Mrs IRWIN (7:09 PM) —There are two issues raised in this Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 1998 . The first is to bring a number of rights mechanisms into line with the Brandy High Court decision. The second is to cut back on those very mechanisms. On the one hand, the bill is seeking to improve the handling of grievances relating to what most of us take for granted as our God-given rights and, on the other hand, it is seeking to reduce the accessibility of those mechanisms for those people who might be said to have less opportunity to pursue their rights.

Most of us would accept that it is my right to tell you when you are infringing my rights and, for the most part, I am fully able to stand up for myself. That makes me an unlikely candidate for dealings with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission or with the specialist commissioners in disability, race or sex.

I am a potential candidate and so are all of us. It is true of most people in the electorate I represent. In my electorate of Fowler, the language count is well over 100. It is a great community, and I would like to invite you all to visit to see how cultural, racial and language barriers are overcome by necessity and by a natural, innate sense of respect for others. You would have to work really hard at being intolerant if you were going to make a thing of it. Diversity in Fowler is pervasive. Liverpool's diversity is worldly. On the other hand—and food writers are increasingly saying so—the scents and flavours of Cabramatta are not of this world.

Most of these people are Australians—Aussies. You are, we are; we are all Australians. But do not tell me that lots of them have not been passed over for a job because of language barriers or cultural or racial differences or plain old-fashioned irrational prejudice. It is quite hard for the Australian born Aussie to understand his or her rights, let alone for someone from an often traumatised homeland with a different language to understand them.

Equal rights are what makes democracy. Any reduction in the means to pursue one's rights diminishes those rights, diminishes democracy. Any reduction in access to those mechanisms where fairness and the rule of law replace hatred and prejudice creates classes of superior and inferior people. But it depends on where you are coming from. We know where this government is coming from—the law, access, equity should not be concerns of the lesser people; it would be morally instructive for them to rise above their circumstances.

In keeping with the government's business management regime, those people who are least able to pay should be made to pay or should be denied access. It is more than sound business practice; it is a corporate plan, a plan to rein in the scandalous abuse by all those non-establishment types, of the all-too-many specialist commissions providing too many cushy jobs to Liberal leaning lawyers and other bleeding heart do-gooders who harbour economically irrational notions that law does not have to be profitable.

Well, we on this side would like to take issue. Solving the technical issues raised by the Brandy decision is what this legislation principally, apparently, unremarkably, sets out to do, and like-minded men and women working together within our constitutional and legal framework have no quarrel here. We need to fix it fast if we are going to have coherent, soundly based legislation. We owe it to ourselves and we owe it to those who might need it. And we need it for its more abstract symbolic purpose.

The bill has been around for a long time, a disgracefully long time. It is not a priority. It is not the sort of legislation this government sees as important, except in the context of siphoning off some funds. It is not important to this government because it is not really their constituency: a bunch of overly-sensitive foreigners, a bunch of yappy sheilas whingeing about a bit of slap-and-tickle from the boss, people with disabilities, and Aboriginal people.

As John Elliott, a man with some exposure to the courts, a man who presided over that great institution, the Liberal Party of Australia, said only this week, `Aboriginal people are the forgotten race'. He said that `they and the drugs problem aren't making the pie any bigger'. He went on to say:

We've got to keep Johnny Howard . . . to stay worrying about economic growth and not worrying about saying sorry to a forgotten race.

Big Bad John. Between him and Little John, is it any wonder we need a Robin Hood?

It is not just Aboriginal people whom the Howard government would like to forget. It is a whole section of Australians who generally do not vote Liberal—people who, on the whole, are not law consumers in any commercially viable sense. Why should they be allowed to put their gripe into the ear of one of those commissions? Why should they have access to the law when people like Abbott and Costello have paid good money to do so? But, of course, human rights are relative. Some people have rights. Others have the right to be human, the right to silence, the right to be trammelled, abused, slurred and treated as less than, well, human.

