A Bill Of Rights Is Necessary For The Protection Of The Australian Citizens From The Government

These include freedom of opinion, thought, association and freedom from arbitrary detention and are all about treating others fairly and being fairly treated yourself, and making genuine choices in daily life. Wilson says ‘Respect for human rights underpins the democratic processes of our society and is the cornerstone of a society that respects individuals and voluntary community collaboration’ (Tim Wilson, 2014). Despite this, the control the Australian Government exercised over its people in WWII encroached on all of these universally recognized human rights, and it was in 1948 after the atrocity of WWII that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was internationalised.

After looking at other example of Bills of Rights around the world, with America having theirs for 224 years, Canada having implemented theirs for 30 years and the UK for 17 years, Australia needs to consider each nation’s Bill of Rights’ respective strengths and weaknesses when considering our own Bill of Rights in order for it to best suit the current and future society. Canada adopts something of the middle ground between the strongly entrenched rights in the United State’s constitution and the United Kingdom where the British parliament remains supreme with a weak level of right entrenchment, making it perfect for the situation in Australia.

Good afternoon, my name is Stephanie Jones and I am a currently a human rights lawyer. Human rights are the basic freedoms and protections that everyone is entitled to purely for simply just being a human being. Today I would like to use this opportunity to discuss with you the greatly debated issue of an Australian Bill of Rights. Australia currently does not have a Bill of Rights, but is the current legal system coping without one? The answer to that question in my opinion is no. Australia currently is not adequately protecting individual human rights without having a Bill of Rights. While many people would argue that yes, Australia protects individual rights well enough as it is, just as many people passionately argue that Australia does indeed need a Bill of Rights for a variety of reasons which will be talked about in greater depth later on. In my talk with you today, I would like to discuss with you all what exactly a Bill of Rights is and what it aims to achieve, how a Bill of Rights has worked in other countries and some of the more popular arguments for and against having one.

In this essay I will examine the development of Australian society and subsequent rights given to Australian citizens, thus addressing the guiding question as quoted at the top of the paper.

In my opinion yes, the Bill of Rights was a necessary addition to the Constitution. A bill of rights is a list of the liberties and protections possessed by a nation’s citizens (Krutz, 2016, p. 28). The Bill of Rights was needed in order to control the government’s power and guarantee our rights as citizens. Citizens’ rights needed to be protected and the government power needed to be restricted. As citizens, we deserve a right to have a say in how our lives go. The First Amendment is very important regarding our freedom of speech, religion, and press. If it weren’t for the Bill of Rights, today as citizens, I feel we wouldn’t have any rights, we wouldn’t be

This has come from the Australian community and international human rights monitors who have stated that “There are still areas in which the domestic legal system does not provide an effective remedy to persons whose rights under the [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] have been violated … [Australia] should take measures to give effect to all Covenant rights and freedoms.” There hasn’t only been a recent push for a Bill of Rights, Former Chief Justice Sir Anthony Mason wrote in 1997 that “Australia's adoption of a Bill of Rights would bring Australia in from the cold, so to speak, and make directly applicable the human rights jurisprudence which has developed internationally and elsewhere. That is an important consideration in that our isolation from that jurisprudence means that we do not have what is a vital component of other constitutional and legal systems, a component which has a significant impact on culture and thought, and is an important ingredient in the emerging world order that is reducing the effective choices open to the nation state”. Brian Galligan who is an academic expert on citizenship stated that “the old confidence in the effectiveness of parliamentary responsible government and the common law for protecting human rights has been undermined by more realistic accounts of the weakness of parliament and the increasingly residual domain of common law compared with the plethora of statutory laws.” The answer to whether Australia needs to adopt a Bill of Rights in order to protect Australian citizens is simple… yes and

