Australia reinstates racial discrimination laws

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Australia reinstates racial discrimination laws

June 22, 2010 10:36:24 am

[JURIST] The Australian government reinstated its Racial Discrimination Act (RDA) [materials] in the Northern Territory on Tuesday after the Senate [official website] approved the legislation [Senate report] as part of a Social Security Act late Monday. The discrimination laws were suspended by the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act (NTER) [text, PDF] in 2007 in order to allow governmental authorities to regulate how welfare money was spent by the Aboriginal people of the country. Under the act, regulators were able to intervene in Aboriginal areas [AFP report] by setting aside a portion of the welfare benefits received for rent, food and medical care in order to prevent the designated money from being spent on alcohol. Until the repeal of the NTER, the regulations would only have applied to Aborigines. The reinstatement of the RDA allows the regulation of welfare payments to remain in place, but the regulations will be applied to both indigenous and non-indigenous citizens living in the Northern Territory. Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin [official website] praised the restoration of the RDA [press release] and noted the intent of the NTER will still be achieved, stating:

This is an important achievement. The legislation removes what has been a blight on Australia's reputation as the land of a fair go. We recognise the importance of dignity and pride for Indigenous Australians. The legislation also introduces a new non-discriminatory income management scheme to protect children and families and help disengaged youth. The suspension of the RDA left Indigenous people feeling hurt, betrayed and less worthy than other Australians. Re-instating the RDA restores dignity and helps Indigenous Australians to take ownership of their lives and to drive change in the Northern Territory. It also ensures that measures under the NTER are sustainable and can be effective in the long term.

The discriminatory nature of the NTER has been widely criticized. In March, UN special rapporteur James Anaya [official website] condemned the law [press release], calling it problematic from a human rights point of view. The welfare regulations approved under the NTER are scheduled to go into effect on July 1.

Current Prime Minister Kevin Rudd [official website] has championed the cause of improved living conditions for and relations with Australia's indigenous population since his election in 2008. Last year, Australia endorsed [JURIST report] the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People [text, PDF]. When the declaration was adopted by the UN [JURIST report] in 2007, Australia was among the four member states that declined to endorse the treaty. Former prime minister John Howard [JURIST news archive] said [speech, PDF] that his Liberal Party [official website] led administration believed the declaration would cause a national regression into a climate of "victimhood." In February 2008, Rudd issued an official apology [statement text] for past mistreatment to the nation's indigenous population on behalf of the federal government, a sentiment which he reaffirmed last year.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.