Commission – General
I am very grateful for this opportunity to address this speech night. 1998 is an historic year. Not only does it mark the 130th anniversary of Brisbane Grammar School, the oldest secondary school in Brisbane, it also marks the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They are both significant anniversaries and they are tied together by the importance they place on the role of education to inform, instruct and inspire.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice
This morning about 20,000 Australians woke up in a prison cell. What will their day bring? Most of you know far more about that than I do and that is precisely why we have called upon your expertise for today's workshop.
Commission – General
The topic of this seminar is ‘Criminal Justice in a climate of fear’. The word terrorism is not mentioned and yet the subject invites discussion of the impact of terrorism on life and laws in Australia.
Rights and Freedoms
Firstly I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we stand and by so doing remind ourselves that Australia's cultural traditions stretch back many thousands of years and express our aspirations for Australians of the future to be socially just and inclusive.
Commission – General
I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Ngunnawal peoples, and pay my respect to their elders past and present.
Disability Rights
I will not speak in detail about human rights conventions and disability because this topic is addressed by my co-speaker in this session, Karl Lachwitz. I will say though that international human rights law and human rights debate has not yet acknowledged adequately or sufficiently clearly that people with a disability are part of what the "human" in human rights means. Equally, there has not always been enough attention to human rights dimensions in disability discourse.
Legal
Paper presented at the Homelessness and Human Rights Seminar Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission 12.30 – 2pm, Monday 7 April 2008 133 Castlereagh Street, Sydney, NSW
Rights and Freedoms
Speech by Dr Sev Ozdowski at the United Nations Association of Australia - Tasmanian Branch - Human Rights Seminar: Human Rights from the Perspective of Individual, Collective and Corporate Responsibilities, Saturday 17 November 2001
Commission – General
Human rights are said to be universal and indivisible. This paper explores how far that universality introduces human rights principles into the functions and work of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT). The answer, I think, could be “further than you realise”.
Commission – General
Torture and various forms of terrorism have been practiced throughout history, though never on the scale we are now confronted with. The first visual records of police interrogation were discovered in a four thousand year old tomb in ancient Egypt. Since the pharaohs there have been many refinements in methods of inducing physical pain and gathering intelligence, most notably during the Spanish Inquisition, but more recently in the modern totalitarian state.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice
I would normally begin my speech with an acknowledgement of the traditional owners – but today I need to first express my thanks to Jackie for stepping in to give me voice.
Commission – General
Since the terrorist attacks on September 11 2001, Governments around the world have created a raft of new counter-terrorism laws. In Australia alone, over 40 new laws have created new criminal offences, new detention and questioning powers for police and security apparatus, new powers for the Attorney-General to proscribe terrorist organisations, new ways to control people’s movement and activities without criminal convictions, and new investigative powers for police and security agencies.
Rights and Freedoms
I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we stand, and pay my respects to their elders both past and present. I make this statement at any function where I speak in order to:
Commission – General
I would like to acknowledge the Kaurna peoples, the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today, and pay my respects to their elders past and present.
Disability Rights
I've always been fascinated by numbers. Although remembering some of my maths exam results, I'm not so sure that they have been as fascinated by me. If you ask a group of people to say the first number that comes into their heads, you'll get a lot of 7's. Perhaps it's because we all have an intuitive awareness that 7 is the smallest number of faces of a regular polygon that cannot be constructed with a ruler and compass.
Visit our media centre for up to date contact details for all media enquiries.
