Leonard Colquhoun
“Words, words, words, I’m so sick of words” sang Eliza Doolittle in a much more benign setting. No written charter, no matter how seemingly watertight in its ‘protection’ of rights or of individuals, is a permanent guarantee, particularly if the administration of those rights, through that very charter, is taken away from elected MPs and handed over to unelected judges, on the assumption that judicial appointment makes one a philosopher-king.
HAVE WE GOT RIGHTS FOR YOU !!!
SO, NICE Ms Giddings is thinking about, if that’s the proper term, gifting us with “the most progressive charter of human rights in the nation” [http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2008/11/10/37295_tasmania-news.html].
The most immediately relevant observation is that her latest ‘Look at Me’ effort needs, in her own words, to be “debated and discussed” if only for the simple reason that one person’s rights often mean another person wronged, most easily seen in the housing rental market: upsetting the balance between the respective rights of tenants and owners quickly results in severe housing shortages either through investors fleeing from the residential housing market or tenants unable to afford exorbitant rents. Practical result: one side has greatly enhanced paper rights, and both sides lose.
The empty vagueness of this proposal seems well captured in “They sit there with you knowing you make decisions based on that understanding that people have a right to health care”. Errh ?? ‘Half-baked’ is undue praise – the oven door never even got opened, nor the gas turned on.
Posters to the Mercury story’s website were quick off their marks to show, yet again, that Ole Abe had gotten it right about not fooling all of the people all of the time: “You’ve got to be kidding! Minister, you really have your plate full of hashed and half-baked ideas already, leave this one for another Attorney General another day!” (Posted by: Kelvin Markham of Hobart 8:50am today, Mon 10 Nov 08) and “Sorry Giddy, this was never going to keep Lennon and the mill off the front page. In light with your standard performance it is a piss weak try in the first place!” (Posted by: Tom of Launceston 9:08am today, Mon 10 Nov 08)
Another warning sign is that saddest of sad old cringes: “Tasmania may get the most progressive charter of human rights in the nation”, if not the southern hemisphere, or the world, or the cosmos, ad bloody infinitum. Another of those sorts of boastful claims which rarely stand up to probing, and usually indicate another More Spin than Substance effort. Along the same lines as all those ‘Australia leads the world’ claims which never seem to have any factual or statistical evidence to support them.
And, as for “sitting there . . . making decisions”, what about deciding something sensible about the mass of vacant public housing which now and then makes the front pages, a point echoed by “Before we have a human rights bill can we first enshrine the right to a hospital system that works, an education system that works and a criminal justice system that actually protects the community rather than views every criminal as a victim rather than a criminal” (Posted by: Jack Smith 8:54am today, Mon 10 Nov 08; abridged and slightly edited).
Which leads us to the (in)famous 1936 Constitution of the USSR (Remember that seven-decade horrorshow?) which enshrined almost every possible conceivable human right in its eloquent wording. Its timing was as eloquent a testimonial to its effectiveness as any realist could want. Just after the 1932-33 state-sponsored famine in the Ukraine, which the Ukrainians call the Holodomor [Голодомор], considered, according to Wikipedia, “one of the greatest national catastrophes to affect the Ukrainian nation in modern history where millions of inhabitants of Ukraine died of starvation in an unprecedented peacetime catastrophe”. And just before the 1937-38 Great Purge, which “involved the purge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, repression of peasants, deportations of ethnic minorities, and the persecution of unaffiliated persons, characterized by widespread police surveillance, widespread suspicion of ‘saboteurs’, imprisonment, and killings. Estimates of the number of deaths associated with the Great Purge run from the official figure of 681,692 to nearly 2 million.” (also Wikipedia)
“Words, words, words, I’m so sick of words” sang Eliza Doolittle in a much more benign setting. No written charter, no matter how seemingly watertight in its ‘protection’ of rights or of individuals, is a permanent guarantee, particularly if the administration of those rights, through that very charter, is taken away from elected MPs and handed over to unelected judges, on the assumption that judicial appointment makes one a philosopher-king. One word suffices in rebuttal: Einfeld. (At least, except for their Supreme Court, US judges actually are elected – not that that’s necessarily an endorsement of that practice.)
Finally, and as usual, there is only one group of real winners in these sorts of moves: lawyers, and you can already sniff the smell of battle over My Client’s Rights are Bigger and Better than your Client’s, and have more UN Approval and Greener Credentials, not mention a keener Empathy with the Dreamtime, and, yes, we are moving into our plush new offices tomorrow, and yes, the spouse is putting pen to paper next week on the deal for the lovely Georgian in Battery Square / beautiful Victorian Italianate on Elphin Road, you remember, the one we had our eyes on just before the Act was passed.
Leonard Colquhoun
Nov 2008
