Went to the Human Rights Charter consultation in Dandenong today. Was very interesting — lots of discussion at my table on political rights vs social and cultural rights, the framework for rights in Australia (constitutional vs legislative), discussion of the need for remedies and enforceability and so on and so forth. Not enough brain to detail at the moment… besides, I plan to write a submission to the consultation (you can too: submissions due May 29, and don’t use the GetUp site to do it unless you’re really time poor — write your own, considered, multi-page submission).
I’m involved with this for a number of reasons: it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to participate in the establishment of a human rights charter in this country; I’ve always been interested in global governance and this is a stepping stone to helping shape my world; I want to be able to tell Harper I was involved with it and didn’t sit by and let others do it; I strongly believe civic participation is a duty we all share; even more so after yesterday, I’m worried about those who argue we don’t need a charter, either because they think God will take care of it or because they think we are subjects of the Crown or because they think that laws restrict rights (yes, all of these points were raised by people at the consultation) [1]; and selfishly because I hope my participation may lead to a career change that I find fulfilling and challenging.
Still on the human rights theme, it turns out I won the video competition! Since I don’t own the rights to the Bob Marley song I used, I have to replace the music by next Tuesday so they can play it everywhere and promote the human rights charter. To say I’m thrilled is an understatement of massive proportions.
[1] Well, what do you know? I’m less of a libertarian than I thought. I’ve been comfortably aware that I’m more an anarcho-syndicalist than a ‘pure’ anarchist for many years but recently I’ve been moving more towards liberalism on some issues, at least for the duration of my lifetime, as I can’t see a complete lack of laws as workable *yet* given stuff like honour killings and child brides. I still believe education and not punishment is the key to eradicating these things but I think having these things be ‘legal’ or having no laws made about them gives the wrong message. It’s very complicated.