Expanding our bill of rights policy?

I would personally prefer to see these sorts of things debated in international forums given they’re not purely domestic issues, nor would they be a restraint on legislative power per se, and could have fairly technical aspects that really ought to be debated out by experts.

But also on that note, one thing I was reminded of when @piecritic linked me to http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/2014/35.html is that international agreements lack any real force until implemented by the legislature. It would be interesting if this was reformed so that domestic courts could rule that a domestic law breached international obligations.

It’s actually interesting you say this, because in 1972 the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment adopted a declaration providing what is essentially a recognised right to a healthy environment.

Maybe it depends on how it is expressed. If it is expressed in a way that implies the environment must be safe for human health, then whilst that might take care of pollution, it might also imply a justification for something like culling flying foxes because of the risk of them transmitting Hendra virus, or culling sharks so that humans can swim safely, or for the recent controversial vegetation clearing laws in NSW intended to mitigate bushfire risk.

It just seems to me that referring to the environment in a human rights context may imply the precedence of humans over nature, which obviously if seen as an absolute may not produce very good environmental outcomes.

Our Bill of Rights policy is about a Constitutional Bill of Rights.
I like the looks of the EU General Data Protection Regulations.
It doesn’t look to me like they are saying those things will be in a constitutional level Bill of Rights thing though.
I suspect that is probably a good thing, because the area is changing too rapidly for good norms to be established.
Once such bills have been in place and adjusted a few times and the ground settles, then I expect what remains could be formed into a constitutional level thing later.

And ironically that’s seemingly what the 1972 Stockholm Declaration did. :frowning:

Agreed with Andrew on this: a bill of rights should contain broad rights, rather than be too specific. It should be principles-driven rather than anything else.

well my logic may be wrong if someone wants to convince me otherwise. Perhaps it does reinforce why we are better off with just the ‘negative liberties’ bill of rights rather than trying to include other human rights.

The ‘positive’ rights of individuals, look more like ‘responsibilities’ of governments to me.
Like “Housing”. Consider the idea of a right to housing.
We could all just lean back while teh government makes us dah house.
If we adopted this, we would not be housed, we would be hosed.

Rights are for individuals and are about freedoms from oppression,
Responsibilities are for governments and are more like a commitment to protect those who can not protect themselves.