12 - Australia and International Human Rights

Summary

In a global context dominated by the ‘war on terror’, and a domestic context of unprecedented governmental power, Australia’s traditional concern for human rights diminished in the period under review. The contradictions within Australian human rights policy, and the mix of positive and negative developments noted in the preceding volume, gave way to an unambiguous reality in which Australia’s respect for human rights was generally at a discount, both domestically and internationally. New schisms in public opinion were also created. Although the government and its supporters clearly regarded the loss of civic freedoms as primarily the product of the new environment of terror and the necessary price of enhanced national security, critics argued that the government’s human rights record before September 2001 had already been so mixed that the war on terror had merely exacerbated an already deteriorating situation.