Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House:

(1)

notes that 10 December 2008 is the sixtieth anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;

(2)

recalls that the adoption of the Declaration was a response to the suffering of those who had experienced human rights violations, especially the ‘barbarous acts’ perpetrated during World War II;

(3)

recognises that whilst significant progress has been made in promoting and protecting human rights since the Declaration was adopted, human rights violations have continued to occur;

(4)

acknowledges the valuable contribution of Australians who played a role in the development and adoption of this important instrument of international law and who, since then, have contributed to its implementation; and

(5)

affirms the principles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and emphasises its commitment to those principles.

Sixty years ago, in the aftermath of the deaths of some 70 million people in the Second World War, the nations of the world came together to endorse the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was an event with no historical precedent—the nations of the world embracing a global expression of the basic rights and freedoms to which all human beings are entitled, and a standard which all nations could adopt themselves and a standard by which all nations could also be held to account. Sixty years on from 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights remains the global benchmark for the protection of human rights. It remains as relevant to every person in a world of 6¾ billion today as it was to the 2½ billion people who were alive in 1948.

It speaks to our responsibilities wherever there is a violation of human rights against any person for any reason and in any part of the world, by any government, any corporation, any organisation or any individual. It transcends nations; it transcends cultures; it transcends politics; it transcends personalities; it transcends creed and tongue. It speaks to the murder of innocence in Darfur, the treatment of political prisoners in Burma and the ongoing conflict in the Congo that has recently displaced hundreds of thousands of people. It speaks to the plight of millions of refugees around the world who have fled their homelands in fear. It speaks to the severe poverty that contributes to the premature deaths of 18 million people around the world every year and one in three people dying from preventable diseases. And it speaks to the responsibilities of the international community in all of these areas.

Some of these threats to human rights are close to home; others are far from our shores. But for Australians our belief is in a fair go for all, and this belief does not stop at the continental shelf. It transcends our shores; it extends to the world at large. We believe in a fair go for everyone, everywhere, and that belief in a fair go means that as a nation we seek to make a difference and support human rights and fundamental freedoms around the world and at home. We, therefore, do not just stand idly by while there are denials of basic freedoms and basic rights, wherever they may occur. We recognise that the casualties of inaction are dignity, fairness and justice.

That is why today I move this motion in recognition of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its continuing importance in the 21st century. As Australians we can be proud of our long history of involvement in the promotion of universal human rights through the United Nations.

Following the Second World War, Australia played a significant role in shaping both the Charter of the United Nations and the universal declaration itself. Alongside 16 other states, Australia was an inaugural member of the human rights commission that began work on the universal declaration, which was originally proposed to be an international bill of human rights. Australia was also one of eight countries represented on the subsidiary drafting committee. Along with 47 other nations, on 10 December 1948 at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, we voted in a plenary session of the  general assembly to adopt the declaration.

The exceptional contribution made towards these documents by the Minister for External Affairs in the Curtin and Chifley governments, Dr HV Evatt, is widely acknowledged. Evatt understood that economic security and political freedoms were critical to international security. He fought tirelessly for a strong and positive commitment to those rights and freedoms in the universal declaration. And he had the honour to be the President of the United Nations General Assembly when the universal declaration was finally adopted. That was a good day for Australia.

Indeed, the Australian delegation to the third session of the general assembly in 1948 reported in relation to the universal declaration:

Australia has from the beginning been one of the leaders in this field. We urged at the Paris Peace Conference that the peace treaties with enemy states should contain effective guarantees of human rights. We have also played our part from the beginning as a member of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights which made the first draft of the convention. Australia was one of the first countries to urge that economic and social rights should be included in the Declaration.

The Australian delegation has worked successfully to keep each article clear and concise, expressing the broad fundamental human rights in which we believe. It has resisted attempts to write in a series of limitations, which would properly be done in a legally binding convention.

That, I believe, reflects a good Australian contribution to a good Australian document on what was and remains a good day for Australian diplomacy.

The government that I lead stands proudly in the strong tradition of the defence and promotion of human rights. As a middle power, we believe in a creative use of diplomacy to build stronger human rights protections in every part of the world. One of the most important ways Australia can contribute to advancing human rights today is through the Millennium Development Goals. The Millennium Development Goals are among the most important commitments to human rights that the international community has made since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948. Around the world, nations have pledged to substantially lift their efforts to help achieve these goals and to eliminate the extreme poverty that denies more than 1.4 billion people the most basic life opportunities. The government’s strong commitment to the MDGs is reflected in our pledge to lift Australia’s overseas aid to 0.5 per cent of gross national income by 2015. Our MDGs commitment involves a contribution of just half of 1c of every dollar of our national income, yet it is large enough to make a real difference in the lives of so many millions of people in forgotten parts of the world and in forgotten parts of our own region. In this time of global economic downturn, which inevitably has its greatest impact on the world’s poorest people, we reaffirm, as a government and as a nation, our commitment to the MDGs and urge other nations also to lift their efforts to these crucially important goals.

