the importance of free speech as a cornerstone of people's individual dignity, because it is the manifestation of people's freedom of conscience.

Sadly, in subsequent treaties—in particular the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which became the foundation for many laws that continue to this day—Stalin won the argument, and liberal democracies didn't. If you go back and compare the histories of the two documents, you can read that. Critically, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights understood that one of the most foundational principles of liberalism and liberal democratic rights itself was property rights—and how important that was. Again, when it got to the ICCPR, it was eradicated from that discussion. When you eradicate that legacy of liberal democratic values and what it means for a free people—about the idea of equal dignity and worth in the pursuit of happiness—you erase so much of the dignity that people enjoy. That's how we end up in modern day human rights abuses as much as the atrocities of the past.

I heard the previous speaker, rightly, talk about what is being done to the Uygurs in China, and he deserves commendation for doing so. Of course, it doesn't sit in isolation. The idea of dignity and individual empowerment sits at the heart of the rights of people to self-determine—whether it be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders here or the people of Hong Kong—or to live out the full expression of their individual worth. We see that under threat in any government on earth that imposes religious fundamentalism that prioritises collective religious aspirations over peoples' individual dignity, and the people who suffer are often those most marginalised or disempowered, whether it is women, homosexuals or other religious minorities who equally have a right to be able to live out their life with dignity and purpose.

On Human Rights Day we celebrate our achievements as a country, as one that continues towards a greater sense of perfection for human rights. But we should never allow ourselves to turn a blind eye to the challenges we face today and to call on aspiration from others around the world.

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