Human Rights are Everyone's Rights

This month was a stark reminder of the amount of work there is still to be done in our country if we are to call ourselves a nation that cares about our citizens. 

At the beginning of this month, the Australian Government announced a complete travel ban on all direct flights from India as a result of the rapidly growing rates of COVID-19 in the country.  The Federal Health Minister in a press conference stated that anyone, including all Australian citizens trying to return home from India, who attempted to break the rules would face a fine of up to $66,600 or 5 years imprisonment or both. 

This unprecedented legislative enactment from the Government sent immediate shockwaves around the country and was seen by many as a racially motivated move targeting a specific community of citizens.  Human rights practitioners around the country and the world, as well as the UN, saw this as a breach of Australia's legal obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and a legal challenge was mounted in the Federal Court of Australia claiming the move was also unconstitutional. 

And at home in this country, Australians of Indian heritage were made to feel marginalised and demonised, with hundreds experiencing racially motivated verbal abuse and attacks from members of the public who were encouraged by their Government to fear and view their fellow citizens as pandemic spreaders and dangers to their health.

As a result of mounting public outcry and international condemnation, the Australian Government eventually lifted the ban and repealed the legislation, but not before untold damage had been done and two Australians that were trying to return home died in India from the pandemic.

On the 26th of May this year, we observed National Sorry Day, a day when we remember and acknowledge the mistreatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were forcibly removed from their families and communities, which we now know as ‘The Stolen Generations’.  National Sorry Day is a day to acknowledge the strength of Stolen Generations Survivors and reflect on how we can all play a part in the healing process for our people and nation.

But on this day we also remember that 13 years on from the first National Apology by the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are still 10.6 times more likely than non-Indigenous children to be removed from their families, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men, women and children are grossly over-represented and our dying in custody and our Government still refuse to accept the recommendations that resulted from the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart that called for us all to unite as a country and commit to a way forward through reconciliation, by acknowledging the sovereignty of our First Nations People,  truth-telling and giving a voice to our First Nations People to Parliament.

And as a nation, we are still committed to a policy that sees us indefinitely interning those who flee their countries in the hope of seeking asylum and safe haven in our land of plenty.

So this month of May was a brutal reminder to me and should be a reminder to us all, that we as a nation have a lot of work to do if we are to truly call ourselves the lucky country because, for many, this country is anything but. 

As the people of this nation, we can all play our part - we can demand better of our elected leaders by raising our voice, using our privilege and leveraging our spheres of influence to put pressure on those who should know better and must do better by us all because human rights are everyone's rights.