About Ruddock and his UN mashing

Crikey has an article on "Ruddock's peculiar view of human rights" in its recent email newsletter (although I can't seem to find it on their website, or is the RSS feed). Charles Richardson writes about Ruddock's claims "that the UN Convention on Human Rights requires the government to suppress civil liberties in order to fight terrorism" and argues that Ruddock "fundamentally misunderstands what human rights treaties ... are all about".

"We don't need a human rights treaty or a bill of rights to tell us that governments should be protecting the citizens' lives – that's their job. The point of a bill of rights is to constrain the way governments go about doing their job ...

Ruddock's view sets up a moral equivalence between government actions and government failures to act, but a moment's thought shows that this is absurd. If the police fail to prevent a murder, it's unfortunate, but it happens all the time – it's not a human rights issue. But if the police kill innocent people, it's a much more serious matter, because it puts us at risk from the very agency we have established to protect us.

If one thought that Ruddock really believed his own argument, it would be disturbing that we have an attorney-general who could muddle up such basic issues. It is much more likely, however, that he's cynically making whatever argument he thinks will serve the immediate purpose, and trusting that the media will be too incompetent to expose him.

Sadly enough, he's probably right".

Excuse the lengthy quote, but it's just what I wish I'd written in my last post. Congratulations to Charles Richardson for his clear thinking.

"Ruddock's peculiar view of human rights" by Charles Richardson. In Crikey Daily, 27 July 2005, item 14.

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