Human rights protection begins at home

But the discretion thus given to the courts runs counter to the role of the judge. This is to apply the law, and not to legislate. To an activist judge they offer a splendid opportunity to legislate further than ever envisioned, as we have seen so clearly in the US. The inevitable result is the politicisation of the highest judiciary.

So, the process of appointment and confirmation is no longer a search for quality. It becomes a search for political conformity either with those appointing or with those confirming, more often than not an impossible contradiction.

This results in frequent unworthy compromises, and an inevitable decline in the public standing and credibility of the highest judiciary.

It is hard to think of a more serious blow to the very heart of our democratic institutions.

Our founders were well aware of the limitations of bills of rights in, for example, France, in achieving standards which had already prevailed in Australia.

So when UN committees treat human rights treaties as surrogate bills of rights in countries such as Australia, rather than targets for proper standards under less democratic regimes or the most appalling dictatorships, something is seriously wrong.

By removing ourselves from the jurisdiction of those eminent and excellent judges who typically sat on the Privy Council, we surely never intended to submit ourselves to this new system. After all, this is surveillance by "experts'', many of whose careers were nurtured and whose appointments were championed by governments whose human rights practices would outrage right-thinking Australians.

The great achievement in human rights during the last decades of the 20th century were not the work of these committees. Instead, this was the result of the perseverance and the moral authority of those Western leaders who would not succumb or compromise in the Cold War, especially Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. It was their leadership which led to the collapse of the vast Soviet empire.

Just as it was Australian leadership and particularly of the Prime Minister, John Howard which, in seizing the opportunity, ensured that the great stain on our national conscience, East Timor, was finally erased. It was these Western leaders and not the panoply of UN human rights committees who ensured the liberation of so many people and their just attainment of basic human rights.

The United Nations is an important organisation, but its heart and soul remains in the Western democracies, whose concept it was.