THE AGE UN race committee 'biased' on sentencing By BRENDAN NICHOLSON . POLITICAL REPORTER Sunday 26 March 2000 The Federal Government says there is no point in the United Nations race relations committee visiting Australia because it is clearly biased. Late on Friday the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said it viewed with grave concern the mandatory sentencing laws operating in Western Australia and the Northern Territory, and urged the Federal Government to review them. The committee said the laws discriminated against indigenous Australians and conflicted with the UN conventions on human rights. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission has urged the committee to visit Australia but CERD's representative responsible for Australian matters, US human rights lawyer Ms Gay McDougall, said it was unlikely without the Australian Government's blessing. The Attorney-General, Mr Daryl Williams, told The Sunday Age he saw little point in the committee coming unless it changed its approach significantly. "That issue has been raised before and if the committee continues to have an unbalanced approach there would be no point in its coming to Australia," Mr Williams said. The Government would certainly not act on the committee's concerns until it brought down a report that was unbiased and balanced. He said it was likely that Australia would make representations to the UN about the committee's approach. The committee had no power to take action, Mr Williams said. The best it could do was to give an opinion. "That will not have any effect at all except the negative publicity it will bring." The committee was not well resourced and largely relied on the views of individual committee members, some of them from countries with shocking human rights records, Mr Williams said. But federal Liberal backbencher Dr Brendan Nelson said the UN report should not be ignored. Dr Nelson, who served on a Senate committee that examined mandatory sentencing, told Sky TV: "I don't think we should ever ignore what the United Nations says." The Opposition Leader, Mr Kim Beazley, said the mandatory sentencing was "Dickensian" and he urged the Federal Government to overturn the laws. Greens Senator Bob Brown said the UN report left the Federal Government with no choice but to override the WA and NT mandatory sentencing laws. -- _________________________________ Truth is a pathless land. --- Krishnamurti ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------ RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." RecOzNet2 is archived for members @ http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznet2%40paradigm4.com.au/
