Kevin Rudd's Bill of Rights a Failure

Bob Carr is against this Socialist/Communist subversive move to undermine the Government of Australia and its traditions and constitution.

Human rights charter is doomed: Carr

BOB Carr has predicted that the Rudd Government's flirtation with a charter of rights for Australia is doomed to failure despite support from Labor luminaries.

The former NSW Labor premier, who has previously warned that a bill of rights would lead to litigation over ``naked strollers'' and ``vegetarian menus'', has urged Kevin Rudd to dump the idea.
The Prime Minister has selected a bill of rights sceptic - priest Frank Brennan - to lead a panel shaping new laws to protect human rights.

Also announced on the panel today are former television news presenter Mary Kostakidis, barrister Tammy Williams and former federal police commissioner Mick Palmer.

One of the architects of the British model yesterday claimed it had become a "villains' charter".

"(But) I just don't think it will take off, politically,'' Mr Carr told The Australian Online today.

"Either a bill of rights or a charter, both proposals represent a shift in power from elected parliaments to unelected judges.

And this:

Rights charter like a dead parrot

• Bob Carr
• June 5, 2009

Illustration: John Shakespeare.

Illustration: John Shakespeare.

More judicial review, or judge-made law, is the last thing Australia needs. So nobody should be distressed that the push for an Australian charter of rights is exhausted. "The parrot is dead … It is an ex-parrot," as Monty Python would say.

A charter, according to its supporters, is a list of rights and allows the High Court to make findings of "incompatibility" between these and Commonwealth legislation.

But the constitutional difficulty of designing a charter emerged when two former High Court judges, Sir Gerard Brennan and Michael McHugh, said that requiring the High Court to play an advisory role to Parliament is outside the court's power. The advocates of a charter are self-proclaimed experts on the constitution; this was close to a death blow to something they had worked on for years.

"Moreover, the Australian people are unlikely to endorse any such proposal. Last time it was put to the people in a referendum in 1988 it was soundly defeated.