The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 9 September 2000
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HERE
AS John Howard prepared to fly out to take his place at the UN's Millennium Summit earlier this week, a letter to the editor appeared in The New York Times criticising Australia's new stance on ``critical United Nations human rights monitoring activities''. Its author, a gentleman from Atlanta, observed: ``It is unfortunate that Australia would react defensively to issues raised by the committee that monitors the United Nations Race Convention, which Australia ratified in 1975.'' He went on to dismantle the arguments upon which our Prime Minister is defending his Government's decision to downgrade relationships with the UN. ``John Howard argues that democracies should not be the subject of criticism because they have internal checks that ensure the enjoyment of human rights in those societies,'' continued the letter. ``This argument undermines the concept of a universal system in which all governments are scrutinised according to the same standard. Because treaty bodies have no enforcement powers, their only function is to assess how well governments are living up to the standards to which they agreed. For a democracy to denounce a United Nations committee's findings only gives abusive governments an excuse to bow out of the process.'' You may think: ``How dare a foreigner pass judgment on how our captain chooses to run his ship? But this insightful letter writer used to captain a ship of his own. And to Jimmy Carter, the 39th US President, global human rights has always been a primary crusade. But that is beside the point being made here. Two days after this letter was published, this Thursday just passed, The New York Times (on its website and presumably concurrently in its paper version) ran its first Olympic-related, in-depth examination of modern Australia. Penned by a visiting correspondent, the 1500-word article ran with the headline: ``Not a Game to the `Stolen Generation'.'' It's pretty easy to guess its contents from that. Included was a description of Redfern's ``block'' as a ``rat- and drug-infested collection of graffiti-scarred houses where heroin addicts inject themselves 50 yards from a playground where children frolic on swings''. A tad harsh, perhaps? The point here is, we do not need UN observers to tell the world about Australia's problems -- we have every news agency in the world right here, right now to do the job properly. John Howard did not need to travel to New York to embarrass us, he could have babbled on about the UN's flawed committee processes from the front step of Kirribilli House. However, even if the world media was not here, does Howard think he can control information about our social affairs simply by banning the UN from our shores? The most pathetic aspect of this mess is that our beloved Government has chosen to take its stand against the UN committee system on the back of a treaty allowing women everywhere to appeal against discrimination cases to a UN tribunal. Conveniently, the Government can justify this to itself in the light of the recent domestic debate over who should be allowed access to IVF treatments. How ironic that the Coalition should use an inherently sexist argument as a smokescreen for its racist agenda. This whole issue came about because of the UN's comments regarding our treatment of Aborigines and refugees. Fine, our Government does not appreciate that sort of bad publicity. Much in the same way Saddam Hussein didn't like the UN interfering in his treatment of the Kurds a few years back. But what can we do, Mr Howard? It's a bit too late to return to that old Menzies-era ideal in regards to domestic harmony -- a sort of hear no evil, see no evil, show no evil approach -- no matter how hard you try. Or how stupid does he think everyone else outside his Cabinet room might be?