The Australian government is lifting our development assistance efforts in key areas such as health, basic education, water, sanitation, the environment and adaptation to climate change. We are giving priority to working with nations in our region towards the Millennium Development Goals through our own Pacific Partnerships for Development. Already the government has signed partnership agreements with Papua New Guinea and Samoa, and further partnership agreements are planned for the year ahead. We have also recently outlined a stronger engagement with development efforts in Africa, which faces the greatest challenges in achieving progress on the Millennium Development Goals. Australia’s commitment to help make poverty history in the 21st century represents an embodiment of the vision laid out in the universal declaration to ensure that, for all people, the rights to food, clothing, housing and medical care—the core components of wellbeing and a decent standard of living—are, in fact, delivered.

The Australian government is committed to advancing human rights at home as well as abroad. We are prepared to commit Australia to new human rights instruments where appropriate. Where we genuinely believe in the policy objective and genuinely believe we can adhere to our obligations, we will adopt and implement those instruments. We are committed to a positive engagement with the UN human rights system in implementing Australia’s international human rights obligations. And we are willing to consider appropriate changes to laws, implementing our human rights obligations here within Australia. This approach is reflected in action we have already commenced on international human rights instruments relating to disability, discrimination against women and the use of torture.

In July this year, the government ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The government has also conducted consultations with states and territories on Australia’s accession to the optional protocol to that convention. The government is also incorporating assistance for people with disabilities into our international development assistance program. The Development for All policy aims to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities and to promote international leadership on disability and development. The government is committed to the protection and promotion of the rights of women, both at home and abroad. The government recently moved formally to accede to the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women—and it was high time. The government is also committed to action on the optional protocol to the convention against torture, and consultations with the states and territories and other stakeholders on this matter are underway.

Australia’s renewed engagement with the UN human rights system is reflected in the government’s extension of a standing invitation to human rights rapporteurs to investigate the protection of human rights domestically. We should have nothing of which we are ashamed. We should be open to global scrutiny. We should have always been open to global scrutiny. The previous government resisted such visits because it did not want the practices that were occurring in Australian detention centres exposed to scrutiny. We take an entirely different view. We believe that a universal declaration of human rights means what it says—that a civilised, modern government must be consistent in its respect for human rights at home and abroad. That does not mean that we will always accept every criticism of Australian practices made by human rights bodies; but it does mean that we believe in openness, engagement and transparency and that we should have absolutely nothing to hide. It means considering seriously any criticism of Australia’s human rights practices, and it means making changes when our policies do not live up to our national commitment to the proper protection of human rights. That is why, in our first year in office, we have ended the inhumane, unfair and wasteful Pacific solution, ended temporary protection visas and substantially reformed Australia’s detention policy. We have restored fairness and humanity to our treatment of people seeking asylum in Australia, while also returning strong and effective border security.

During the past 12 months the government has demonstrated its commitment and made significant progress in promoting and protecting human rights domestically. Throughout the history of European settlement, our record of respect for human rights has been marred by the treatment of Indigenous Australians. The parliament sought to address one of the darkest chapters of that history earlier this year, when we offered a national apology to Indigenous Australians for the policy of forced removal of children that led to the stolen generations. The apology has helped to build a bridge of respect towards a better future for Indigenous Australians. The apology was long overdue. The government has committed to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. This will be difficult to achieve; it nonetheless should be a goal for us all. To achieve this, the Australian government, in partnership with the states and territories, has set six targets, including closing the gap in life expectancy, child mortality, early childhood education, literacy and numeracy, school attainment rates and employment outcomes. We know that these are profoundly ambitious targets. Closing the gap is about making a reality of the universal declaration here in Australia today. These targets will require new approaches and substantial investment and they will not be achieved by the Commonwealth alone. They will require new partnerships with the private sector, the community sector and with states and territories. Towards these goals, the Council of Australian Governments last weekend agreed to invest $4.6 billion in initiatives across early childhood development, health, housing, economic development and remote service delivery over the next decade.

Another important aspect of human rights protection is recognition of human rights at work. With the Fair Work Bill 2008 introduced to parliament last week, Australia will close the book on Work Choices. In its place we will have a modern industrial relations system that recognises fundamental workplace rights, including the right to be represented by a union, the right to protection from unfair dismissal and the right to collective enterprise bargaining. These are basic and universal rights.

