I hope you (if you're Australian) took your opportunity to make a submission to the National Human Rights Consultation Committee. The deadline was Monday. But you can still sneak in some last views over on the Committee's discussion site, where the deadline isn't until 26 June. There hasn't been a lot of traffic at that site, so you have a good chance of being noticed. Go and have a look at the discussion so far, if you have a moment, as some of it is quite interesting.
I was quite taken by (though not wholly in agreement with) Professor Tom Campbell's mildly sceptical comments about human rights and human rights law. I think he's wrong in his claim that most of us object to power being transferred to unelected judges if an entrenched Bill of Rights is put in place (I'm a bit tired of this canard - no such "transfer of power" takes place; what takes place is more subtle than this, and more defensible). But he does cut through a fair bit of confusion.
About Me
- Russell Blackford
- Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019); AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021); and HOW WE BECAME POST-LIBERAL: THE RISE AND FALL OF TOLERATION (2024).
2 comments:
I am Canadian and would warn Australia that human rights is just a concept for special interests to gain something for someone they could not get or keep in the legislature.
Human rights means here ethnic/homosexual/feminists agendas that are rejected by majorities here.
Pay close attention to motives, wrords, and whether these "rights" are to trump the people's right to rule themselves with their own laws based on their own morality and sense of right and wrong.
The better idea is like from the states of God given or natural rights in basic great things.
Then no human right concepts are needed. All is covered.
When human rights comes up in canada it meas judges decide what those human rights are.
Not that they enforce agreed ideas on rights from the people.
I suspect this is a way for minorities to get their way and say its beyond majorities right to say no.
Great concepts amongst men should not be corrupted by the pasionate agendas of activists.
Critics can persuade the public this is so and in troubles the public deny credibility to these rights period.
It must come from the people.
The majority believed in witches in the 1800's. They felt they had the moral obligation to burn those accused.
Society has an obligation to protect disenfranchised or unpopular minorities against widespread ideological misconceptions, even if those misconceptions are held by the majority of the population.
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