User:Borofkin/Human rights in Australia

Australia generally has a good human rights record. State sanctioned torture is non-existant, and protection of women and minorities is reasonably good by world standards.

There are a number of pieces of legislation to protect certain human rights, however Australia has no bill of rights. The High Court has found certain implied rights in the constitution.

Australia has been criticised at various times for its immigration policies, treatment of asylum seekers, and treatment of the native population.

Legislation

• Racial Discrimination Act 1975
• Sex Discrimination Act 1984
• Disability Discrimination Act 1992
• Age Discrimination Act 2004
• Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act 1986

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission

Main article: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) is a national independent statutory body of the Australian government. It has the responsibility for investigating alleged infringements under Australia’s anti-discrimination legislation.

According to their website, matters that can be investigated by the Commission include "discrimination on the grounds of race, colour or ethnic origin, racial vilification, sex, sexual harassment, marital status, pregnancy, or disability."

Universal suffrage

Women were given the vote at the federal level in 1902. Aboriginies did not win the right to vote until the 1967 referrendum.

Aboriginies

Australian Aborigines are the indigenous peoples of Australia. Their ancestors probably arrived in Australia just over 50,000 years ago, although the date remains in dispute.

Massacres and dispossession of land

In 1770, Captain James Cook took possesion of the east coast of Australia and named it New South Wales in the name of Great Britain. The Aboriginal population was decimated by British colonisation which began in 1788, when news of the land's fertility spread to Europeans causing them to begin settling in the Aborigines' land. A combination of disease, loss of land (and thus food resources) and outright murder reduced the Aboriginal population by an estimated 90% during the 19th century and early 20th century.

A wave of massacres and resistance followed the frontier. The last massacre was at Coniston in the Northern Territory in 1928. Poisoning of food and water has been recorded on several different occasions.

Stolen generation

Main article: Stolen generation

Stolen Generation is the term commonly used to mean the Australian Aboriginal children who were removed from their families by Australian government agencies and church missions between approximately 1900 and 1972. Originally considered child welfare, the practice is today perceived by many as gross human rights violations, having wrought extensive family and cultural damage.

The nature of the removals, their extent, and its effects on those removed, is a topic of considerable dispute and political debate within Australia to the point that the term "Stolen Generation" is often referred to in the media as the "so-called Stolen Generation".

According to a government enquiry on the topic, at least 30,000 children were removed from their parents, and the figure may be substantially higher (the report notes that formal records of removals were very poorly kept). Percentage estimates were given that 10–30% of all Aboriginal children born during the seventy year period were removed.

Health

Many Aborigines now live in towns and cities around Australia, but a substantial number live in settlements (often located on the site of former church missions) in what are often remote areas of rural Australia. The health and economic difficulties facing both groups are substantial (for instance, life expectancy of Aboriginal people is often 20 years shorter than the wider Australian population, and alcoholism is a serious issue) and the root causes are poverty, grog and the brutality of individuals towards one another. The solutions to these root causes have been, again, contentious in political issues.

Immigration and Asylum Seekers

White Australia policy

Main article: White Australia policy

The White Australia policy, the policy of excluding all non white people from the Australian continent, was the official policy of all governments and all mainstream political parties in Australia from the 1890s to the 1950s, and elements of the policy survived until the 1970s. Although the expression “White Australia Policy” was never in official use, it was common in political and public debate throughout the period.

Mandatory detention

Main article: Mandatory detention in Australia

The term mandatory detention describes the legislation and actions of the Australian government to detain all persons entering the country by boat without a valid visa, including children. During the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, these unathorised arrivals, popularly referred to as boat people, were transferred to one of the Australian immigration detention facilities on the Australian mainland, or to Manus Island or Nauru as part of the Pacific Solution. Mandatory detention is considered by many to be a violation of basic human rights, and remains a very controversial aspect of Australian immigration policy

The HREOC held an inquiry into mandatory detention and found that many basic rights outlined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child were denied to children living in immigration detention.