Senator COONEY (6:50 PM) —I move:

I think each of these documents deserves comment separately. Perhaps that is what we might do. I will take the first of the documents which deals with a complaint by an Australian citizen to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. It deals with an application that was not successful. It is an indication of a person's right that, if he feels that the tribunals within this country have not given him a fair go, he can go to a body like the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, not that that body is going to be able to make a judgment that binds this country. Nevertheless, it enables the person concerned to have the views of a body outside Australia that administers treaties which Australia signs up to.

All of these documents deal with the particular situation where a person has exhausted his or her rights within Australia and then seeks by the consent of the nation to go elsewhere. So it is not as if we are dealing with some body that overrides the Australian situation. It does not do that, but with the allowance of Australia, a person goes off to another tribunal. In this case, the person who went off—the alleged victim, as this document reads—did so because he said that he had been discriminated against in his work in Australia.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination listened to him and listened to the submissions put by Australia and said that Australia had acted fairly. When I say `Australia', I mean that the various tribunals and courts in Australia had acted fairly and given him a fair result and fair decision. It is perhaps worth while reading the comment by the committee at 9.3. It says:

The point I want to make is that there is this overriding international law, if you like, that guides countries in what is fair and reasonable. Those countries are not bound by the judgments of a committee like the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, but nevertheless it is a process whereby the countries around the world have the benefit of the opinion of a committee that interprets international treaties, and so was the case in this situation.

Mr Acting Deputy President, in the series of documents that you have called out, Australia has done very well indeed. It does show that Australia has a very good regime within it that enables people who are in Australia to get justice. On my reading of the documents, there was only one matter where it was suggested a person had been unfairly treated, and that is a matter that is still ongoing. (Extension of time granted)

These documents are all similar. The next one sets out the decision of the Human Rights Commission established under article 28 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Although this is a different committee—the last committee I was talking about was the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination—it is of the same order. It is an international body that, again, enables the residents of a country to go to an international forum, with the consent of the country in which he or she lives, and to have the opinion of that committee about the situation that he or she feels was not fair in terms of himself or herself.

In this case, the person had considerable concern about a matter in terms of Pine Gap near Alice Springs. He wanted to indicate his objection to it being there and trespassed on Pine Gap. He said that the system here had not treated him fairly. Again, the committee found that Australia had acted well, that its justice was of a good standard and that the author, as they call him in the document, had not made out the case that he wanted to make out and therefore he failed. Again, it is an indication of this rule of law, this body of law, this body of rights, that is seen as covering all countries and that all good countries should live up to, and in this case Australia did live up to it. I think this is a tendency, if you like, or a practice that will grow more and more.

In the end, we will have a rule of law operating throughout the world. For example, in Europe now we have the trial of people who are accused of genocide and other war crimes, and I think everybody approves of that. What we have to do—and you are very conscious of this, Mr Acting Deputy President Watson; I have heard you speak about it— is be very conscious that our sovereignty as a nation is preserved, that the courts in this country are given their proper respect and that they are our primary refuge when we feel that as citizens we are not properly dealt with. But, if we are going to have an international system, which we have—we have an international system more and more in trade, in tax and, in effect, at every level, brought around mainly because of the growth in technology—we have to feel our way in terms of an international system whereby the law that is recognised around the world is one that is proper and fair. This is another example of it. This is one that arises out of a particular convention, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.