The Chairman of the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council has this week called on Government to take stock of its human rights performance.
This week, Bishop Christopher Saunders, from the Diocese of Broome WA, said that recent developments in Indigenous affairs and immigration policy would give cause for anyone concerned about human rights to ask, ‘What’s happening to our nation?’
“What’s happening in a nation willing to outlay billions of dollars in on-land and off-shore immigration detention that undermines human dignity and causes irreparable harm?” Bishop Saunders asked.
“The cost of running the Manus Island and Nauru facilities alone is over $1 billion annually.
“At the same time, Commonwealth and State governments seem unwilling to scrape together a small fraction of that amount to provide basic services to remote Indigenous communities.
“Anywhere up to 150 remote towns in Western Australia face closure because the State Government says it can’t find a meagre $90 million to fund municipal and essential services that were recently offloaded to the states by the Commonwealth Government.
“Aboriginal communities in South Australia are also at risk,” Bishop Saunders said.
Bishop Saunders went on to say that it seems that Australia’s human rights record is being undermined by policies aimed at denying people sanctuary.
“People in the cities and regional centres of Australia see it as their right to have basic municipal services. How can we possibly say that Australian citizens in remote communities do not have the same right?
“Last week’s changes in Australia’s asylum legislation strike out most references to the Refugee Convention – the international human rights standard for the treatment of asylum seekers, including our basic obligation to ensure no one is deported to danger.
“As always, the benchmark of a country’s human rights performance is seen in how it treats the most vulnerable. Australia is failing the test for First Australians seeking to maintain connection with their traditional, ancestral homelands and for refugees and asylum seekers fleeing violence and persecution in their homelands,” Bishop Saunders concluded. – CathNews