Aborigine rights become a prickly trade issue with Europe
INDIA is not alone in its objections to social clauses in trade agreements with the West. Australia, a member of the Anglo-Saxon club, is balking at an European Union (EU) demand for a human rights clause in a new trade agreement. And though the obvious reason would be Canberras touchiness about foreigners standing in judgement over internal human rights issues, it is also probably trying to curry favour with its Asian neighbours by resisting the EU move.
What does Australia have to hide? Continuing problems with its Aboriginal minority high rates of imprisonment and death in custody, low health and life expectancy, high unemployment, general discrimination all criticised in the recent annual US State Department report on human rights worldwide.
Prime Minister John Howard has described the EU clause as impertinent. And Deputy Prime Minister and Trade Minister Tim Fischer has indicated that Australia would reject trade sanctions against China, playing down the brutality of its occupation of Tibet. Trade sanctions against Myanmar, with its appalling human rights record, have already been rejected.
But the opposition Labour Partys foreign affairs spokesman, Laurie Brereton, has denounced the dispute as a shameful debacle: "It is absurd that this should be turned into a treaty breaker," he said.
Rodney Lewis, a well-known human rights lawyer in Sydney, agrees: "There maybe an element of solidarity with other regional countries here insofar as some others have likewise refused. I suspect Australia doesnt want to be seen to be breaking ranks or falling into any further disfavour with its regional neighbours."
However, the issue has come up at an awkward time. The Government is considering whether to introduce legislation to override a high court decision about native title rights to land in the Wik case. At the end of last year, Supreme Court ruled that the huge pastoral leases given to cattle farmers in Australias north did not extinguish native title.
The Wik decision concluded that pastoral and native title rights to land could co-exist. Previously the ranchers believed they had exclusive occupancy. The powerful rural lobby, the National Farmers Federation, has demanded exclusive possession of their properties and called on Howard to honour an agreement made between the federation and the previous Labour Party government in 1993 validating pastoral leases issued after 1975. Pastoralists say they require legal certainty to make investments in their land.
Aborigines are alarmed. "It is unacceptable to diminish the rights of indigenous people," said a senior official in the government- recognised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Council. "The very fact that it is discussed is quite frightening. The fact that the premier of Queensland is talking about holding a referendum on extinguishing the rights of the indigenous population is almost comparable to Nazi Germany in some ways." Some Aboriginal groups have called on the EU to look into Australias record on human rights.
Howard has already been widely criticised by ethnic minority groups for not distancing the government from the views of independent MP Pauline Hanson, a fish-and- chip shopowner from a depressed Queensland town who has opposed immigration and welfare for Aborigines. He has also been accused of taking the "white picket fence view of history". In a recent speech he urged Australians again not to be perpetually apologetic for the sins of the past.
In contrast, Governor-General William Deane, a former high court judge himself, in his Australia Day address on January 26 focussed on the "appalling state of Aboriginal health, a tragic story of sickness, suffering, dying, death of fellow Australians." The US report on human rights has highlighted high imprisonment rates at over 15 times the rate of non-indigenous people. Over 45 per cent of Aboriginal men between the ages of 20 and 30 have been arrested at some time in their lives; the incarceration rate for indigenous juvenile offenders was 21 times that of non-indigenous juveniles. It still remains to be seen whether international criticism will help the Aborigine cause.