20000326

Australia rejects UN racial discrimination charge

SYDNEY: The Australian federal government has rejected a damning report by a United Nations committee on racial discrimination which calls on it to override mandatory sentencing laws.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, in a report handed down in Geneva on Friday, said the federal Australian government's response had been unsatisfactory to laws in Western Australia and the Northern Territory which require that repeat offenders of even trivial criminal acts be jailed.

This raised dangers of further impairment of the rights of indigenous Australian communities, the UN report said.

Australian Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock, who represented the Australian government at Geneva hearings this week by the UN committee, said on ABC radio on Saturday morning that the committee's report was unbalanced, inaccurate and seemed to rely exclusively on information from non-government organisations.

He accused the UN committee of intruding unreasonably in domestic Australian affairs.

This rejection was echoed by federal Attorney-General Darryl Williams, who also said on ABC radio that the report was not balanced.

"It puts in question the credibility internationally of the committee. The committee should reconsider its report and take a more balanced perspective," Williams said.

Gay McDougall, a human rights activist and a member of the UN committee, told the same ABC radio report from Geneva that the committee was seriously concerned about Aboriginal land title laws under the government of Prime Minister John Howard, as well as about mandatory sentencing.

It was also concerned by the current course of national reconciliation between Aboriginals and the mainstream Australian community, as well as over great disparities in economic, social and cultural rights between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.

Mandatory sentencing seemed to target offences which were regularly committed by indigenous Australians, especially young ones, she said.

The Northern Territory's Chief Minister Dennis Burke said on Saturday morning that the issue was in the jurisdiction of the territories and states and that the Northern Territory would not be swayed by a "political bandwagon".

The UN cannot compel Howard's government to override mandatory sentencing laws. However, McDougall pointed out on Saturday that Australia had in the past complied with its international legal obligations.

Australia has until October to respond to the UN report. -Reuters