By EVA WILAND
Former High Court judge Michael Kirby yesterday attacked the Murdoch press for stifling debate and thoughts on human rights reform in Australia.
The outspoken retired judge lashed out at The Australian newspaper for its view against human rights legislation in Australia in the wake of the National Human Rights Consultation Committee (NHRCC)’s report released last week.
Kirby was delivering a lecture at Macquarie University in Sydney, entitled “Law and religion in the age of universal human rights” which was sponsored by the Macquarie School of Law and Centre for Research on Social Inclusion.
The attack came after Paul Kelly, editor-at-large of The Australian, set the tone against human rights legislation in an opinion peace which was particularly damning, describing the report as divisive and political.
Kelly accuses the report for playing into the hands of the human rights lobby which has been seeking “the obliteration of the Howard cultural legacy”.
Kirby, in response questions from the audience yesterday, launched into a scathing criticism of The Australian for its “concerted campaign against having a charter of rights” and noted Australia was the only western country without such a charter.
“It’s really a shocking thing that a particular media house doesn’t allow a fair representation of issues,” he said. “They make it their comeuppance as they did in relation to the republic.”
Kirby defended the report, saying Father Frank Brennan, chairman of the committee, had made a good case for a charter of human rights.
“The people of Australia are not crazy, they don’t like having things rammed down their throats. They want to think about things,” he said.
“We can’t say the Australian Parliament fixes up things quickly. It took an awful long time to fix up the issue (of homosexuality) that depressed me in my youth.
“It took an awful long time to fix up white Australia and our racist attitudes to which I grew up in this country.
“Most of all, it never fixed up the deprivation of the Aboriginal people in this country.
“So…we don’t always do things quickly and if some people want to stimulate the Parliamentary process, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing in my humble opinion, but that’s a matter for all the citizens to decide between themselves.
“We’re going to have a lot of debate about (human rights reform), but not in the pages of The Australian.”