Bill of Wrongs

Lying on your back, browning your belly under Sydney’s summer sun, it’s easy to wonder why Australia needs a Bill of Human Rights until you recall the Howard years. That will wake you from your slumber. In early 2003, before the American-Anglo-Aussie alliance invaded Iraq, over 100,000 people gathered in Hyde Park to peacefully protest the impending war. In late 2005 the Howard government passed a raft of anti terrorism and sedition laws which had the intended effect of chilling dissent. By mid 2007, in the twilight hours of the Howard government, opposition to the war had grown and yet less than 5,000 citizens were brave enough to assert their arguably tenuous democratic right to free speech and assembly by marching up George Street past cops with truncheons during the APEC summit in Sydney. In the absence of a Bill of Human Rights, half the City of Sydney was in lock down while the other half was terrorised by choppers swooping over their homes.

To mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10th, the still new Rudd government is reviewing whether or not Australia should recognise human rights in our constitution. An unholy coalition of the right wing factions of the Labor and Liberal parties passionately believes Australia should remain the lone western nation without human rights protection. Their fundamental argument is that an American ‘Bill of Rights’ model, which allows courts to provide a check and balance against the legislative and executive branches of government, is flawed because it will undermine elected politicians’ ability to do whatever they bloody well want. Residents in NSW are right to be frightened. The spokesperson for the NO HUMAN RIGHTS campaign is former State Premier Bob Carr (of the Carr-Iemma-Whatshisname government). In the wake of the Cronulla riots his successor hitched the ALP’s car to the Howard-Bush train wreck and gave the State Police extraordinary powers at the same time that the Federal government was busy introducing sedition and anti terrorism laws. Without judicial or legislative oversight, the local constabulary is now able to declare a police state, shutting down entire neighbourhoods while empowering NSWs’ finest to seize people’s mobile phones and read text messages in violation of the right to free speech, privacy and the presumption of innocence. In the absence of a Bill of Human Rights, Bob Carr introduced sniffer dogs in late 2001, allowing a furry force of snotty snouts to invasively search for drugs without a warrant. Last month police even brought a sniffer dog through the local business launch of the Glebe Street Fair, where Meredith Bergmann declared she had voted against sniffer dogs when Carr first introduced his hounding measures.

Last month Bergmann, a Labor left faction member, the former President of the State upper house and a current councillor at the City of Sydney, opposed the City’s requirement that local publishers (whether they be Rupert Murdoch or yours truly) obtain a license and pay a prohibitive tax, if they wish to freely distribute their publications on city streets, in violation of a newspaper’s right to free speech. One of the effects of providing a constitutional protection of free speech in the US is that newspaper racks are a constitutionally protected way for newspapers to reach readers. Here in Sydney, local publishers must pay Council hundreds of thousands of dollars for the right to have spruikers distribute newspapers on City streets, since newspaper racks and indeed all street furniture have met with the ire of the current Lord Mayor, who has launched a one woman war against clutter. Tokyo, Shanghai and Hong Kong can have their neon lights and urban bustle; New York, Paris and London can have their signage, racks, benches and tables — here in Sydney, Clover Moore is combining Swiss style antiseptic sterility with Singaporean penalties to boot. Her campaign to clean Sydney’s city streets has reached obsessive compulsive proportions. The City recently sent a letter to the Green Party threatening to issue fines if the group continued to place political posters on the City’s Spartan smart polls. Greeted with a backlash from local free speech activists, Council now claims it will not issue infringement notices for political posters, but has left its policy on the books and still aggressively rips down any and all posters upon sight. Free speech is a messy business which has no place in Sydney.