2010
To the enquiry into public housing in Victoria we made the following points within the terms of reference.
•• Current waiting lists are too long. There’’s anecdotal evidence that many lose hope and leave the queue in despair.
•• Homelessness has damaging, long-term effects on mental and physical wellbeing. The young are at risk of entering a life of crime. Those adapted to ‘‘street life’’ will need remedial services designed to integrate them into society.
•• There is an urgent need for emergency shelters during time of extreme weather for those who live on the streets of the city.
•• We congratulated the government on its recent and prompt action to eliminate the squalor and exploitation of tenants in some rooming houses.
•• The unregulated property market deprived many of the ability to buy or rent a house. We believe that the State should provide a safety net, in those circum- stances, rather than relegate this service to charities.
•• Some individuals will see a rooming house as their best option. We suggested that there should be a number of such houses owned and run by the government or not-for-profit Housing Societies.
•• Public housing should be located throughout the community rather than in large ‘‘estates’’ and ‘‘ghettos of disadvantage’’. They should be close to public transport, schools, child care and shopping centres. Ongoing maintenance of these premises would prevent structural and aesthetic deterioration. Existing prejudices against public housing and its tenants need to be addressed in an education campaign.
•• Groups with special needs include single mothers, seniors, Indigenous Australians, refugees and asylum seekers, people with disability, mental illness or substance abuse. We referred to several research papers on these issues and supported the call, by ACOSS Australian Council of Social Services, for a National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Geoff Allshorn, Jean Brown, Howard Hodgens & Halina Strnad
Following our submission in Sept. 2008 HSV was invited by the federal Advisory Council on Intellectual Property to submit on modified options for Patentable Subject Matter. We made the following main points.
• There is a need for consistency of language and concepts with other jurisdictions. • There needs to be a list of subject matters that are specifically excluded.
• A ‘mere discovery’ should certainly be excluded • There needs to be a mechanism to revoke a patent. when unforeseen, unacceptable results occur in its use and to establish the role of the courts in assessing such cases. • We expressed support for the proposal to establish an advisory panel to the Commissioner of Patents to create a greater community input. • We reiterated our previously stated Humanist view that matters of ethics and human well-being should take precedence over the commercialisation of intellectual properties. • Patenting of some human genes and allowing monopolies on genetic testing are examples of the unacceptable aspects of the present system.
We enclosed a newspaper report in support of our views.
Halina Strnad
On education we made the following main points.
We expressed concern that there ought to be equity of educational opportunities for all students, as this is a basic human right and it is the government’s obligation to provide this service to all.
We were critical that the preferential funding for religious schools and the exemptions allowed to these bodies from anti-discrimination legislation. We noted that the high cost of education breaches the principle of egalitarianism, if financially disadvantaged students are denied quality education.
We expressed the view that the current practice of National Testing promotes learning rather than critical thinking, life skills, positive social interaction and a broad knowledge base. We pleaded for a reassessment of educational policies and practices particularly in regard to proper and equitable sourcing of schools, public and private, with positive discrimination towards disadvantaged schools and their teachers.
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We see ‘school ranking tables’ and the ‘My Schools’ website as grossly unfair assessments which victimise disadvantaged and under-funded schools and their teachers.
Ministers of Education.) Geoff Allshorn
On the subject of racism in Australia we made the following main points
We expressed concern at the recent spate of racist attacks and abuse and at the inadequate response of governments to this dangerous social trend. The universal Declaration of Human Rights and the World Conference to combat racism and racial discrimination put an obligation on all governments to take specific measures and mount a co-ordinated response against racism.
