Page 2537 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 15 November 1989
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Now, many of these things on perusal sound fine, but when you look at what they actually mean - and I will go into the importance of exactly what they mean in a moment - you find that they mean that the child has the right to privacy. If the child is perhaps in his room then the parent cannot interfere arbitrarily with the child's so-called right to privacy - supposedly regardless of what he is doing. It is a vast statement. There is no corollary restricting it.
There are a number of other articles within this convention that need full, open and lengthy public and parliamentary debate. Now, I notice that the members of the Labor Party have made a number of statements decrying the suggestion that there is anything wrong with the convention. Let me mention a couple of points that I doubt anybody in this Assembly is aware of. If they were aware of them, they should have done something about them. We all know that recently - it was actually in August 1986 - a document entitled a bill of rights was overwhelmingly rejected by Canberrans and Australians. We all know that.
A member: No.
MR STEVENSON: All right; we should know that because it was. And that is why it was not, at that time, introduced. The bill of rights is not in a process of going through as a treaty; it was rejected overwhelmingly by the people of Australia. However, a few months later, in December 1986, almost every objectionable section of the bill of rights was introduced and became law under a section of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act 1986 and related legislation. Anyone who thinks we do not have most of the articles in the bill of rights in law in Australia is misinformed, because we do. It is obvious that this is not known by most people.
This is basically a mirror image of the bill of rights, the rights of a child, except it only relates to children. The bill of rights and these matters would be enforced by the Human Rights Commission. My legal advice is that the only grounds of appeal are points of law on the meaning of any of these articles. The Human Rights Commission is not bound by the normal rules of evidence, and inquiries can be held in secret. There are a number of other matters of concern.
DR KINLOCH (11.41): Whatever our own personal judgments may be now or may be eventually, I have a feeling that we need much more time on this and I therefore move:
That the debate be now adjourned.
Question put.
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