International Conference on Human Rights

International Conference on Human Rights Education
University of Western Sydney, 5 November 2010

'What Government should do to advance a Human Rights culture?'

It's a pleasure for me to be here in Sydney, and to have been invited to address this International Conference on Human Rights Education.

I particularly want to thank Dr Sev Ozdowski OAM, for all of his work in organising this conference.

Tony Abbott has said in his message that he hopes like I do, that this conference, and others like it, will provide a crucial forum for students and academics alike to express their views and gain insights from others.

Government should advance a human rights culture - education is vital to the success of this goal.

Australians, almost unconsciously, enjoy a variety of rights that seem synonymous with our culture. Normally we tend to associate human rights issues with the unrealised rights of prisoners of war, or ethnic minorities being persecuted in countries far away.

It is true we have come a long way since the terrible violations of human rights during World War II that led so many to migrate to Australia to start new beginnings. But human rights are still being violated around the world today, just not in the systematic and grand scale as the Shoha.

There is a real awareness and moral concern on a global scale about practices that create inequality in opportunity for women, racial prejudice and intolerance, child slavery, and persecution based on political ideology.

While we don't see such abuse in Australia it would be wrong to think that the work of human rights is all but near completion in the western world.

Under the Rudd Labor government, an ill-conceived and artificially narrow so-called 'National Human Rights Consultation' was conducted last year about the protection and promotion of human rights.

As my colleague Senator George Brandis rightly pointed our in our submission to the consultation, all options should have been considered ranging from a constitutional charter of rights, or a legislative alternative, right through to the more practical examples I will illuminate today.

However, consultation does serve to highlight that the work of human rights in Australia is on-going, and fostering a culture of rights involves all of us.

While there are a number of jurisdictions that have a range of frameworks, levels and roles in human rights matters, and different charters exist in some states and territories, Government must at all times be mindful that our responsibilities must be carried out in a way that builds empowerment and an expansion of freedom and never the opposite.

The Federal government has a central role to play. Reforms to the education sector put forward by the Coalition at the last election show that education is a powerful mechanism by which the Federal government can foster a culture of human rights awareness in partnership with the states and territories.

In fact when I speak to parents, principals associations, academics, friends, colleagues, or my own constituents about their views on education, it reminds me that injustice occurs right within our borders, right here at home in Australia.

When a family struggles to meet everyday education expenses for their children to the point where they need to move their child from one school to another, when students with disabilities struggle to obtain an education that appropriately meets their needs, when a student is bullied or intimidated on a school campus, when rural remote or indigenous students struggle to obtain an education at least as good as any other child, these are all in a sense human rights issues.

The Government in its recently launched 'Australia's Human Rights Framework' appropriately outlines this point: "Human rights matter. They are about a fair go- about each of us being able to realise out potential. A human rights culture carries with it responsibilities - not just on government, the Parliament, the courts and tribunals but on all members of the community - to recognise and respect the human rights of others" (p. 4)

For me, this statement captures two central objectives.

First, a culture of rights involves education as a central point - as it seeks to ensure that all people benefit from a standard of living that is necessary to live with dignity and so they can develop the capacity to fully participate in a democratic society.

Second, education is the great liberator of people, it frees us from ignorance, and it frees us from poverty. Education frees individuals from the blind acceptance of state controlled propaganda, and builds a desire to participate in government and increase human suffrage. Education teaches us how to think whereas communist, fascist or tyrannical indoctrination aims to tell people what to think.

The classical Greeks understood this early on, the Greek philosopher, Epictetus, wrote as early as the first century AD, "tantum eruditi sunt liberi", meaning "only the educated are free".

There is a reason the Taliban in Afghanistan denied girls education during their oppressive regime and continue to do so in the parts of Afghanistan they still dominate - education is liberating, it is empowering. Girls without education are more easily oppressed, girls who are educated are more likely to seek freedom and a better life. Two million schoolgirls in Afghanistan today, who were not at school nine years ago, are testament to the freedom and rights that education bring and entrench.

There is a reason Hitler burnt books, it wasn't because he favoured the spectacle, it was because books are knowledge and shine a light of understanding into an otherwise deep pit of ignorance.

Tyrants abhor education unless, as in North Korea, education is simply indoctrination.

The great liberator of the people is not the advancing armies of states or heroes that seek to spread freedom but the inventions and institutions that spread knowledge to the poor and oppressed. The printing press is one of the most important inventions of all time because it enabled knowledge and education to spread to all classes of people. One of the most important roles of the Churches in recent centuries has been the education of the poor and powerless.

Education in all these cases has been a constant theme in the expansion of freedom, the promotion of egalitarianism and the entrenching of human rights.