Another important step during our first year in office is the removal of discrimination against same-sex couples and their children. The government’s same-sex reforms will set a new standard for fairness and consistency in Commonwealth laws. Their combined effect will be to eliminate such discrimination from around 100 laws of the Commonwealth. They aim to ensure that, in each amended law, same-sex couples and their families, for all practical purposes, have the same entitlements as opposite-sex de facto couples. The government will also soon deliver on our commitment to undertake an Australia-wide inquiry to determine how best to recognise and protect human rights and responsibilities into the future.

In 1943, only five years before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was agreed, a German pastor and theologian wrote a universal truth when, in his book, he said that ‘what is dearest to God is precisely the need of one’s neighbour’. As a churchman, Dietrich Bonhoeffer resisted the violation of human rights under the Nazi regime because, he said, ‘Only those who cry out for the Jews have the right to sing Gregorian chants.’ Dietrich Bonhoeffer was right then, he is right today and he will be right into the future. Dietrich Bonhoeffer paid for that conviction with his life in 1945, but his message and that of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which arose out of the carnage of the Second World War are as relevant today as they were then.

Sixty years after its adoption, the declaration remains one of the most defining documents on the protection of rights and freedoms in the history of humankind. Today this House affirms again—consistent with those who have gone before us, consistent with the efforts of previous Australian governments to secure the passage and the adoption of this great international instrument—Australia’s strong commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and our resolve as a nation, as a government and as a people to work on our own soil and to work with governments around the world towards the realisation of these rights for all peoples.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the opposition, I am pleased to rise to second this motion. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a remarkable document. It is, in some respects, the product of the 18th century Enlightenment. It comes as a direct descendant of the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 and France’s Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789, because it affirms that every human being has inherently certain human rights—rights that are inalienable and inherent in our nature as human beings. They are also rights which are held by humans of whatever kind they may be—whatever race, gender, religion and ethnicity—and wherever they may be in the world. So they are universal human rights—inherent, inalienable and universal.

It is a remarkable document too because it was composed in an extraordinary window of time. It was composed after the end of the Second World War and in the shadow of the horrors of that war and, in particular—as I will come to in a moment—the horrors of the Holocaust itself. But it was also before the Cold War had commenced in all of its intensity and the two sides—communism on the one side and the free world on the other—had lined up into a sort of stalemate. This universal declaration could not have emerged during the Cold War. The competition between the two power blocs of East and West would not have allowed it to emerge.

Its main authors were Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt; two professors of law, a Canadian, John Humphrey, and a Frenchman, Rene Cassin; an Orthodox Lebanese philosopher, Charles Malik; and a Chinese philosopher, artist and playwright, Peng-chun Chang. It was an extraordinary collection of men and women, and you can just imagine the scene in Eleanor Roosevelt’s apartment in New York with the philosophical debates between the Orthodox Lebanese philosopher, Charles Malik, and the Chinese philosopher, Peng-chun Chang, about the different philosophical bases for human rights. What is it that gave people human rights? That combination of authors was a remarkable one and, I suppose, speaks of the special nature of that window in time, because, had the debate been going on a few years later, the Chinese philosopher would not have been there. Shortly after the universal declaration was approved by the United Nations, the heavy hand of communism fell over China and it would have been a boiler-suited representative of Chairman Mao who would have been seeking entry—and, of course, denied it because Communist China did not come into the United Nations for many years. But, in any event, Mr Peng was a spokesman for a China that had only a very short time left to be in the world of international affairs.

The declaration, as I said, has a direct line of descent from the 18th century Enlightenment, but it also speaks very directly to the horrors of the Second World War. Article 6, ‘Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law,’ and article 15, ‘Everyone has the right to a nationality,’ and, ‘No-one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality,’ are a direct reaction to the Nazi Nuremberg laws that decreed that anyone but an Aryan was subhuman and therefore to be deprived of their rights as a human being. Article 9, which states, ‘No-one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile,’ obviously speaks to the appalling treatment of political opponents, Jews and prisoners of war by both the Nazis and the communists in the Second World War. Article 16, which was a provision that was objected to by some of the nations in the UN at that time, says:

Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family.

That statement of rights is a direct reaction to the German race laws that prevented Jews from marrying so-called Aryans. The declaration was descended from the 18th century Enlightenment but very much inspired, in that sense, by the horrors of the Second World War. That is recognised in the second paragraph of the preamble, which reads:

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people …

The Prime Minister referred to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a benchmark. That is a common description of this great document. Ten years ago, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan described the declaration as ‘the yardstick by which we measure human progress’. As a lantern which we follow through all the travails and challenges of a turbulent world, the best description was perhaps given by Abraham Lincoln in speaking of the Declaration of Independence. This remark of Abraham Lincoln is cited by Mary Glendon in a book about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and it bears repeating. Abraham Lincoln wrote that the men who drafted the 1776 declaration:

… did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet, that they were about to confer it, immediately, upon them … They meant simply to declare the right so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.

