We Need an Australian Bill of Human Rights

I am in no doubt that we need to enact an Australian Bill of Human Rights. The behaviour of State and Federal Governments over the past decade attest to that.

Thomas Jefferson’s famous aphorism ‘The price of freedom is eternal vigilance‘ applies to the struggle for the protection of human rights.

The struggle for a single law protecting human rights is, of necessity, eternal. There will always be people who will argue that it is unnecessary or unworkable or too costly and or deny that the unimaginable happens.

We delude ourselves when we argue that human rights abuses haven’t, couldn’t, wont, happen in Australia, committed here and elsewhere by Australians. It has happened and it will again. It is part of the human condition it seems. So we must protect ourselves from ourselves.