How does the Government advance a human rights culture through education?

The role of Government with respect to its interventions is a balancing act.

On one hand, the fundamental principle of freedom of expression is important in Australia. This means that all schools need a degree of freedom and choice to ensure they deliver a service in accordance with the ethics and values of their community.

On the other hand, there will always be a need to ensure that minimum requirements for educational standards are met, that every child is able to access an education that meets their needs, and that our children are safe and free from bullying and harassment.

We are fortunate that our education system embraces a spectrum from individual home schooling of just one student to systemic schools that teach tens of thousands to an individual school with over fifteen hundred students and two hundred teachers. It is a very diverse sector!

The education system in many ways is built around trust. We trust educators and parents to try their best to get it right, to make the right choices and to give priority to our children. The responsibility this gives educators must be constantly nurtured and monitored by Government.

Government should not believe that it alone has all the answers about what constitutes an excellent education.  Rather, it should trust its citizens and enable them to share in ways to meet the responsibility for providing the right education for everyone. In most cases we are not disappointed.

If our children are to grow up to have a capacity for active citizenship then schools have a vital role to play. While parents are the primary teachers of their children, they share this responsibility with their chosen schools in order to nurture the ethical and moral development of their child and their capacity to live in a thriving community.

This is why a parent's right to choose the school they believe is the best one for their child is so important.

The right to an education should actually be the right to choose an education that reflects the values that a parent holds dear and is best for the child.

An important role for any Government in creating a culture of human rights is to protect freedom and choice in schooling.

The rationale for choice is that it drives competition - thus improving the efficiency of our education systems, reduces the cost of education to our taxpayers, and drives school achievement.

We are fortunate in Australia, to the extent in which the current education system supports competition and choice in schooling for our children.

The Coalition has always put increasing competition and choice at the centre of its education policies. Under the former Coalition Government measures were introduced to drive competition, including introducing a better funding instrument though the socio-economic status model for non-government schools, a tuition voucher for students in need of extra support in literacy and numeracy and the introduction of national assessment and reporting of student achievement between schools, states and sectors.

Competition between schools was also promoted by giving principals greater powers over budgets and staff for the very first time. We achieved this by making the ceding of these powers to schools by state education departments a condition of Federal funding.

The Rudd-Gillard Government has abolished only one of the key measures I just spoke of introduced under the previous Government - the tuition voucher in literacy and numeracy.

The Prime Minister has committed to continuing the current SES funding model for non-government schools until at least 2012, which will be six years since she first committed to review the current system she previously deemed to be flawed and unworkable.

The Prime Minister is now attempting to extend the former Coalition Government's work on increasing transparency and accountability to drive more competition by publishing all individual school results through the My Schools website. Of course these actions that encourage choice are welcomed.

This brings me to school autonomy and, one of the most important mechanisms for a great education - the school curriculum - that must prepare our children not only to be able to read, write, count and have the necessary skills to participate in daily life but also prepare then for further education.

Of course curriculum documents agreed by Governments, cannot take carriage of the responsibility for human rights education alone. A school's structure, beliefs, ethos, and community also teach students about what is important and what is valued.

This is why through parliamentary debate in 2008 in relation to schools funding, I fought so hard to ensure that the national curriculum should not be overly prescriptive, but should allow for a variety of curricula to be taught.

The Coalition is concerned that the national curriculum maintains diversity in schooling, in order to give parents choice about what's good for their children's education. Rather than being overly prescriptive the curriculum should allow for International Baccalaureate schools, programs for children with disabilities, Steiner, Montessori, Reggio Emilia schools, and other unique schools, whether they be Jewish, Muslim or Christian, to flourish.

Labor's original Bill did not provide for such diversity, and it was not until after some debate that a statement was finally made by Senator Kim Carr that gave the assurance so many schools wanted and needed.

These issues surrounding the national curriculum are still being debated and gaining momentum. I get regular correspondence reminding me of the importance of civics and citizenship education and it concerns me that it appears to be slipping right off this Government's radar.

We know that civics education is critical to creating a culture of human rights, (as is the study of classics) as it promotes students' participation in our democracy by equipping them with skills and knowledge about active and informed citizenship.

Every child has a right to know about and understand Australia's democratic traditions and heritage, its legal and political institutions, and our shared values of, tolerance, respect, responsibility, freedom and inclusion. Civics education is the perfect mechanism for ensuring our young people learn about the different sources of human rights in Australia from the constitution, to legislation, Magna Carta and the common law.