They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all: constantly looked to, constantly labored for … and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, everywhere.

Those words are just as applicable to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as they were to the Declaration of Independence.

My friend the member for Flinders reminded me a moment ago that, after the Cambodian election in the post Pol Pot era, the universal declaration was printed up in a little blue book and handed out and taught to schoolchildren everywhere in that traumatised country. It was the yardstick, as Kofi Annan said, by which human progress was to be measured. Nadine Gordimer also described it as:

… the essential document, the touchstone, the creed of humanity that surely sums up all other creeds directing human behaviour …

Sadly, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been violated as often as it has been complied with, many would say. Certainly, some of the countries that have cited it and proclaimed it have not been at all consistent in complying with it. There have been horrific breaches of human rights through the world, and breaches are no doubt continuing in places like Darfur, as the Prime Minister described. Of course, there has always been that contradiction in the United Nations. It is worthy to note that, while the Soviet Union and its satellites abstained from the vote approving the declaration, Andrey Vyshinsky, who was Stalin’s prosecutor in the show trials of the 1930s—that horrific example of communist brutality—participated in the discussions, and so he was in the room.

The Prime Minister spoke warmly, as he should, of the role of Herbert Vere Evatt, whose contribution to the foundation of the United Nations is really one of the bright pages in Australian diplomatic history. But I must record my slight disappointment that the Prime Minister did not mention the contribution of another Australian lawyer, whose son is a constituent of mine: Fred Whitlam—Gough Whitlam’s father—who was an Australian government lawyer. It is worth noting that Fred Whitlam, as an Australian public servant, played a very significant role in preparing the UN declaration.

Commitment to human rights is a bipartisan one in Australia, and long may it remain so. On coming to power in 1949, Robert Menzies spoke of the splendid words of the UN Charter’s pledge to peace and human rights. Mr Menzies famously said:

The slogan that ought to be painted round the walls of the General Assembly of the United Nations is ‘We stand for justice.’

In 1950, his government supported words with action. Responding to the appeal by the United Nations for intervention in the Korean conflict, Australia committed ground troops in that war. Three hundred and thirty-nine Australians would die in the UN mandated security action, with more than 1,200 wounded. It was an early and emphatic declaration by the Australian government that the principles of freedom and liberty not only were worth enshrining in the UN Charter and the declaration but also were worth defending.

As I said earlier, for most of the Cold War the UN took a back seat to superpower jostling. It was not until the collapse of the Soviet empire that the UN Security Council could again aspire to its role as the ultimate arbiter of international security disputes and the custodian of global civil rights. We saw that in 1990 with the UN Security Council resolutions to evict Saddam Hussein’s armies from Kuwait, where again Australia contributed to the multinational forces, this time under the Hawke Labor government.

The high water mark of Australia’s support for the enduring principles of the declaration came in the midst of a humanitarian crisis in our own neighbourhood in September 1999. The Howard government’s leadership of the UN mandated security intervention to stop the bloodbath in tiny East Timor distinguished this country’s service in the cause of international human rights. It is a matter for no pride at all that successive governments following 1975 had been queasy onlookers to the domination of East Timor by Indonesia. The Australian intervention, sanctioned by the United Nations, brought to an end the eruption of that dreadful violence that followed the vote for independence by the impoverished people of East Timor. It gave those same people in one of the world’s newest and most vulnerable nation-states a chance at freedom, a chance at popular sovereignty and a chance to exercise the freedom to rule their own lives.

The Australian intervention, led superbly by General Peter Cosgrove, was welcomed by the United Nations as one of the most successful United Nations peacekeeping operations ever, and Prime Minister John Howard would proudly describe our involvement in East Timor’s emergence as a nation as ‘the most positive and noble act by Australia in the area of international relations in the last 20 years’. There could not be a more practical, meaningful demonstration of Australia’s support for those ‘splendid words’, to quote Sir Robert Menzies, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Australia has repeatedly asked for the service and the sacrifice of the brave men and women of our armed forces and our police to help uphold human rights and democratic outcomes in our region and in the world. We ask it of our troops deployed in Afghanistan. We ask it of our forces in the theatre of operations in Iraq. We have asked it of our police, soldiers and senior officials in the Solomon Islands to confront lawlessness and corruption, to put programs in place to produce better governance and better outcomes for the people.

Australia is a proud supporter of the principles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We had a hand in its drafting. Of that there can be no doubt. But, more importantly, we have had a hand over many years in upholding those very human and eternal values which it proclaims to the world.

Debate (on motion by Mr Murphy) adjourned.