The First Australians still continue to be incarcerated in high numbers, mostly for minor offences. Recent deaths in custody are further appalling examples of the institution- alised racism reported in the 1989 National Inquiry into Racist Violence. A recent study has found that racism permeates Australian schools and that consistent prejudice was displayed by Australian youths towards other cultural groups, particularly dark-skinned students from Africa and India. (The Age, 19.11.09) The recent spate of attacks on people of Indian appearance are in many cases racially motivated. ThepogromatCronullawasfacilitatedbymodern technology where the attackers were mobilised by text messages. There is now a proliferation of networking social groups peddling incitement to hate and harm. Superstition and prejudice are not innate, they are acquired usually in childhood at home, in peer groups or preachings. The consequences of prejudice can lead to genocide, ethnic cleansing, pogrom, abuse of rights, apartheid. It is therefore essential to combat racism and xenophobia by starting in early years of life and onwards. WesupportthemovetoestablishaninternetOmbudsman with the power to remove racist material from the net, as mooted by the Prime Minister. (The Age, 27.2.10) Weurgenewlegislationthatmakessuchconduct actionable. We do not regard this as a limitation of the freedom of speech. Racial, religious or ethnic vilifications are an abuse of the freedom of speech and should not be condoned. Rights entail responsibilities; in this case it is the respect for the dignity of others. We urged a vigorous education campaign, in schools, work places and community groups; the participation of all media; the consultation between ethnic groups and educational authorities to formulate an effective anti- violence and anti-racism campaign. We recommend a booklet titled Racism, issued by the Human Rights Commission, as a teaching aid.
Geoff Allshorn, Halina Strnad
Submission report correction
In the submission report on education, April VH, the word ‘rote’ was omitted from the point critical of National Testing. It should have read as follows. •We expressed the view that the current practice of National Testing promotes rote learning rather than critical thinking, life skills, positive social interaction and a broad knowledge base. We pleaded for a reassessment of educational policies and practices particularly in regard to proper and equitable sourcing of schools, public and private, with positive discrimination towards disadvantaged schools and their teachers.
2A. On the rejection of the Human Rights Bill.
After a large majority submitted in favour of a national Bill of Rights to the Brennan Enquiry, its summary dismissal is autocratic and inexplicable.
Our rationale for a national bill I this:
a) Inadequate protection for minority groups in our statutes or common law. B) Australia’s role in formulating the Universal Bill of Human Rights was notable. The absence of such a bill in this country is therefore embarrassing. It compromises our efforts to promote and protect human rights elsewhere. c) Opponents of this bill have their concerns refuted by legal experts and by the success of the State bills in the ACT and Victoria.
2B. On a new policy for asylum seekers
Public opinion is often swayed by irrational and emotional responses to problems or perceived dangers: e.g. for a time after a gruesome murder many would want the death penalty reinstated. After year’s of John Howards’s campaigns of fear and vilification against the asylum
seekers, many overreact to the slightest increase of recent
arrivals and would deny them help.
Humanists believe that the nation’s leaders must establish high ethical and civilised norms and a rational, evidence- based approach to policies. The current wave of fear must not cause another dark period in our history.
seekers arriving by boat is very minor, less than 1.5% of permanent migrants each year, and ask government, there- fore, to adopt a more generous and compassionate policy towards desperate people fleeing from well documented persecution in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.
Halina Strnad
In answer to questions posed in a Discussion Paper on Appointing Judicial Officers in Victoria, we made the following points.
Criteria for selection to judicial office should include awareness of issues of gender, sexuality, cultural and linguistic differences, institutionalised racism, and homophobia, as well as the need for a modern interpretation of our old common laws and statutes which may carry social inequalities that were inherent in our past.
There needs to be an awareness of difficulties juries might have with the esoterica of language used, aspects of evidence and of the imperfections of forensic testing.
We support the aim to select candidates from diverse social and cultural backgrounds.
Students of law interested in judicial careers should be offered a period of ‘work shadowing’ a judge and complete a course designed to develop judicial skills run by the Judicial College of Victoria. It should be a prerequisite for all appointments.
We suggest that a group of advisers, each from diverse cultural and linguistic groups, be on call to act a judge’s assistants when necessary.
We suggest that several election panels be convened to be ‘on call’ for assessment of a canditate when a vacancy occurs. Composition of these panels should vary according to the level of appointment considered, with legal experts of the panel having expertise relevant to that level.
The ‘lay persons’ of the panel should have experience in teaching in teaching, youth and social work, psychology, rehabilitation etc.