The Bill of Rights became a very important document in the United States Constitution in order to ensure United States citizens equal protection of their rights and liberties. The main objective of the Bill of rights was to place limits on the national government creating an understanding and dividing the powers between the states and the national government. Not all the powers were granted to the national government however not all the powers were prohibited to the states. As stated by Ginsberg, Lowi, Weir & Tolbert (2015) the bill of rights consists of 10 amendments incorporated in the U.S constitution. It is important to note that each amendment contains a legal court case in which the supreme court as well as the government have ruled and have ignored or have protected the rights of the individuals involved.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is without a doubt one of Canada’s most important section entrenched in the Canadian Constitution. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a bill of rights enacted into the Canadian Constitution as part of the Canada Act in 1982. However, the Charter was Canada’s second attempt to protect the rights and freedoms of its citizens all throughout the country and on every level of government. The Canadian Bill of Rights, which preceded the Charter was enacted in 1960. However, being only a federal statute rather than a full constitutional document, it had no power and application to provincial laws. In addition, the Supreme Court of Canada only narrowly interpreted the Bill of Rights, therefore rarely unlawful laws were declared inoperative and continued to exist. As a result, the ineffectiveness of the Bill of Rights led to many movements to improve the protection of rights and freedoms in Canada. However, similar to its predecessor, the Charter is not without faults, and loopholes. In some cases, it has even infringed upon certain liberties and democratic rights and freedoms. In other cases, the Charter has incited conflicts between liberty and democracy and raised questions that speculate whether it is truly democratic.

Upholding human rights is essential for ensuring a fair and equitable society. In 1966, Australia and a majority of the world’s nations signed on to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). After the atrocities committed in World War II this seemed like a positive step for ensuring acknowledgement and respect for the rights and freedoms of all people. However, the means of enforcing human rights is not a straightforward process. In response to ratifying the ICCPR, Australia set up the Australian Human Rights Commission. However, after a number of failed attempts, it has not followed through with implementing a

Australia pride itself on its strong human rights record and its standing as a good global citizen. However deeper analysis and according to recent situation that how boat people are being treated shows that Australia has failed to fulfill with its international human rights obligations in a number of areas. This is making the things complicating and has tendency towards receptionist and relativist arguments as regard as these international obligations. Especially, much of the focus in Australia and the country’s

The “Bill of rights” has been devise as a follow-up to Parliament's earliest Habeas Corpus bill, which guard personal freedom and liberty. Now almost every colony had a bill of rights. The Bill of Rights is a situated of limits on the vitality of the administration. Firstly, the Bill

The Human Rights Act 1998 (also known as the Act or the HRA) came into force in the United Kingdom in October 2000. It is composed of a series of sections that have the effect of codifying the protections in the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law. All public bodies (such as courts, police, local governments, hospitals, publicly funded schools, and others) and other bodies carrying out public functions have to comply with the Convention rights. The Human Rights Act protects individuals from torture (mental, physical or both), inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment and deportation or extradition (being sent to another country to face criminal charges) if there is a real risk that they will face

Human rights are the right that any individual is entitled under their government, and it can be provided in divergent forms. Thus in Australia, there are no set of ‘Bill of Rights’, comparable to many other western countries that share similar legal values and standards. The American ‘Bill of Rights’ states that the government ensures the freedom of speech and religion, protection from torture and punishment, and the fair procedures of law . There has always been a great debate on whether Australian government should acquire a constitutional Bill of Rights. I believe that it is not necessary to obtain a Bill of Rights as it is not necessary for Australian legal system, and further, it can bring confusion, greater debate and litigations. There are other forms of human rights law introduced into Australian legal system which sets boundaries for the government to respect individual rights. Consequently, it proves the unnecessity for a Bill of Rights in Australia.

Judicial review provides the courts with the authority to review and change laws that the government proposes that violates the Constitution. In this paper, I will discuss the issue of judicial review. More precisely, I will be focusing my argument on Jeremy Waldron’s objection to radical disagreement, which states that we cannot agree upon what our rights are, therefore we do not know which ones should be put in the charter. I will argue that Jeremy Waldron’s argument is a good objection to judicial review, because if we cannot agree upon what moral rights are, how are we going to be able to apply them to the charter. I will begin by outlining the key points in Waldron’s argument. I will then continue to outline why Waldron’s objections are strong. Finally, I will argue that radical disagreement is a strong objection to judicial review.

Scholars have read the development of rights as a response to several features of modernity. For instance, the deinstitutionalisation of social life has been noted to be a contributing factor to the development of rights. As contemporary culture places less emphasis on traditional sense-making social institutions (such as