Right and right about the follies of a Bill of Rights.

In addition to Carr, Attorney-General John Hatzistergos is another NSW Labor figure who has been vocal against a Bill of Rights. His article in The Australian A Charter of Rights, or Wrongs?
details how

Our institutions have exhibited remarkable stability and constituted a powerful force for ensuring the peaceful development of our nation within the context of maximum personal freedom.

It is unsurprising therefore that in all my time in public life not one ordinary constituent whose door I have knocked has pleaded for a Bill or Charter of Rights.

The referendum results and previous election results have shown the public have been unenthusiastic about such proposals.

Instead the constituency for such change has come not from ordinary citizens but rather professional lobbyists and law school elites.

Recognising that constitutional amendment is hopeless, the protagonists have turned their attention to a statutory charter model which it is argued gives the Courts an interpretive and/or declaratory role but nevertheless preserves parliamentary sovereignty.

A bill or charter of rights would move rights claims out of the political arena, turning them into legal claims

In essence whether one talks of Bills or Charters of Rights essentially one is discussing the degree to which the primary power for making decisions about rights will shift from legislatures to the courts.

www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23522655-17044,00.html

Damien Spillane

John Nelson

This obsession with a bill of rights, the obsession with republicanism, the obsession with obliterating the states…Maxine McKew’s comment that she envisioned an Australia where the constitution was up for evolutionary modification every few years at “constitutional conventions”…it is all ridiculous!

The entire “nation” has been built upon the foundation of the six states, the constitution and a Westminster system of government with a monarch at the head of the judicial system and a fully functioning parliament.

Now this form of governance is not perfect, I daresay it is not even superb or excellent in an idealistic sense. However it IS far superior to any of the humanistic, socialist/communist or secular republican alternatives on display in the world today and a bill of rights or similar changes will in no wise constitute an improvement…

Yarran Johnston

Anything headed up by Father Brennan or endorsed by Father Brennan is sure to be left wing, socialistic, inclusive, feminist, anti-Christian …..etc. He is well and truly on that rocky road to excommunication. He is in fact walking along the precipice and has done for so many many years.

He is a political beast with a long pedigree and should have surrendered his clerical collar aeons ago.

John FG McMahon

See page 2 middle par for an unheraldad use of a Bill of Rights legal tactic.

John Angelico

I agree wholeheartedly with the warnings of the commentators quoted in your article that a bill of rights will lead to a weakening of representative government and more unelected judge made law. There is also the fact that the sort of rights we are likely to get are more along the lines of ‘each child has the right to an education free from religious teaching’ and ‘every woman has the right to kill her unborn child’ rather than the converse. These are both important practical reasons to resist such a move, but I believe there is a more fundamental reason why Christians should be wary of the very concept of ‘human rights’.

The proper role of government is as God’s agent, upholding what is right and punishing what is evil according to His word. The civil laws contained in the Bible do not follow a rights pattern and so at best such a pattern is unnecessary, and at worst it is pernicious. I believe allowing a government to grant human rights is pernicious because it tends to elevate the role of government outside its legitimate sphere of sovereignty and it changes the perception of the source of one’s blessings from God to man. True human rights come directly from God by virtue of being created in His image and are not for governments to claim to give us. Therefore I feel that Christians who accept, in principle, a role for ‘human rights’ are unwittingly conceding this important shift in thinking to the humanist agenda.

Mansel Rogerson, Melbourne

The culture of litigation and the abdication of responsibility that a bill of rights engenders is something that Australia should try and avoid at all costs. …

The transfer of policy decisions from governments and Parliament to the judiciary …

“Freezing” rights: Our view of the importance and priority of rights changes over time. A constitutionally entrenched bill of rights freezes those priorities at a particular point in time. …

Unpredictable interpretation …

The creation of a culture of litigation … Bills of rights are notorious for being the last ground of the desperate in litigation. … While the Courts are swamped with thousands of Bill of Rights cases, where will the ordinary person go for justice? The Courts will be made even more inaccessible and the cost of running the court system will increase. The main beneficiaries of a bill of rights are the lawyers who profit from the legal fees that it generates and the criminals who manage to escape imprisonment on the grounds of a technicality. The main losers are the taxpayers, and society in general through the reduction of community values to mere courtroom weapons.

Conclusion

Parliaments are elected to make laws. In doing so, they make judgments about how the rights and interests of the public should be balanced. Views will differ in any given case about whether the judgment is correct. However, if the decision is unacceptable, the community can make its views known at regular elections. This is our political tradition.

A bill of rights would pose a fundamental shift in that tradition, with the Parliament abdicating its important policy making functions to the judiciary. I do not accept that we should make such a fundamental change just because other countries have bills of rights. The culture of litigation and the abdication of responsibility that it engenders is something that Australia should try and avoid at all costs.

A bill of rights is an admission of the failure of parliaments, governments and the people to behave in a reasonable, responsible and respectful manner. I do not believe that we have failed.

Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane