Amnesty International has slammed former Prime Minister John Howard’s criticism of the idea of a bill of rights for Australia. At a Menzies series lecture at the University of Western Australia last night, Mr Howard dismissed a rights charter as a comprehensively bad plan, reports the ABC.
Victoria and the ACT have already adopted their own human rights charter, but Mr Howard said MPs should not hand their decision-making powers to “unelected judges accountable to no-one”.
According to the report, Amnesty’s human rights act campaign coordinator Jenny Leong says the group is surprised by the amount of “fear-mongering” on the issue, and says the former PM has it all wrong.
“We need to remember that it was under the Howard government that so many of the human rights of this country and our reputation internationally for respecting human rights were eroded,” she told ABC News Online.
Source: ABC