Meeting with Deafness Forum of Australia
Thank you for the opportunity to meet today. I want to take a few minutes to run through some current areas of work which may be of particular interest to you.
Thank you for the opportunity to meet today. I want to take a few minutes to run through some current areas of work which may be of particular interest to you.
Thank you for this opportunity to address your AGM. These events are important times for community organisations such as yours as they provide an opportunity to celebrate your achievements, refresh your organisation and recognise the hard work of staff, your Board and the membership in general.
When I was invited to prepare this paper, Andrew Byrnes encouraged me to concentrate on drawing out strategic thoughts from the Australian experience which might be relevant in Hong Kong , and perhaps in other countries also. That is what I hope to do, rather than spending much time simply reciting that experience or the terms of Australia 's legislation.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with all of you, and sleep with some of you. As you will have noticed, Vinnies was good enough to let my eleven-year-old daughter Rachel join me as my guide tonight, and she'll be the only one getting any of my cuddles. The rest of you have to make your own arrangements.
Firstly, HREOC is charged with: "promoting an understanding and acceptance of human rights in Australia". Young people obviously form a very, very important part of that task.
Lord when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you to drink; a stranger and we welcomed you, naked and clothed you, sick or in prison and we visited you?
May I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Wurundjeri people, and pay my respect to their elders past and present.
I'll start with what's stayed the same. The fundamental restructuring of Australia's workplace relations system has left the functions of HREOC untouched. In particular there is no change in its responsibilities to investigate and conciliate complaints of unlawful discrimination.
First of all I'd like to thank you all for coming to here today. It is timely that we meet the day before Mr Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations arrives in Australia. It is from the United Nations that the international obligations we are discussing today are sourced.
I’d like to begin by acknowledging the Noongar people, the traditional owners of the land where we meet today, and pay my respects to their elders past and present.
I speak as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner and National Race Discrimination Commissioner of Australia. I am a member of Australia’s national human rights institution.
I would also like to thank the conference organisers for two things: – firstly for inviting me to present today, and secondly, for developing a conference on such a critical but very marginalised theme on the national stage – Indigenous policy development – and how we can all do it better.
The position of Social Justice Commissioner was created in 1993 in response to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and HREOC"s National Inquiry into Racist Violence. It was created to ensure an ongoing, national monitoring agency for the human rights of Indigenous peoples.
Just over a month ago I wrote an opinion piece on reconciliation that was published in The Australian newspaper. That article was published on the eve of Corroborree 2000 and the handing over to the people of Australia of the declaration towards reconciliation by the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. In that article, I posed the following question:
I make this acknowledgment in all my public presentations around Australia, not only because I believe that it is good manners to do so, but also because recognising the indigenous history of this land is an important element in recognising the truth of our diversity as a people.
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