The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre
Malcolm Fraser was born in Melbourne in 1930 and educated at
Melbourne Grammar and Oxford University graduating in 1952. He gained
Liberal Party pre-selection for the electorate of Wannon in south West
Victoria and was elected to Federal Parliament in 1955 during the
Menzies Government. Mr Fraser was first appointed to the Ministry with
the Army portfolio in 1966 and in 1968 he was promoted to Cabinet rank
with the post of Minister for Education and Science.
I have been asked to talk about human rights in Australia and overseas.
The leaders in the post World War determined that what had happened in
Europe would never happen again. They planned to build a better world.
In 1954 the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees was also
ratified by the Menzies Government.
Under the Refugee Convention a person suffering or at real risk of
persecution has the right to asylum in another country. This is a right
to which all Australian Governments, post war, have been committed.
I never thought I would live to see the day when Australia would turn
its back on people fleeing persecution and terror. Australia has been
shamed in the eyes of the international community. CNN, BBC World make
sure that the world is very well aware of our treatment and attitude to
refugees.
A country director of CARE’s operation in Yemen wrote to me the other
day asking how to respond to an often asked question “Excuse me, I am
only a simple bedouin, but how does CARE Australia justify working with
refugees worldwide when refugees are treated so horribly by the
Government and people of Australia?”
Since then the Tampa incident has arisen and the world now knows that we
are establishing camps for refugees in countries around Australia’s
periphery. Many Australians have accepted this as defending Australia’s
shores. I am concerned that both political parties support the policy.
It is obscene that a wealthy country such as Australia is buying space
in poor countries such as Nauru and Papua New Guinea to help solve an
Australian problem.
Despite the fact that numbers coming to Australia are relatively small,
4000 or 5000, compared to over 400,000 to Europe, the best part of
100,000 to Britain and well over 100,000 to Germany, Australians have
been told that boat people are queue jumpers, that they are illegal,
that they are wealthy and have bought their passage. We should
understand that there is no queue. The refugees in Pakistan face 5 or 6
years in the camps with no guarantee of finding an asylum country at the
end of it. Over recent years the number of Afghanistan refugees has
fallen by half. The front door is closing. Thus, Australia by its
spokesman, has been depicted as a harsh uncompromising and inhumane
country, so contrary to the reputation built over the previous 50 years.
In addition, after the terrible incidents in New York and Washington in
the United States, a senior Minister suggested that this justifies
Australia’s policy in relation to boat people, the implication being
that it could be a terrorist route to Australia. The boat people are
fleeing terrorism and they are fleeing Muslim fundamentalism. Terrorists
would be most unlikely to seek to come to Australia by that route. They
would face up to two years or more in a detention centre under the
utmost scrutiny. Terrorists would be much more inclined to travel with
impeccable papers and come to Australia by Qantas.
I again felt ashamed when I saw how our leaders reacted to children with
life-vests on being photographed in the sea. We were told they had been
thrown into the sea and that any parent who would do such a thing must
be terrible indeed, the sort of person we would not want to have in
Australia. But think of the other side of the story. The desperation
that must clutch their hearts, they know from whence they have come.
They know that in Afghanistan they have no future. Girls and women are
not allowed to be educated and they are not allowed to work. Minority
groups have been pillaged and destroyed. They have small savings but
enough to buy their way to Europe or to Australia.
Is it not possible that they believed that jumping into the sea and
being rescued by Australians and placed on an Australian boat would make
them eligible to apply for refugee status here. How distraught, what
pressure would they have had to endure to take such a step? A
compassionate response would have understood the pressure and the
desperation. Do any one of us know how we would behave if we had
experienced their pasts? The immediate political Australian judgement
was callous, brutal.
Australia is by its policies effectively denying such people rights to
which we committed ourselves when we ratified the Convention relating to
the Status on Refugees in 1954. These actions diminish Australia.
As a Common Law country Australians have been led to believe that the
Common Law provides the best protection for the individual rights of all
people. At this moment it does not operate in relation to refugees
seeking asylum despite our obligations under the Refugee Convention.
Unfortunately it is not only beyond Australia’s shores that human rights
are inadequately exercised. Australia’s early treatment of our
Indigenous population was for many people too harsh, too brutal, too
terrible in its consequence for them to comprehend. The clash at the
frontier as white settlement pressed out was disastrous for Indigenous
people.
Later, laws authorised the taking of part blood children from their
families and from their mothers. The special laws effectively put
Indigenous Australians outside the protection of the Common Law.
In recent years many advanced countries have decided that they need
additional protection for the basic human rights of their people.
Previous Common Law countries, such as New Zealand, Canada and the
United Kingdom have now all enshrined a Bill of Rights in their law. We
should follow their example and establish a Bill of Rights. Against that
Bill of Rights, the actions of Governments could be judged and if
necessary condemned. Those who wish to maintain freedom of action in
Government oppose the idea of a Bill of Rights. They say it does not fit
with our Common Law system. The experience of New Zealand, Canada and
Britain makes it plain that that is not so.
Opponents of a Bill of Rights claim that the Common Law provides better
protection for individual rights. The inadequacy of the Common Law in
relation to Australian’s Indigenous population, alone demonstrates the
need for a Bill of Rights. Opponents of a Bill of Rights also say that
our rights would be diminished because only the rights enshrined in a
Bill of Rights would be enjoyed by our people. That is sheer nonsense.
Legislation establishing a Bill of Rights would make it perfectly plain
that existing rights under the Common Law would remain in force and the
Bill of Rights would establish additional rights or reinforce the
provisions of Common Law.
Those who object to a Bill of Rights are looking to the past and to a
different world. Perhaps they want no restraint on their power. We
should establish that restraint. That we do not have a Bill of Rights is
a significant deficiency in our own Constitutional and legal processes.
I emphasise that initially at least it should be established by
Parliament so that if experience suggests amendments are necessary they
can be consummated without the difficulty of a Constitutional change.
Through much of the last century terrible things occurred. During the
first world war in Australia we had our own problems. The Prime
Minister, Billy Hughes, turned two referenda on conscription into
anti-Catholic, anti-Irish referenda by deliberate choice, by a
deliberate decision. He left Australia a legacy of sectarianism and of
discrimination that endured for the best part of 50 years.
And in Australia Governments sanctioned the practice of taking mixed
blood Aboriginal children from their mothers for at least 60 years.
Now we have seen how Australia treats desperate refugees seeking asylum
despite our obligations under the Refugee Convention.
Discrimination on whatever ground is a great evil. Experience shows us
that once it begins, it spreads. It is this group today, it is another
group tomorrow.
The impact of Pauline Hanson on Australian policy has been unfortunate,
perhaps disastrous for Australia’s reputation internationally and
especially throughout our region. It has deepened divisions within the
Australian community in serious and unhappy ways. Surely we can
understand that we must act to end all discrimination and make it clear
to our Government that we want all people treated with dignity and
esteem.
There are many in Australia who have come from countries where
persecution was rife. There are many whose forbears have traditionally
experienced persecution. They above all should be able to smell its
beginning and work to end it and treat harshly those who promote it and
those who acquiesce in its consequences. If we do not re-establish the
absolute need to treat all people with decency and respect as we
ourselves would wish to be treated then we will face harsh and divisive
years as we move through this century. A Bill of Rights would help to
underline the importance of these issues.
I have great faith in this multicultural society and I know there are
many people in many parts of Australia who understand how tragic and how
unfortunate recent events have been. What we also must understand is
that it is people of good will who must exert themselves and reassert
the need for decency in public affairs.
