[an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive]

Brisbane, 15 December 2008

Address to Pacific Human Rights Consultations

Introduction

Thank you for those introductory comments. I’m delighted to have this opportunity to address participants at this week’s consultations.

I’d like at the outset to congratulate the Regional Rights Resource Team of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community on the comprehensive program they have developed for this week. I would also like to thank the UNDP Pacific Centre, the COMSEC Human Rights Unit and Amnesty International for their support for these consultations.

I have no doubt that the program on which you are about to embark will support your work as Members of Parliament as you promote and uphold human rights in your various constituencies.

The presentations and activities you will attend cover a range of human rights issues that are important to the Pacific region’s political, social and economic development.

The Australian Government is an active and willing partner in this endeavour. We are committed to working with our Pacific neighbours on practical measures to improve human rights standards and its supporting institutional infrastructure across the region.

This morning I would like to outline for you the Government’s policy framework in support of human rights in the Pacific.

In the course of our first year in Government we have done much to pursue these policies and I look forward, as Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs, to working closely with you to make further progress in our region.

Australia’s commitment to human rights

The Australian Government took office last year determined to reclaim Australia's reputation as a leader in the international promotion and protection of human rights.

One of our first steps was an open and honest examination of our own human rights record, and particularly the historic mistreatment of Indigenous Australians.

The Prime Minister's Apology to Indigenous Australians in February was a defining moment in Australia's history and was recognised by the international community as a symbolic and momentous step forward.

The Apology sent a clear message to the world that Australia is serious about both symbolic and practical steps towards reconciliation, and committed to closing the gap on Indigenous disadvantage.

In this 60th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Government is also adopting measures to strengthen Australia's engagement with the international human rights system.

We understand that international scrutiny is an important tool in upholding human rights and have extended a standing invitation to United Nations human rights experts to visit Australia.

In July, Australia became the 30th country to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The Government has also taken concrete steps towards becoming a party to the Convention's Optional Protocol.

This year also marks the 25th anniversary of Australia's ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

The Australian Government has lodged its instrument of accession to the Optional Protocol to the Convention enabling Australian women in future to bring complaints under CEDAW to the United Nations where domestic remedies have been exhausted.

I see you have a session on Thursday morning on legislating to give effect to the Convention and to prevent violence against women; I’d like to return to this theme later in my remarks.

The Government has also begun consultations with State and Territory counterparts and NGOs on Australia becoming a party to the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture.

The Optional Protocol establishes a system of United Nations visits to places of detention and requires states to establish a domestic mechanism to monitor detention.

Engaging on human rights issues in the Pacific

The Government’s strong record on international human rights issues reflects our firm belief in the universality of these rights.

We will continue to press for their fulfilment across the board and in all countries.

At the same time, we understand that individual countries bring unique perspectives and approaches to human rights.

Our formal bilateral Human Rights Dialogues illustrate our willingness to engage in an area of discussion where we know that we won’t always agree.

That is the approach we bring to our human rights engagement with Pacific countries.

As with dialogue in other spheres of our relationship, we want it to be firmly based on mutual respect, mutual responsibility and mutual commitment.

The Government understands that real progress in establishing international human rights norms in the Pacific will only be achieved if we work collaboratively with our neighbours, as equals, to realise shared goals.

We can’t be prescriptive about defining Pacific nations’ human rights issues and priorities. Instead, we need to engage in a conversation. And our engagement must reflect a long term commitment to develop broad-based support for international human rights norms.

Engaging as equals means bringing a sense of humility and self-examination to our conversations with Pacific nations.

We may, for example, want to discuss the inherent damage that corruption does to a government’s ability to uphold human rights standards.

But we can only do so effectively if we also acknowledge cases of high level corruption in Australia’s own recent history.

Similarly, our view is that human rights can only be fully enjoyed by a society when they are enjoyed equally by both men and women.

But as we support efforts to end violence against women and to achieve gender equality, we must also acknowledge the confronting truth that nearly half a million Australian women have experienced violence from their partner or former partner.

In other words, we need to approach our discussion from the perspective of shared challenges and a shared effort.

Australia’s new approach to the Pacific

The tone of our human rights engagement in the Pacific is consistent with the new spirit of cooperation articulated by the Prime Minister in his landmark Port Moresby Declaration in March this year.