That is the case unless you can afford a good lawyer, or unless you are doing something serious such as pursuing profit but finding the tax laws a little unfavourable—unfavourable enough for you to tie up the administrations and the courts with hokey technical arguments, well paid for of course. This is the pursuit of your rights to pay less than your fair share of tax. It is a business overhead, after all, and the democratic institutions of this nation are there to serve your interests, your rights. It is business, and that is different from the commissions, tribunals, courts and other forums being bogged down with little people's problems. They might stand to lose as much, relatively speaking, of course, but they are not paying for top silks. They do not have to answer to their company's board if the action is not strategically based—justice, fairness, responsibility, compliance, morals and ethics do not figure in the balance sheet.

Labor's amendments to costs are critical in this regard. Discrimination is often aided and abetted by the disadvantage of the victim. The offender more often is asserting the power of position, of financial means, or the power of the local language, the power to draw upon collectively held prejudices, or sheer physical power. Labor does not support the government's increases in the Federal Court's schedule of fees in the case of discrimination cases. We are not alone in the view that justice is not served by making it dangerously expensive. Many victims of discrimination are unlikely to have the means to pay more than $2,500 just to take the case to court. The fees should be nominal. They should not be a barrier to undertaking action for oneself, because it is often the case that one is not alone in suffering discrimination. It is often race based, to give the most obvious example.

There is no doubt in my mind that the government, with this fee structure, is providing a disincentive for cases to be resolved at Federal Court level. Again, it is market thinking. Demand will be very cost sensitive. Like the GST, the additional expense will not mean much to the well-off but it means a hell of a lot to the less well-off. And who is most likely to be less well-off? As I said before, I would like you all to drop into my office in Fowler and I will show you around. It would help if you are multilingual and like exotic cooking. For the ordinary people of Fowler, from a hundred or so different cultural and language backgrounds, the cuts to legal aid make the prospects of launching a complaint pretty daunting. The new guidelines essentially mean that test cases and class actions will only get a look-in.

I and my colleagues on this side like the idea of promoting human rights in Australia. It means we have come of age. It means we are a free country. It reminds us that freedom should be jealously guarded. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and the specialist commissioners provide a potent international signal that we do jealously guard our rights. Having a workable, accessible, non-discriminatory system to deal with breaches is, I would have thought, the best way of publicising the existence of those rights. Furthermore, specialist commissioners should not be solely complaint driven. They need to get out into the field and identify practices that are out of line and they need to work to correct them. That is active promotion of human rights. The protection of human rights in this country is not a job which has been completed. But just look at the Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 2) to see just how this government plans to dilute the mechanism by collapsing the present commissioners, with their expert perspectives, into three.

Clearly, when it comes to basic civilised rights which should be enjoyed equally by all, regardless of colour, creed, sex, disability or any other artificial or misguided distinction, we should all have a place to go. Not a kiss-and-ride railway set-down, not a 15-minute loading zone or a half-hour House of Reps side-door spot, but a place where we can put the case adequately, under cover preferably, and drive away with the job complete. What the government would like is the sort of one-stop shop Centrelink concept that has been received with as much acclaim as a government charter plane rort. You do not get any answers to your questions even if there is a lucky chance that there is someone there. And it all adds up to pretty messy and confused stuff. We do not discriminate against the sort of discrimination you are complaining about, nor do we discriminate between discrimination cases and other cases. It is called administrative efficiency.

Anti-discrimination legislation has had a short history. It postdates pro-discrimination legislation. It is in its infancy. But this government has already slashed into the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. As the shadow minister, the member for Barton, previously pointed out, there has been a staggering cut of around half the commission's budget. Staff have been cut. The bulk of the work is now only that which is pressing.

Human rights issues cannot be put on a production line. It is a labour intensive area demanding sensitive human judgment. It is difficult ground because it involves perceptions, community values, hurt feelings, individuals, groups, large and small institutions, the law, the states, international agreements and all responsible citizens. Those injured face the indignity and even shame of making a spectacle of their private concern. This bill has two purposes. As I said when I began, we in the opposition are in agreement with the technical adjustments brought on by the Brandy decision but we are not impressed by the proposals to restrict access to the mechanisms for redress by ordinary Australians.