Many of you may remember the growing levels of public concern about the adequacy of civics education in the 1990's. The results of surveys conducted at that time were a cause for concern. In 1994, a study of 15-19 year olds reported that 90 per cent did not know what the Constitution covered, 83 per cent did not know what the Cabinet was and 9 per cent did not feel they knew what the rights and responsibilities of citizens were.

The Civic Expert group established under the Keating Government was given the task of developing a strategy to overcome this deficiency. It provided a strategic plan for Government education on civics issues.

This work continued after the election of the Howard Government in March 1996. The Coalition took up this issue vigorously, as it had promised.

There was of course, one significant difference that contrasts the direction civics education took after the Coalition took the reins. Rather than the area of Civics and Citizenship Education being embedded into the existing curriculum for the Studies of Society and the Environment, the Coalition Government decided that it was much better for the discipline of history to be used.

On the wider issue of the national curriculum, its development was contracted to the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority (ACARA).

The Commonwealth's national education agreement with the states and territories in relation to Government schools clearly states that the national curriculum in the subjects of maths, science, history and English must gain acceptance by all the states and be available to implement from 2011. Consultation with all stakeholders has been a feature of the development process.

Early on, it became apparent that the drafters had missed the mark in key aspects of the draft curriculum. Now we have seen a growing list of states, teacher professional associations, academics and parent groups joining the voices concerned about the curriculum in its current form.

Of course there are a whole host of organisations that are interested and want to be involved, as there should be. There will inevitably be conflicting advice and some decisions that will be made that will not please everyone.

But there are real concerns being repeated by many about the focus of the national curriculum's content, overcrowding, a lack of resources for teacher training and implementation and a 'lowest common denominator' approach to resolving conflicting views. All of which adds up to a potential decline in the standard of the school curriculum and not an improvement in quality and outcomes.

The Coalition has advocated that human rights education is best served by being placed in the history curriculum where it can highlight the common challenges, rights and responsibilities that all Australians share and have shared over time, as well as those unfortunate instances where not all Australians have been accorded the same rights.

As the Civics Expert Group appointed in the Keating era quite rightly said: "Our system of government relies for its efficacy and legitimacy on an informed citizenry; without active, knowledgeable citizens the forms of democratic representation remain empty; without vigilant, informed citizens there is no check on potential tyranny".

In the modern context, we see legislation at the state level that arguably curtails human freedoms of association and assembly.

Whilst the debates about the merits and needs of such legislation, for example, the South Australian 'anti organised gangs' legislation is best left for state parliaments, it is my observation that such examples would be useful in a history curriculum to highlight previous and on-going challenges of balancing the rights of the majority against the rights of a sometimes unpopular, and even criminal, minority.

An education system that encourages students to think about these types of human rights issues and links historical human-rights struggles to modern-day examples in Australia will be far more effective than Labor's often narrow and ideologically focused agenda.

I'm obviously not alone in my thinking. It's interesting to note that ACARA admitted that complaints about a lack of emphasis on contemporary history, particularly around Australia's history after World War II, were identified in 26,000 submissions following the release of the draft history curriculum, which is due for implementation in two months.

No one doubts that both sides of politics are committed to addressing social disadvantage, and protecting vulnerable groups within our society.

This bipartisanship is reflected in the Government's 'Human Rights Framework', specifically with respect to enhancing human rights education through "greater support for human rights education across the community, including primary and secondary schools; and investing $6.6 million to expand the community education role of the Australian Human Rights Commission."

While these actions are of course welcome, there are a number of policies that could be considered to advance human rights education. I would advocate:

• An annual national essay competition for both primary and secondary school students on a human rights-related topic with prize money for the successful school and student.
• A partnership between Government and peak bodies to support a nation-wide debating contest on a human rights-related topic, as a way of fostering both a human rights culture within schools and also within the broader community.
• Within the new national legal profession reform agenda been undertaken by the Council of Australian Governments' (COAG), is there an opportunity to seek to include human-rights law into the 'priestly 11' subjects that all lawyers undertake at university?
• With the Government working toward a set of agreed teacher standards, to support the collective responsibility of the profession to ensure that those who teach have essential knowledge and skills - is fostering a culture of human rights being included in this process?

We should be trying to identify practical measures wherever possible, and use processes already underway which would more meaningfully impact in fostering a human rights culture both in the short-term and long-term.

I will conclude by re-iterating that these initiatives could be most effective as complements to the effective development of a culture of human rights, which requires a robust and enabling education framework; namely a comprehensive, national, appropriate school curriculum as well as truly broad and inclusive national dialogue about human rights that puts all options on the table, even ones that governments and oppositions don't necessarily support.

Thank you for the opportunity this conference presents to be discursive about the role of education in promoting and protecting human rights. I look forward to reading the other papers presented yesterday and today.

Ends