Russell Broadbent here, your Independent Member for Monash.
The Australian Human Rights Commission is copping a lot of heat – and rightly so.
Last week respected Liberal MP Julian Leeser delivered a ferocious attack on the Commission, saying its very existence should be called into question for failing to defend Jewish Australians. He said the commission is “flailing and failing” and that if the Commission “cannot fulfil its purpose, we must question its very existence” which includes a budget of $43m and 200 staff.
I wholeheartedly agree with his sentiments.
Yesterday the Commission released its report titled: Collateral Damage: What the untold stories from the COVID -19 pandemic reveal about human rights in Australia.
I don’t need a report to tell me about the damage, despair and desperation left in the wake of Australia’s response to the pandemic … because I’ve been listening to these untold stories – untold because so many were censored – for the past five years.
Remember the hundreds of days in lockdown, mask mandates, limits on how far you could travel from your home, limits on how many times a day you could leave your home, limits on how much toilet paper you could buy, and vax mandates so you could go to work and feed your family?
Of course, there were going to be consequences for such draconian and inhumane rules and excessive government overreach!
This report from The Human Rights Commission is way too little and way too late!
The Commissioner says the report is not about placing blame – but it absolutely should be!
Governments at all levels must be held to account for the pain, suffering and distress that’s been perpetrated against the people of this great nation.
Basic human rights might have been an afterthought for the government and the human rights commission during the pandemic. But they weren’t for me.
That’s justice as I see it.
