Page 2677 - Week 12 - Thursday, 16 November 1989
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Federal matter and a Federal matter only. The Commonwealth's right to sign a convention is hardly open to challenge. The issue falls squarely within the external powers provision of the constitution. Since the Tasmanian dams case, the Commonwealth's constitutional power to make laws in pursuit of international agreements is also clear, except to the occasional parochialist, usually of a right-wing persuasion.
Perhaps Mr Stevenson does not like these facts. He has every right of free speech to say so. What concerns me is that on the basis of some convenient misreadings of a handful of articles in the convention he wants us to stand in the way of extending similar rights to those who are fully entitled to them: our children.
Mr Stevenson also has the right to disagree with the convention as passionately and as noisily as he likes. I just happen to think that the floor of this Assembly is not the right forum for him to prosecute his opinions. If he objects to the Commonwealth's actions, let him speak out on the national stage and be judged accordingly. Let him lobby Federal politicians and vote in the next Federal election for whoever promises to rescind our agreement to the convention. He may find a fringe group here or there with sufficient tunnel vision to oblige him. He may even wish to stand for that election in the hope of pursuing the issue in the proper forum: the Federal Parliament. Again, he might find a sufficiently idiosyncratic fringe group to support him. No doubt, he will continue with his Abolish Self Government Coalition. I do not know how well it would go in a Federal election.
What is clear is that this Assembly is not, and should never be, prepared to assist him in pushing his own views on human rights to the national stage. Introducing his motion yesterday, Mr Stevenson tried a couple of the oldest tricks in the book. He tried to imply that members of the Assembly who have not dragged in a lawyer to pore over the convention have no real right to comment. On those terms, we have enough lawyers here for me to be confident that he will receive many qualified rejoinders. But, in the end, the opinions of lawyers are just that: they are opinions.
The convention is hardly written in tortured legalese. I do not know where Mr Stevenson gets his legal advice from but I am happy to speak on the assumption that an ordinary reading of ordinary English is at least as reliable as a legal interpretation fashioned to meet a client's expectations. I do not expect anyone here to submit to his appeal to authority. That is one of the earliest fallacies a first-year logic student is introduced to. If, for reasons of his own, Mr Stevenson prefers unquestioning reliance on authority, there are plenty of good historical lessons for all of us as to why we cannot share that view.
The other trick was his appeal to fear. It will not wash. It is the stuff of propaganda and disinformation. Without
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