I was listening to an interview by 2GB’s Neil Mitchell of the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commissioner Ro Allen a recommendation from a uni colleague. 

Yes it was a train wreck, but also not all too dissimilar to the media conversation we’d seen unfolding in response to heightened pandemic measures and strict health orders. 

As the lifestyle and freedoms of social, economic and politically privileged community members continued to be curtailed to unprecedented levels, the discourse of RIGHTS and ENTITLEMENT became paramount, hot and the new best thing. Had people not realised what had happened in history when RIGHTS had been denied? 

This was a point of ridiculousness. Particularly reflecting on asylum seeker advocacy, where polling of mainstream Australians under the Rudd, Abbott, Turnbull years had adamantly shown not only a complete disregard for human rights, but in fact had associated the concept with international righteousness and interference.

Fundamentally, it didn’t matter what the United Nations, UNICEF Australia or more activist leaning advocacy bodies said about the rights of children, women and men to seek asylum (safety), and be cared with education, play and safety on arrival, the Australian public wanted to ‘turn back the boats’. No number of reports or evidence held on rights based arguments would or did make an ounce of difference. In fact the reports risked local backlash.  

This was particularly the case among the conservative white rural and regional Australian men, the men frequenting gyms, the men on building sites, the conservative freedom voting liberal men and Neil Mitchell listeners, who now so liberally (and indeed mistakenly) made their argument on rights, and yes rights based language. 

Somewhere in the last two decades, conservative political leaders, namely Howard and Abbott, have very successfully debunked the role, the need, and affirmed the danger of human rights in Australia. Howard eroded the case for a Bill of Rights in the Australian Parliament between 2001 and on until 2009, and with enough nationalism surrounding the matter, Abbott too had conjured sufficient conservative support to disregard Australia’s tainted human right record and UN recommendations.

In doing so, we eroded a strong public narrative on the nuances of rights, the complexities of rights, and lost the basis for a shared understanding of the importance difference between unvetted freedom (and liberty) and a person’s rights to be protected from harm or discrimination. 

At risk of my own rant, with pandemic requirements for the first time many privileged white Australians had too experienced their liberties being curtailed in order to protect the safety and health of society and the most vulnerable. Something that marginalised groups such as refugee communities, First Nations people and LGBTIQ communities were only too familiar with their liberties (neigh rights) being infringed many time before. 

With rights based language now mistakenly co-opted by the likes of right-wing shock jocks, what opportunities or risks does this now pose progressive rights based movements? Firstly, remember that just because it’s hot, its current branding does not align with your cause. And while this is the case, your arguments for the rights of those most vulnerable risk too being coopted by white extremists for anti-institution and toxic individualist arguments. Lending fuel to the fire. 

What’s needed right now is to put a fire on that tinder, and more than ever correct and educate and build a shared language on what human rights are. Take the wind out of Alan Jones and the like, and prevent rights based language from being misused to defend destructive entitlement of privileged groups.

The opportunity is public awareness of the issue right now. Pertinence is it’s misuse and ability to embolden white supremacist and anti-institutional ideology. Human rights education and awareness campaigns have a moment to operate, and have an incredibly important role right now to rework the loss that conservative Governments have undercut this past decade. 

Amnesty, Red Cross, Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights, International Human Rights Film Festival and allies, your rights awareness campaigns – let’s go!