At a fundamental level, it is also an intrinsic part of our new determination to support Pacific nations in their economic and social developmental aspirations.

That is because human rights and development are interdependent and mutually reinforcing.

The concept of Pacific Partnerships for Development lay at the heart of the Prime Minister’s Port Moresby Declaration.

Through these prospective Partnerships, Australia will look to work with partners who jointly commit to improvements across a spectrum of priority areas, including public infrastructure, governance, economic growth, education and health and human capacity building.

The Partnerships are not, in and of themselves, agreements on human rights measures or standards.

But by working collaboratively with our Pacific neighbours to improve development and to reach shared economic and social aspirations, we are also confronting obstacles to the development of a strong human rights culture.

Our Human Rights Fund, which is part of our development assistance program, supports both small, community-based organisations in their promotion of human rights as well as the regional activities of the United Nations and National Human Rights Institutions.

This year, for instance, we have contributed core funding for the Vanuatu Women’s Centre and supported human rights training delivered to Pacific Island police forces.

Last week on Human Rights Day Australia announced we will support four projects in the Pacific, under the Human Rights Small Grant Scheme. These projects will focus on:

Applied human rights: the development context

I spoke earlier about the interplay between universal human rights principles and the speed with which different countries can enshrine them in law and practice.

It’s not always easy to reconcile principle and practicality.

We as elected parliamentarians ought never to cease promotion of basic human rights like the right to a fair trial, to free speech, and to equality of opportunity and freedom from discrimination on grounds of race, gender, disability or religion.

But the fact is, many of these rights are impossible to exercise – and hard to become exercised over - if you’re poorly educated, in bad health, or malnourished; if few of your family’s most basic needs are being met; or if your access to government services is blocked by petty corruption.

Where these basic living standards are wholly or largely absent, other political and civil rights may seem somewhat academic.

As I said earlier, Australia’s development assistance policy recognises that development and human rights are interdependent and mutually reinforcing.

As you know, we and other members of the United Nations have subscribed and remain committed to the Millennium Development Goals.

In our own Pacific region, progress towards meeting the targets embodied in these goals has been mixed. As a good international citizen, and as a member of this region, we must and will do all we can to remedy this situation.

In seeking to help our neighbours meet these indices of human and social development, Australian Government policy embraces a wide range of practical, complementary initiatives.

These initiatives, including those delivered through our development assistance program, are designed to address basic social needs. Human rights dialogue should not be seen separately in such an approach, but rather be encouraged as an integral part of the developmental experience. Achieving such balance in turn builds a stronger and more robust developmental experience that enfranchises the disadvantaged and strengthens the capacity of social, cultural and economic institutions to sustain developmental and material gains.

A fundamental building block of development is – and I’m sure you will all agree -- the concept of good governance.

It is a key feature of our collaborative work with Pacific neighbours and is central to ensuring there is institutional strength which - amongst many things - ensures the rights of people are enhanced.

Take, for example, the excellent work done since 2003 by the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands, or RAMSI.

This initiative represents asuccessful partnership of sixteen Pacific Islands Forum states, which having helped restore law and order in Solomon Islands, is now turning its focus towards the longer-term issues of capacity building, governance, economic reform, and strengthening judicial and correctional institutions.

In PNG, and in close consultation with the government we are, through the Strongim Gavman Program, working to improve governance at different levels.

This includes our joint efforts to enhance financial management and budget controls, and to help strengthen the administration of justice.

In Vanuatu, Australia has been working closely with Vanuatu agencies in the law and justice sector. Through the ‘Governance for Growth’ program, we are working jointly to identify and overcome governance obstacles to broad based growth.

This has led to a negotiated end to the government monopoly in the telecommunications sector, resulting in a decrease in costs and improvements in national coverage.

I should also mention the Pacific public sector capacity program. As part of a four-year initiative, Australia is investing $107 million -- with $6 million allocated in this financial year -- to strengthen public sector administration in the Pacific.

This is intended to address a key impediment to poverty reduction, by helping to improve service delivery and enable economic growth.

Improved public health is another of our priorities in the region. And, under this broad rubric, Australia is devoting significant resources to combating the spread of HIV/AIDS.

