Speakers

Leon Compton has broadcast on ABC radio in the Northern Territory for the past three years and is currently presenting Breakfast with Leon.

His broadcasting career has taken him on a trajectory through the eastern states.

As more and more people attempt to anoint themselves as protectors of the 'Territory lifestyle' he wonders if a Bill of Rights or Statehood will promote or diminish that which is seen to define the Territory. In the years to come debate over a Bill of Rights and surrounding matters is only destined to intensify and he looks forward to the symposium as a chance to hear contrasting views and maybe provoke a few.

Professor James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at The University of Queensland. He has taught law in New Zealand, Hong Kong, Canada and the United States, and practised law in Toronto and London.

His views have been published extensively in top legal, philosophical and law journals in England, the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

He has written an extensive number of newspaper columns, mostly in New Zealand, but also in Canada and Australia.

He has presented dozens of papers and talks to law faculties in the US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and to lawyers’ groups, at conferences, to non-legal organisations, to think tanks and others.

Professor Allan says he is delighted to have moved to a country without a national bill of rights (the ACT one doesn’t really count and Victoria’s is to be lamented). In his view Australia has the best constitutional structures going.

Sue Bradley's presentation will consider the origins of the body politic of the Northern Territory since 1863 – from its administration as part of South Australia through to becoming a Commonwealth Territory.

In the context of rights for Territory residents, the presentation looks at the inferior status of our first elected representative in the Commonwealth parliament and our position today.

Consideration is also given to current structures in our federal system and the role Statehood may have in influencing more practical arrangements making the Territory a potential leader in a new cooperative federalism.

Sue Bradley arrived in the Northern Territory in 1970, where she worked in Aboriginal affairs and education, raised a family and became involved in a variety of non-governmental organisations advocating for rights for people without an effective voice.

Recognised for her advocacy and people skills, Sue was appointed Foundation Co-Chair of the Statehood Steering Committee in April 2005. In this role Sue has overseen a number of community consultations, the development of Statehood publications and the imminent release of a community discussion paper on constitutional development (May 2007).

Although many Australians might feel that things are fine on the human rights front, it is important to appreciate that those who are politically marginalised or economically and socially disadvantaged often feel very differently. The Social Justice Commissioner, Mr Tom Calma, will explore how a Bill of Rights could contribute to the ability of Indigenous peoples in the Northern Territory to more fully enjoy their human rights, paying particular attention to how a Bill of Rights could recognise and protect the unique cultural rights of Indigenous peoples - the custodians of the world's oldest cultures. The paper will also make the point that a Bill of Rights can be developed that grants rights and freedoms to all Australians in a non-contentious way, and in so doing, enhance the recognition and protection of the rights of the most vulnerable groups, including Indigenous people.

Mr Calma is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner and acting Race Discrimination Commissioner.

An elder from the Kungarakan tribal group and the Iwaidja tribal group whose traditional lands are south west of Darwin and on the Coburg Peninsula, he has been involved in Indigenous affairs at a local, community, state, national and international level and worked in the public sector for more than 30 years.

Mr Calma has broad experience in public administration, particularly in Indigenous education programs and in developing employment and training programs for Indigenous people.

In 2003, he was Senior Adviser Indigenous Affairs to the Minister of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs.

From 1995-2002, he worked as a senior Australian diplomat in India and Vietnam representing Australia’s interests in education and training. He has been appointed acting Race Discrimination Commissioner for a one-year term.

In 2003 Chief Minister Clare Martin announced a new, community based campaign for Northern Territory statehood. There were, however, considerable challenges in developing support for statehood among Territory residents. Despite the Northern Territory Statehood Steering Committee’s energetic and proactive efforts, the revived statehood campaign did not attract widespread popular enthusiasm. It is now clear that statehood is unlikely to emerge quickly. An important obstacle is the frequently used but misleading argument that the Territory is not democratically governed under its current constitutional arrangements. Even more crucial is that key elements of the Territory’s Aboriginal leadership see few, if any, benefits in statehood.

David Carment is Professor of History at Charles Darwin University, where he was also dean of the Faculty of Law, Business and Arts between 2001 and 2004. He has a PhD in History from The Australian National University.

He is the author of numerous publications on Australian political history, the history of Central Queensland, Northern Territory history and Northern Territory politics. His books include A Past Displayed: Public History, Public Memory and Cultural Resource Management in Australia’s Northern Territory (Northern Territory University Press, 2001) and Territorianism: Politics and Identity in Australia’s Northern Territory 1978-2001 (Australian Scholarly Publishing, forthcoming 2007).

Professor Carment is currently working on aspects of the campaign for Northern Territory statehood and a study of approaches to Northern Territory history from the late 1970s to the present. Actively involved in community and professional activities, he is a former president of the Australian Historical Association, the Historical Society of the Northern Territory and the National Trust of Australia (Northern Territory). In 2003 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).

Dr de Costa will shortly join York University in Toronto, Canada as an assistant professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies. He has taught at Trent and McMaster universities in Canada and Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. His teaching and research interests are in comparative and global approaches to the legacies of colonialism and indigenous politics. He completed undergraduate and doctoral degrees in Australia, and his PhD dissertation was a comparative study of treaty-making in Canada and reconciliation in Australia. He is currently co-editing a book tentatively titled Globalization, Autonomy and Indigenous Peoples.

Dr Annemarie Devereux's paper reflects on a Bill of Rights for the Northern Territory from the perspective of the international human rights regime. Given that Australia has ratified six core human rights treaties, it has already recognised that human rights are applicable and should be enforceable against all levels of government. It is crucial systems are in place to implement these economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights. While the international regime offers assistance in terms of standard setting and monitoring of performance, it cannot substitute for a robust domestic mechanism to implement these standards: a system to ‘make rights real’. The legal recognition and entrenchment of rights can play an important role in this process. Systems are also needed to provide access to remedies for those whose human rights are violated.

