Ruddock opposes Bill of Rights
I am always surprised at two Australian misconceptions, both driven by unreasonable fears and the mockery of the common intelligence that comes from so many politicians. One is the dizzying fear Australians have of firearms. Mention a gun to an Australian, he or she looks like they're facing a salt water crocodile. That must be the same expression on their face.
A constitutional Bill of Rights says something very important to the people of a nation. It says the people are more important than the government.
Without a Bill of Rights, the opposite message is repeated with every law, and every time a law is enforced.
I was about 4 years old when my father first showed me a machete. I was fascinated by this half-hatchet, half-knife with its long heavy blade. It was USArmy issue, with a hard rubber handle and a long heavy blade, used by the troops sent into the South Pacific.
He told stories about people in the Carribbean using it to chop down bunches of bananas. And how in South America, the natives used machetes to chop their way through dense forests. My mother told me about when my father had used a machete to chop a man free from an anaconda.
It was years later that the idea it could be used on a man came to me. I thought then it must be some kind of nut who would do something like that.
I was 5 or so when they bought me my first rifle - a .22 single shot. I was shown how to load, unload, and carry it so that no one would be shot by accident, including me!
Then they sent me out into the northern Arizona desert to shoot rabbits.
My father taught me to shoot after I'd spent a couple of boxes of rounds without hitting anything.
He and my mother told me a gun was a tool, not a weapon. That the only place for using a gun as a weapon was in a war.
Lessons run deep when they are based in trust. From those words about guns came my life-long attitude about all forms of violence. There is a time and a place for all things, the Bible is echoed in the famous song by The Doors.
What does that have to do with a Bill of Rights?
Because law is a weapon as brutal as a two-handed machete. If you expect a person to wield any tool or weapon responsibly, you have to give them trust and respect. It is that trust and respect that will stay their hand, not the threat of punishment or death.
A Bill of Rights tells the citizens of a country that they are trusted and respected; that they must wield these laws as responsibly as the government will wield other laws. Without a Bill of Rights, the citizens of a country, like Australia, know that they are the least important part of the country. Sarcastically, the bottom of the heap - and we all know what flows downhill. - The message comes across loud and clear without ever being spoken.
Are there those who abuse and misuse their rights? Of course.
There are those who abuse machetes, too; and guns. That is part of the cost of freedom: to allow people to make mistakes and have the courage to stand by your principles even when they threaten you. Even when those who abuse their freedom may kill you.
Freedom is not cheap, or easy. Ask the millions who have died fighting for it, or the millions more who risk their lives to find it.
Freedom without respect and responsibility is a lie a drug. It is a promise constantly forgotten. The repeated promise of freedom is used like a narcotic to quell the need for common respect, and trust.
Any fifth grader in Civics class will tell you, Mr Ruddock, that the Bill of Rights is not absolute. Freedom of Speech does not mean you can yell, "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
And most of those fifth graders will tell you that rights are constantly being redefined, and adapting to the necessities of the times. Adaptation is a constant dialogue between the fears of those who would abuse rights, and the courage of those who would rather die than live without them.
It is that dialogue that keeps the government in check; the law in balance. If a government goes too far, the citizens can force the abusive laws to be rescinded. The courts will enforce the rights of the citizens.
There is no such dialogue in Australia. The Australian government can pass and execute any law it chooses at any time. It is one of the main reasons the Australian democracy remains immature.
The right of a government to write any law is an act of terror. Government does not have to rule by fear, Mr Ruddock.
Some of those fifth graders will someday die because of their love for those rights, and the ideals of freedom - based on trust and respect - they represent.
ATTORNEY-General Philip Ruddock has dismissed growing calls for Australia to adopt a bill of rights.
Concerns about the Federal Government's tough anti-terrorism laws posing threats to civil liberties have sparked calls this year for the introduction of a bill of rights.
But Mr Ruddock today downplayed the concerns, saying the new laws balanced the need to protect human rights with the need to protect Australians from terrorist attacks.
Australia risked lumbering itself with an inflexible set of principles if it followed countries like the United States and Canada by adopting a bill of rights, he said.
“The danger with having a statutory bill of rights is that it is an inflexible set which can frustrate the implementation of necessary policies that are aimed at protecting the safety of the community,” Mr Ruddock told a Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) forum.
“Bills of rights are inevitably rooted in time and there is a certain chauvinism in those who believe that rights as we conceive them today are the most appropriate into the future.”
Australia is the only modern western country in the world without a constitutional or statutory bill of rights to protect fundamental human rights and use as a benchmark measure for new laws.
A constitutional Bill of Rights says something very important to the people of a nation. It says the people are more important than the government.
Without a Bill of Rights, the opposite message is repeated with every law, and every time a law is enforced.
I was about 4 years old when my father first showed me a machete. I was fascinated by this half-hatchet, half-knife with its long heavy blade. It was USArmy issue, with a hard rubber handle and a long heavy blade, used by the troops sent into the South Pacific.
He told stories about people in the Carribbean using it to chop down bunches of bananas. And how in South America, the natives used machetes to chop their way through dense forests. My mother told me about when my father had used a machete to chop a man free from an anaconda.
It was years later that the idea it could be used on a man came to me. I thought then it must be some kind of nut who would do something like that.
I was 5 or so when they bought me my first rifle - a .22 single shot. I was shown how to load, unload, and carry it so that no one would be shot by accident, including me!
Then they sent me out into the northern Arizona desert to shoot rabbits.
My father taught me to shoot after I'd spent a couple of boxes of rounds without hitting anything.
He and my mother told me a gun was a tool, not a weapon. That the only place for using a gun as a weapon was in a war.
Lessons run deep when they are based in trust. From those words about guns came my life-long attitude about all forms of violence. There is a time and a place for all things, the Bible is echoed in the famous song by The Doors.
What does that have to do with a Bill of Rights?
Because law is a weapon as brutal as a two-handed machete. If you expect a person to wield any tool or weapon responsibly, you have to give them trust and respect. It is that trust and respect that will stay their hand, not the threat of punishment or death.
A Bill of Rights tells the citizens of a country that they are trusted and respected; that they must wield these laws as responsibly as the government will wield other laws. Without a Bill of Rights, the citizens of a country, like Australia, know that they are the least important part of the country. Sarcastically, the bottom of the heap - and we all know what flows downhill. - The message comes across loud and clear without ever being spoken.
Are there those who abuse and misuse their rights? Of course.
There are those who abuse machetes, too; and guns. That is part of the cost of freedom: to allow people to make mistakes and have the courage to stand by your principles even when they threaten you. Even when those who abuse their freedom may kill you.
Freedom is not cheap, or easy. Ask the millions who have died fighting for it, or the millions more who risk their lives to find it.
Freedom without respect and responsibility is a lie a drug. It is a promise constantly forgotten. The repeated promise of freedom is used like a narcotic to quell the need for common respect, and trust.
Any fifth grader in Civics class will tell you, Mr Ruddock, that the Bill of Rights is not absolute. Freedom of Speech does not mean you can yell, "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
And most of those fifth graders will tell you that rights are constantly being redefined, and adapting to the necessities of the times. Adaptation is a constant dialogue between the fears of those who would abuse rights, and the courage of those who would rather die than live without them.
It is that dialogue that keeps the government in check; the law in balance. If a government goes too far, the citizens can force the abusive laws to be rescinded. The courts will enforce the rights of the citizens.
There is no such dialogue in Australia. The Australian government can pass and execute any law it chooses at any time. It is one of the main reasons the Australian democracy remains immature.
The right of a government to write any law is an act of terror. Government does not have to rule by fear, Mr Ruddock.
Some of those fifth graders will someday die because of their love for those rights, and the ideals of freedom - based on trust and respect - they represent.
posted by Unknown at
6:49 PM
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2 Comments:
Even as a soldier, a gun is best treated like a tool. The most powerful weapons a soldier has are his mind and his heart, not the baggage he carries.
Training only gives a soldier more tools to work with. It makes some complicated decisions easier by simulating practice. A soldier learns to move and fight in order to save his own life.
As you would not use a plow to clean the lounge room carpet, you do not use the weapons of war in civilian life.
Only those who are naive, or poorly trained, would even consider such things.
A soldier understands that soldiering is a special function within society. A soldier agrees to make his or her life expendable to a greater good, or subject to the judgment of others. It is true expression of the meaning of service, in the most meaningful way.
What is sad is that civilians assume that soldiers are children, and treat them as children playing with dangerous toys. Nothing could be farther from the truth, if the soldier has been trained properly.
As in any profession, if the person fears their tools, or does not respect their tools, they are a danger to themselves and others. Ask any machinist what he or she thinks when someone looks nervously at a ban saw or lathe.
For those who do not know and respect their tools, who have no experience with them, they assume their own naive and childish attitudes are shared by soldiers because they know no better.
This is the greatest mistake made by civilians and civil authorities about weapons and soldiers. - It really does come down to the quality of the individual, guided by training.
On the other hand, the balance in society is also valuable.
Soldiers must be subject to the judgment and values of civilian authority. Soldiers are human, too, and make mistakes.
Society is a constant compromise between varied and various value systems, within the limits of human understanding. As a soldier defends the society and its laws, he or she must also be subject to those laws.
If every soldier, or policeman, does not understand these basic facts, then the society is going to have serious problems.
By
Unknown, at 9:52 AM
The same sense of respect, trust, and responsibility is a part of every person in a society.
A man does not raise his hand to a woman because he knows it will cost him her respect and trust.
A woman does not abuse a man because she knows it will cost her his respect and trust.
It is a question of individual character, not an issue that can be made law, whether a man strikes back when a woman attacks him, either by abuse or physical attack.
I can speak for myself here. After two years of abuse and threats by my ex and her family while I was nearly invalid, followed by her perjury and extortion using the ignorant prejudice of the Victorian courts, I chose to never raise my hand to any of them in any way.
In fact, rather than raise my hand, I sank deep into depression and anxiety to the point that I would have chosen to harm myself, repeatedly, and finally became suicidal, rather than harm any of them.
It is a disgusting condemnation of Australian law that it cannot recognize and respect that sort of character in a person.
What I have found in the last few years is that I am not unique, or special. Most men would prefer to destroy themselves, one way or the other, before harming those they love.
Australian law condemns a man from even trying to express this seemingly basic human characteristic.
Paul Donley
By
Unknown, at 10:02 AM
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