For example, the Australian Government is the lead donor supporting Papua New Guinea's national HIV/AIDS response. including the PNG-Australia Sanap Wantaim program.

Unless more is done to address the spread of HIV/AIDS in PNG, the country’s workforce may decline by 12.5% by 2025 and significantly reduce the size of PNG’s economy.

On a different level, Australia is committed to helping countries in this region to share more fully in the benefits of increased trade and economic growth.

Without such growth, the citizens of your countries will be unable to realise their true potential.

We believe – as do Pacific Island Leaders – that the nations of the Pacific ought to become more deeply integrated with the wider global community, and benefit from the freer flow of goods, services and investments within the region.

We are committed to helping our neighbours adjust to the inevitable costs of structural reforms, including through development assistance tailored towards improving the infrastructure and capacity necessary to take advantage of trade opportunities.

Last month, I also had the pleasure of signing, on behalf the Government, three MOUs relating to Australia’s Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme, with representatives of Kiribati, Tonga and Vanuatu.

This Scheme is an important demonstration of our strengthened Pacific engagement. Certainly, it’s been as warmly welcomed by Pacific island governments, as by communities in Australia.

In so far as it ultimately enables Pacific island workers to contribute to their countries’ economic development—through employment experience, remittances, and on-the-job training—whilst addressing skills shortages in Australia, we think it can make a useful contribution to challenging unemployment in the Pacific.

I referred at the outset to Australia’s own efforts to end discrimination against women. The right of women not to face discrimination is a difficult and often culturally sensitive issue to address within the Pacific. In my lifetime however, I have seen what a difference such efforts have made and continue to make to our society and stand ready to advocate such efforts in our broader region.

I am glad to see that this effort is reflected in our development assistance program, because advancing gender equality is essential to reducing poverty and to increasing the effectiveness of aid.

In 2007, AusAID developed a comprehensive policy framework which placed gender equality as an overarching objective of the aid program and integrates it into all aid initiatives.

The challenge of empowering women in the Pacific has many aspects.

At one level, there’s the work we do – including with UNIFEM’s office in Suva—to improve women’s leadership and access to decision-making at a local and national level throughout the Pacific.

Women’s economic empowerment remains a key challenge. To this end we have over the past year undertaken work to identify what impedes women’s participation within the private sector in the Pacific, and steps that might improve the business enabling environment for women.

At another level, we work to advance women’s vital role in the development effort by actively assisting in regional efforts to prevent violence against women.

For example, AusAID currently supports the Vanuatu Women’s Centre and the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre.

The Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre provides support for victims of domestic violence, advocates against violence, runs training targeting men, including chiefs and religious leaders, and has successfully raised the profile of the seriousness of violence against women in Fiji, the Pacific and internationally.

Last month, we also launched a report prepared by AusAID entitled Violence against women in Melanesia and East Timor: Building on global and regional approaches.

Conclusion: the importance of leadership

I’d like to conclude with some reflections on that report, and the importance of moral leadership for human rights issues generally.

I do so as a lawyer and Member of Parliament, conscious that you all, as legislators, play a vital role in shaping both the Pacific debate on human rights and the way that debate is ultimately reflected in policy.

You should never underestimate the power of example.

It was immensely encouraging to hear that the current Papua New Guinea Police Commissioner was present, and spoke at the launch of the AusAID report in PNG on 24 November.

This is a man known for his determination to hold the Royal PNG Constabulary to account for any part they may play as perpetrators of violence against women.

His stance echoes that of Prime Minister Somare who, in a groundbreaking statement in Parliament on 17 November 2007, called on his fellow citizens to speak up when they encountered violence against women.

More recently, His Excellency Anote Tong, President of Kiribati, lent his considerable prestige to this cause when he encouraged men to take action to end violence against women.

They must, he said, “respect and honour the important role that women continue to play in fostering development in our families and the nation as a whole”.

I would hope that all of us would follow the example of this kind of leadership and speak out, not only on the subject of violence against women, but against all other forms of entrenched social injustice.

Changing society and social mores takes time and effort, but people like you are better placed than most to lead by example.

Thank you.

Media inquiries: Mr Kerr's office - 02 6277 4991

[an error occurred while processing this directive]