Dr Devereux's paper will also explore recent UN evaluations of policies and practices within the Australian states to highlight the need for stronger domestic systems. In recent years, the UN has been critical of a range of policies including regulations on speech, conditions in prisons, inequalities in relation to indigenous men, women and children’s human rights, and the stigmatisation of some ethnic groups. A particular case study will be undertaken of recent counter terrorism initiatives to highlight the potential benefit of greater legal recognition of human rights through a Bill of Rights.

Dr Annemarie Devereux specialises in international human rights law. She has worked with the federal Attorney-General’s Department (Canberra, 1995-2000) primarily in the Office of International Law, as well as in the  community sector (Public Interest Advocacy Centre, Sydney), and as a volunteer with community organisations. She has worked with the United Nations peace-keeping missions in Timor Leste, where she advised the Constituent Assembly on the protection of human rights through constitutional and non-constitutional mechanisms. In 2005-2006, she was based in New York with the Security Council’s Counter Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate. Dr Devereux has taught at The Australian National University, The University of Sydney and Queensland University of Technology. She was involved in the community deliberations that preceded the ACT’s adoption of its Human Rights Act 2004.

She is now undertaking research as a senior lecturer with the Australian Catholic University and senior research fellow with the Institute of Ethics, Governance and Law (Griffith University/QUT).

What are human rights? More specifically, which rights should a Territory Human Rights Act protect? Whose rights should a Territory Human Rights Act protect? And how should a Territory Human Rights Act work?

Associate Professor Simon Evans' paper attempts to provide answers to each of these questions. It starts by reflecting on the basic nature of human rights as ethical or moral claims. It then considers whether and how these non-legal rights should be institutionalised as legal rights. There is no universal answer to this question. The experience of legislative human rights acts now implemented in the ACT and Victoria provides useful guidance on the shape of a Territory Human Rights Act that fits within the Australian constitutional context. But the Territory's distinctive character means that there will be some significant differences in a Territory Act. In particular, an Act should include appropriate non-judicial institutional mechanisms for protecting social, economic and cultural rights.

Associate Professor Simon Evans is director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies, Faculty of Law, at The University of Melbourne.

Dr Evans researches and teaches in constitutional law and constitutional theory and human rights. His particular fields of research are constitutional and statutory human rights protection especially in the Commonwealth, the constitutional limits on redistribution and regulation of property, and the mechanisms for ensuring the accountability of the executive government. He has published widely on these topics in Australia and overseas.

For the past three years Dr Evans has been working with Associate Professor Carolyn Evans on an ARC funded project on Australian parliaments and the protection of human rights.

Before coming to the University of Melbourne in 1999, he studied at the universities of Sydney and Cambridge and worked as an associate to Sir Anthony Mason at the High Court of Australia and as a solicitor at Mallesons Stephen Jaques in Sydney.

Ken Parish is a lecturer in the law discipline at Charles Darwin University.  His background includes almost 20 years as a senior lawyer in private practice in Darwin, with involvement in some of the Northern Territory’s major litigation (including the nationally significant Mudginberri industrial relations litigation in the 1980s, numerous high profile defamation matters, and a High Court challenge to the NT’s former mandatory sentencing legislation). 

Ken was a Labor Member of the Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory in the early 1990s, holding a number of economic shadow portfolios. 

His principal areas of academic and teaching interest lie in administrative and constitutional law, and he has been primarily responsible for the devising, implementation and development of CDU’s pioneering and highly successful online external LLB program.

Allan Patience is Professor of Political Science at Charles Darwin University. From 1991 to 2004 he was professor of Political Science and Asian Studies at Victoria University, Melbourne, and from 2004-2006 professor of Political Science at the University of Papua New Guinea.

He has held visiting professorships at the University of Tokyo, Keio University and Kobe-Gakuin University. His teaching and research interests include Australian politics, Australia's relations with its Asia-Pacific neighbours, and the crisis of governance in the South Pacific.

Professor George Williams’ paper will address why the Northern Territory should consider adopting a Charter of Rights. It will examine the issue both as a change that might be made under the current governance arrangements in the Territory and if the Territory became a state. The paper will focus on a Charter of Rights in the form similar to that recently enacted in Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory. These laws are not constitutional instruments like that in the United States which also give a final say to courts. Instead, they are based on the United Kingdom Human Rights Act 1998 in being an ordinary Act of Parliament that focuses upon improving the work of Government and Parliament rather than transferring contentious issues for decision by the courts.

Professor George Williams is the Anthony Mason Professor and Director of the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at the Faculty of Law, The University of New South Wales. He has worked at the Australian National University, Blake Dawson Waldron and as Associate to Justice McHugh of the High Court, and has held visiting positions in law schools in Toronto, New York and London.

He is an author of 13 books including A Charter of Rights for Australia, What Price Security? Taking Stock of Australia’s Anti-Terror Laws, No Country is an Island: Australia and International Law and Australian Constitutional Law and Theory, and is an editor of a further eight books including The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia.

He also practises as a barrister and has appeared in the High Court of Australia in cases such as Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation (freedom of speech), the Hindmarsh Island Bridge Case (freedom from racial discrimination) and Plaintiff S157/2002 v Commonwealth (review of government action and the rule of law) and in the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal of Fiji, including in Republic of Fiji v Prasad (legality of the 2000 coup).

Professor Williams is a frequent media commentator and writes for many major Australian newspapers. He chaired the Victorian Human Rights Consultation Committee that recommended that Victoria enact a Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities.