By MARK RILEY NEW YORK CORRESPONDENT Friday 17 March 2000 The Age http://www.theage.com.au/news/20000317/A13695-2000Mar16.html
Politically explosive findings that placed Australia in direct violation of international human rights conventions were dumped from a United Nations report on mandatory sentencing this week amid diplomatic pressure from the Federal Government.
The discarded conclusions said the laws breached the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and numerous human rights instruments on racial discrimination and the independence of the judiciary.
Their exclusion from the final report allowed the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Alexander Downer, to announce on Monday that the potentially damaging inquiry had made "no judgements about Australia's conformity with international standards".
UN officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said this saved the Federal Government from the politically dangerous prospect of a UN Human Rights Commission request to override the Northern Territory and Western Australian laws.
The officials confirmed that elements of the report had been dropped after the Australian lobbying.
That request would have had profound consequences for the Federal Government, as it prepares to use its numbers in the House of Representatives to derail a bill from Senator Bob Brown that would effectively overrule the state laws.
Documents obtained by The Age show that UN human rights experts made several adverse judgements that did not appear in the final report.
"The exercise of juvenile justice in Australia would appear to be in violation of human rights standards prohibiting discrimination," the experts wrote.
In another section they found: "The practice of mandatory sentencing is, in reality, a violation of the right to a fair trial by an independent and impartial court."
They also found that: "The possibility for a sentence to be reviewed is internationally accepted in all but the most serious of cases, such as those involving murder. From the information provided, it would seem that this right has not been respected."
In another section expunged from the report, the UN human rights experts found that Australia's laws contravened the independence of judges by removing their discretion in sentencing.
"Mandatory sentencing rules are typically imposed by political authorities on the judiciary, and they thus violate the usual requirement that the executive be separate and distinct from the judiciary," they said.
The findings were dropped after high-level diplomatic representations from Australia in recent weeks to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva and to Unicef in New York. The diplomats emphasised the political sensitivity of the issue and spelt out the potential consequences for the Federal Government of any adverse findings.
The advice on whether the NT and WA laws breached the conventions was requested by the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Kim Beazley, during a meeting in Canberra with the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, last month.
Mr Annan passed on the request to the UN Human Rights Commissioner, Mrs Mary Robinson, and the head of Unicef, Ms Carol Bellamy.
UN officials told The Age that Mr Annan considered the mandatory sentencing issue to be a domestic matter and did not want the report to be used as political ammunition to drag the UN into the debate.
Mr Annan was also eager to maintain the good relations he had established with the Federal Government through the country's leading role in the East Timor military mission.
The UN officials revealed that the UN Human Rights Commission had the power through its committee structure to make a formal request to Australia to amend laws that placed it in breach of its international obligations.
The Federal Government would be seen as having sole responsibility for ensuring those obligations were met because the conventions had been ratified in Federal Parliament.
That responsibility would require that the Federal Government take whatever action was necessary to either amend or override state laws that breached the conventions, the officials said.
The chairman of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Commission, Mr Geoff Clark, said in Darwin yesterday he was seeking a meeting with the UN's Mrs Robinson to boost international pressure on the issue.
Mr Clark said he planned to alert Mrs Robinson to the findings of a Senate report recommending that the Federal Government overturn the controversial laws.
According to AAP, he said the meeting was being arranged by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Speaking in Darwin before departing for Geneva, Mr Clark condemned the Federal Government for gagging debate on a bill that would outlaw mandatory sentencing for juveniles.
"What happened to free political speech in this country, what happened to a democracy that likes to see justice and has a high moral standing in the eyes of the world?" he said.
He labelled the laws "sawn-off justice" and accused the Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, of being confused in his approach to indigenous issues.
Mr Clark said he would also raise the so-called stolen generation and native title laws in Geneva. <end>