Thousands of viewpoints on protecting individuals
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday October 10, 2009
While Richard Ackland wipes the egg from his face ("Egg in your face can be so satisfying", October 9), one of his remarks should be corrected.He playfully suggests, "There are grounds to suspect that after reading last week's column the committee felt so ashamed they quickly rewrote the report to give everyone a 'fair go'." As required by our terms of reference, we submitted our report to the Rudd Government two days before his previous column. We had to rely on the 35,000 submissions received rather than Mr Ackland's advice.Father Frank BrennanYarralumla (ACT)Like Richard Ackland I was convinced that Frank Brennan's inquiry would go for the cheaper chicken and recommend a legislation review committee instead of a human rights charter. This happened in NSW after a similar 2001 upper house inquiry. I was never so pleased to be proven wrong.For all my enthusiasm, I am reminded that the Hawke Labor government passed legislation for a human rights bill in the House of Representatives in 1985.The bill stalled in the Senate and lapsed when Parliament was prorogued.The real problem with not having a human rights bill or charter in Australia is that our human rights jurisprudence has become isolated from the rest of the common law world in the10 years since the British Human Rights Act became law. Rather than politicise the judiciary, comparable legislation in Australia will simply bring our judges and politicians into line with the current thinking on human rights that is consistent with our British heritage.Peter Breen WoolloomoolooI have long admired Richard Ackland's jaundiced view of the legal profession and was therefore surprised to see him enthusiastically supporting a bill of rights. t its best the law is a vehicle which defends all citizens equally. The problem is that the law rarely operates "at its best" and, invariably, the intent of legislation is destroyed by lawyers pushing the boundaries of law to defend the indefensible and to fill their own pockets.Take what happened in relation to third party vehicle injuries claims where a whole industry emerged in which lawyers and medical professionals created a pot of gold for people with undefined musculo skeletalinjuries. Of course, their championing of those "injured" was at the expense of us all as we ended up paying with exorbitantinsurance charges.I cannot see how lawyers will be able to resist seeing a bill of rights as yet another opportunity to engage in destruction testing of existing legal codes. Theinescapable fact is that, at its heart, the business of lawyers is the exercise of power, andlawyers, being human, are no more immune to the misuse of that power than the rest of us.We could try to shoot a few of them from time to time "pour encourager les autres", butattempts to do so would invariably result in more work for their colleagues.The bill of rights is doomed to become a right to bill by opportunistic lawyers making mischief with legislation. Mr Ackland surely must know this.Tony Letford AshfieldWho should we trust? Ourunelected High Court judges who discarded the false claim that Australia was terra nullius, or our elected representatives who were comfortable with perpetuating a lie?Andrew Partos Seaforth
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald
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