Should Australia take any notice of criticisms from United Nations committees?
Earlier this week Sir Ronald Wilson said that the Government's rejection of an attack on its Wik legislation by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) was "offensive". Sir Ronald, a former president of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, warned that Australia's international reputation was at risk.
The "international embarrassment" card is a common tactic of activists who have failed to get their own way with Australian parliaments or the public on issues from Jabiluka to children's rights, and greenhouse emissions to native title.
The activists pretend that the international bodies who have censured us are made up of well informed and impartial people with sound judgement. But many of the UN committees are little more than extensions of the activists' own networks, comprising a convenient mix of ideological enthusiasts, pliable bureaucrats, and cynical entrepreneurs with an eye for the main chance.
While the Howard Government was right to dismiss the CERD report as "insulting" and "unbalanced", perhaps it should also have pointed out that the committee itself is unbalanced. Although its eighteen members theoretically serve in their personal capacity, they are nominated by their governments, and more than half come from countries without a tradition of accepting the autonomy of individuals who are put forward to join international organisations.
Members include people who were nominated by current communist regimes, such as Cuba and China, people originally nominated by former communist states, and people from a number of countries with a truly nasty record on human rights and the treatment of minorities. Some of them have views which would be totally rejected across the whole spectrum of Australian political opinion. For instance, Agha Shahi from Pakistan is a strong supporter of his country's nuclear weapons program who is passionately opposed to the signing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
And the CERD does not even take seriously the very convention whose provisions it is supposedly overseeing. The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination -- which was adopted in 1966 -- is a universalist and integrationist document, specifically intended to break down all racial and ethnic barriers. The convention is clearly at odds with the identity politics which have become prevalent in many liberal democracies in recent years, although this is not a development that the UN committee bothers to condemn.
And while the convention allowed for special measures designed to assist disadvantaged groups, it warned that these must not "lead to the maintenance of separate rights for different racial groups" and that the measures must not continue "after the objectives for which they were taken have been achieved". The affirmative action and preferential treatment policies that a number of western countries have adopted are arguably in breach of these conditions, although once again, the CERD shows little interest in such matters.
People who believe that Australia's domestic policies are really likely "to shame us in the eyes of the world" also seem to think that the rest of the world is carefully focused on us, taking diligent note of all our peccadilloes. This fallacy is readily dispelled by scanning the international media, either in situ, or on the Internet. The rest of the world seldom gives us much thought, except as a sporting power or tourist destination.
When the CERD report was released a few weeks ago I checked over a dozen English language newspapers in Europe, Asia, North America and South Africa on the Internet. Only two, England's Daily Telegraph and Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, carried any mention of the report.
In both cases, the stories were sourced from Sydney, rather than from Geneva where the CERD report was actually issued. In other words, what really triggered the stories was not the report itself, but the way it was being used by Australians who were playing the "international shame" game in order to push their own agenda.
However, there is one way to cause embarrassment for Australia. This would be to take seriously those who attempt political blackmail by invoking threats of a non-existent "world opinion" directed against us.
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