There should be a standard procedure to examine each candidate. Given the inquiry into private matters, selection panels should be bound by an oath of confidentiality.
Attorneys General should not have the power to reject a candidate who has been assessed and recommended by a panel and appoint a person who has not been tested. If, however, such power is to be retained, it must be seen to be free of personal or political favouritism by a detailed, publicised rationale for the appointment.
We believe that experts should provide a list of disqualifying mental and physical conditions likely to affect a judge’s functioning. Medical certificates should be required to exclude such conditions as is the requirement for teachers, police, aged and child carers. Good mental and physical health is particularly important in legal matters where impaired function may have a significant ill effect on people’s lives. In recent years several members of parliament stood down from their duties due to depressive illness and were admired for their honesty in disclosing their impairment. We believe judicial officers should report any health problems that develop during their tenure of office.
Geoff Allshorn, Kate Oldaker and Halina Strnad
1. HSV sent a letter to each of the ten Victorian Senators. In view of the impending conscience vote on what are, essentially, the rights of the terminally ill, we urged them to consider the following.
The Northern Territory’s Rights of the Terminally Ill Act was widely regarded as a compassionate and civilised approach to dying with dignity. 2. At present up to 85% of Australians support voluntary euthanasia, and this support runs across religious, political and age-group divides.
3. The rights of those who wish to prolong their dying are rightly respected. Those few who seek assistance in shortening their agony of painful death should have their wish equally respected. At the core of this issue is the person’s autony.
4. A law that denies the relief of prolonged suffering for terminally ill humans, but enforces it in the case of other animals, is an incongruous, wrong law. 5. The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and the US states of Oregon and Washington permit voluntary euthanasia under strict medical and legal supervision. There is no evidence of the ‘slippery slope’ into voluntary euthanasia.
6. Physician-assisted dying occurs in a clandestine manner and it is essential that it be open to scrutiny.
Halina Strnad
2. Inquiry into the Adequacy and Future Directions of Public Housing in Victoria
HSV contributed one of the 109 submissions to this thorough inquiry. Other contributors included social and associations, Michael Lennon (an HSV public lecturer), CEO Housing Choices, aged, disadvantaged and disabled groups. Submissions were augmented by public hearings in country and rural districts. Summary of points made in report Public housing provides the majority of long-term, affordable and secure social housing in Victoria and has an important role to play in the changing context of social housing provision. It includes rental housing provided and/ or managed by government or non-government organisations.
Decades of underinvestment and decreasing stock levels have contributed to the current gap between supply and demand, affecting the quality and the services that administered it. Recent injections of funding at the state and national levels have provided some financial relief.
The Committee heard consistently of the importance of growing the supply of public housing in Victoria. An adequate supply of public housing is essential to ensuring equity and fairness. However, public housing continues to operate at a deficit. Strategies to reduce expenditure and raise revenue have largely targeted rental income – both the collection of rent and a focus on the recovery of outstanding debts. It has been significant for the increasingly socially disadvantaged tenants who either live or seek to live in public housing, and in the climate of declining afford- ability in the private market.
Initiatives to grow supply have focused on the growth of not-for-profit housing associations over public (social) housing without resolving the problem. Improvements in asset management will help identify the optimal mix of dwellings, bring in housing standards and even distribution across Victoria and meeting health and safety requirements and long-term planning.
In spite of the increased emphasis on housing associations to resolve the shortages of stock, there is a tension between financial viability and growth objectives and social goals of fairly allocating social housing to those on low incomes.
The $500 million four-year initiative will yield a net increase of 400 properties, and the (National) Social Housing Initiative a further 4500 by the end of 2012. Many examples of these combine a mix of private and subsidised units, and exhibit energy and water-saving principles. Proposed changes to the Planning and Environment Act would include an objective to support the need for public housing development.
The Committee recommended the Victorian government advocate Commonwealth funding the difference between the market rent and concessional (rebated) rents on the basis that it is a community service obligation similar to concessions to consumers for electricity and water supply.
Howard Hodgens
