Page 4198 - Week 14 - Thursday, 25 October 1990
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Amnesty's challenge is to get a recognition that its role is peaceful and humanitarian; that what it sets about to do is to awaken the conscience of good men and women and children throughout the world on behalf of those held in unconscionable conditions, particularly prisoners of conscience. Every day of the week we read in our journals of the breaches of human rights - some of them gross and dreadful impositions on human beings.
Mr Speaker, just because Australia is the lucky country, that does not set us apart and quieten us in our conscience. The conscience should drive us in the mandate we have to speak up. We have a mandate to speak up because there is every duty on us, since we enjoy a democracy, to speak to the values that we have enshrined in Australia. Mr Speaker, there is an ever-growing human rights constituency in the Australian community. It is vitally important that that constituency remain depoliticised, that the issue of Amnesty's prisoner of conscience campaign remain a matter for bipartisan support and, where it is not supported, neutral silence.
Mr Speaker, I commend Amnesty in the ACT, I commend all my colleagues in the Assembly and I commend all the staff of the Assembly and those associated with us who work for Amnesty.
Amnesty International
MR JENSEN (5.55): I wish to make a few brief comments in relation to the continuing challenge for Amnesty in the world. Mr Speaker, I am pleased to be a member of the Assembly's chapter of Amnesty International and I think it is something that all people of good conscience should in fact - - -
Mrs Grassby: Bernard closed the debate.
MR JENSEN: Bernard did not move the adjournment. Wakey, wakey, Ellnor.
Mr Stefaniak: He did not move the adjournment, Ellnor, Trevor did; so he does not close it.
MR JENSEN: If you are quite finished, members, I would like to continue my remarks.
Mrs Grassby: We just wanted to clarify whether Bernard had closed the debate or not.
MR JENSEN: Well, I suggest that you pay attention, Mrs Grassby, and we might get on.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Come on, let us get on with it.
MR JENSEN: It is unfortunate that members opposite have not been paying attention; otherwise I would not have been interrupted in my comments here this afternoon. Prisoners of conscience are held in 78 countries, nearly half the member states of the United Nations. Torture and ill-treatment of prisoners has been reported during the 1980s
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