kewpid.net

Another instal­ment in Ger­ard Hende­r­son and Julian Burnside’s inter­min­able feud.

The case for such a charter was well argued at the sum­mit by legal aca­dem­ics Hil­ary Char­les­worth and George Wil­li­ams. But they failed to per­suade those del­eg­ates who believe that human rights are well pro­tec­ted by the cur­rent sys­tem and who oppose giv­ing greater powers to the legal profession.

Hende­r­son sneak­ily makes the point that Aus­tralia has a good human rights record here without actu­ally say­ing so, imput­ing it to anonym­ous del­eg­ates. While it’s true that Aus­tralia has a good his­tory of uphold­ing human rights con­ven­tions, it has taken a bat­ter­ing over the past dec­ade, par­tic­u­larly under the Howard government.

He then goes for the jug­u­lar, bring­ing up the “legal pro­fes­sion” boo­gey­man. There is little glory in fight­ing for the greater pro­tec­tion of rights, and rarely any money for test lit­ig­a­tion. So the human rights law­yers must be doing for the power? Pull the other one Gerry.

Julian Burn­side repeated his famil­iar refrain that politi­cians who (allegedly) do not tell the truth should be sub­jec­ted to pro­vi­sions sim­ilar to Sec­tion 52 of the Trade Prac­tices Act, which out­laws mis­lead­ing and decept­ive con­duct. Burn­side used the tele­vised occa­sion to depict politi­cians as deceiv­ers. His pro­posal got nowhere. This is not sur­pris­ing since the Trade Prac­tices Act deals with facts and politi­cians engage in argument.

Sec­tion 52 applies to both facts and opin­ions. There is little point in mak­ing the dis­tinc­tion between the two, and courts have not done so, par­tic­u­larly in the area of defam­a­tion law.

Also, if a truth test is to be applied to politi­cians, why not apply a sim­ilar test to bar­ris­ters, who also engage in advocacy?

He finally comes to a valid point. Aus­tralia is the only com­mon law jur­is­dic­tion to paro­chi­ally main­tain its advoc­ates’ immunity. It should be abolished.

After the sum­mit, Burn­side emailed par­ti­cipants that “it is a relief to know that ideas and con­ver­sa­tion are once again per­miss­ible in this coun­try”. This from a bar­ris­ter who became a national fig­ure on account of his pub­lic — and per­mit­ted — cri­ti­cism of the Howard government.

The smoth­er­ing of freedoms was more per­ni­cious and under­han­ded than the straw-man pseudo-scenario Hende­r­son thinks the left-intelligentsia believes occurred. There doesn’t have to be a bloody revolu­tion, or people being hand­cuffed in the streets for there to be evid­ence of a gov­ern­ment over­step­ping its mark. If Hende­r­son can­not at least make the dis­tinc­tion between hard and soft power, he has no busi­ness being a pub­lic com­ment­ator. Though people like Burn­side were “allowed” to con­tinue their cri­ti­cisms, they were sys­tem­at­ic­ally and pub­licly denounced, with attacks on their back­ground and char­ac­ter rather than their arguments.

The debate over the mer­its of a charter of rights will be debated ad nauseam, but Henderson’s argu­ment that it should be aban­doned because it would give the legal fra­tern­ity too much power is not a good enough reason to deny pro­tec­tions to those with the least amount of power. And his asser­tion that people are sick of the debate drag­ging on is laugh­able given it was the heal-dragging and snip­ing of atro­phytes like him that stalled the debate in the first place.

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York hd down­load Death Rattle Crys­tal Ice

Even Cow­girls Get the Blues video

buy Shane