Australian Federal Election: The day after

[Túrin Turambar]

The perennial debate on asylum seeker policy won’t go away, no matter how much the government might like it to. It had a small triumph when it agreed to a swap with Malaysia – Australia would send 800 boat arrivals in exchange for 4,000 already-processed genuine refugees. The idea is to create a deterrent to asylum seekers who might attempt to reach Australia by boat – arriving by boat and getting sent to the back of the queue in Malaysia against waiting for processing and getting a visa for Australia. News that Australia is again looking for solutions to its asylum-seeker problems overseas has spread around the region, with poor Pacific countries hoping to make some money by hosting boat people. The Solomon Islands have volunteered, and a detention centre in Papua New Guinea may be re-opened (the Government of PNG is, at the moment, paralysed by the illness of Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare).

The U.N. Human Rights Commissioner is not particularly enthusiastic about the scheme, and has criticised the Australian government over both mandatory detention and policy towards aborigines. A recent riot at the Villawood detention centre in Sydney in which a building was set fire to is putting the government under further pressure, as are reports by the Australian Human Rights Commission of depression, suicide and self-harm among adults and children in detention.

The flipside, of course, is the debate in the Australian community about how many more people this country can support at present standards of living. Particularly in light of infrastructure and that other on-going issue in Australian politics, water. I am now living on the western side of Melbourne, which has seen rapid and haphazard growth in the past ten years to the point where the suburb of Werribee is now the fastest-growing in the country. The idea of a ‘big Australia’ is not popular with commuters here. And as the traffic on motorways in Australia’s cities and suburbs gets worse, community attitudes towards asylum seekers harden. It is, I think, a simple fact that many people taking part in the debate on a legal and political level overlook.

[nerdanel]

The idea is to create a deterrent to asylum seekers who might attempt to reach Australia by boat – arriving by boat and getting sent to the back of the queue in Malaysia against waiting for processing and getting a visa for Australia.

"The idea is to create a deterrent to asylum seekers" = the wrong idea. The point that is continually lost, it seems, on the Australian government is that asylum seekers are entitled under the Convention to present themselves and apply for asylum. If they meet the definition of a Convention refugee, they are international law rights-holders, and their rights are to be honored. "Deterrence" is wholly inappropriate and illegitimate, from a legal perspective.

And as the traffic on motorways in Australia’s cities and suburbs gets worse, community attitudes towards asylum seekers harden. It is, I think, a simple fact that many people taking part in the debate on a legal and political level overlook.

Well, it is overlooked on the legal level because it is not relevant at the legal level. The Convention does not say, "Nonrefoulement unless your country is overpopulated; in that case, you may say to hell with the refugees." However, I think it is acknowledged throughout the caselaw and the academic literature that asylum is a "scarce political good" for the reason that you mention.

Where to go with that, I don't know. I'm certainly very much in favor of protecting asylum-seekers, but I am skeptical of the groups that are prioritized in asylum-seeking (those who have experienced persecution based on race, religion, national origin, political opinion, or the ever popular and ambiguous "membership in a particular social group"). Although I've read the arguments to the contrary, it seems to me clearly to reflect a post-WWII/Cold War ordering of priorities, and in no way explains why those who fear civil or political persecution are "worthier" of protection than those fleeing serious economic or non-discriminatory harms. Why the refugee fleeing religious persecution is entitled to a "Cadillac package" of rights (as refugee scholar James Hathaway has called it) while the refugee who is fleeing widespread violence and turmoil (and is potentially at greater physical risk) has no Convention-based rights...is difficult to justify. I've read book-length attempts to justify it and haven't been persuaded. But it does not seem that Australia is really objecting to the fact that too few groups are eligible for asylum.

[Túrin Turambar]

The idea is to create a deterrent to asylum seekers who might attempt to reach Australia by boat – arriving by boat and getting sent to the back of the queue in Malaysia against waiting for processing and getting a visa for Australia.

"The idea is to create a deterrent to asylum seekers" = the wrong idea. The point that is continually lost, it seems, on the Australian government is that asylum seekers are entitled under the Convention to present themselves and apply for asylum. If they meet the definition of a Convention refugee, they are international law rights-holders, and their rights are to be honored. "Deterrence" is wholly inappropriate and illegitimate, from a legal perspective.

Not simply deter people from applying to Australia for asylum, but to deter them from attempting to cross the Timor Sea in fishing boats. There is a reasonable moral argument to this. After all, a lot of people have died, and the ultimate beneficiaries have been people smugglers. But obviously there is a strong political element as well. A government which cannot control the borders looks weak in the eyes of the Australian public. Australia is a country with a small population, an awful lot of land, a lot of remote coastline, and a lot of poor neighbours with dozens of times as many people. This influences and has always influenced the debate.

Personally, I think an equally big problem is that slow overseas processing creates a large push factor. There are thousands of refugees waiting years in camps in Indonesia and Malaysia. At the moment, as desperate as handing your life savings over to a people smuggler, risking the crossing and spending a year in detention looks, it may turn out to be, on average, the most successful strategy to getting a visa. That is the rationale behind a regional processing scheme, which I am coming around to viewing as essential.

[nerdanel]

Could you say more about the regional processing scheme? I'm not familiar with the current Australian proposals; I only know a smattering of your particular social group jurisprudence and detention scheme issues.

Of refugee law's many inequities, one is the privileging of people who are able to cross (usually many) state boundaries to arrive in the country of asylum. This privileges men over women, the able-bodied over the disabled, young and middle-aged adults over children and the elderly, and most glaringly, the well-resourced (who can still genuinely face persecution, of course) over the poor. As you note, this system also benefits people-smugglers, causes deaths of many asylum-seekers, and flusters states. It is inequitable to absolutely everyone and untenable in the long-term, as Australia's retrenchment efforts showcase.

It also disadvantages geographically accessible states who are disproportionately burdened with refugee flows - not that Australia has the most serious complaints on that front. Greece and Italy, for instance, have legitimate frustrations re: the other European states who are happy to minimize their efforts to help to manage refugee flows from the south and east (*cough* Germany and France, among others). And some states do much more of the heavy-lifting per capita than others - the UK, IIRC, takes 3-4 times as many refugees per capita as we do in the US, although we take either the most, or close, in absolute numbers.

To be clear, this will never happen in a million years, but here is my proposal:

The Convention states should rethink their approach. Australia's deterrence model would work well with an approach that refused to privilege refugees who arrived in the asylum-granting states. The states should instead coordinate with each other to establish refugee resettlement quotas, which should be equitably determined. E.g., Western Europe would step up to help out the southern border states; the US could agree to do more (especially since asylum is quite noticeably NOT as politically scarce a commodity in the US as in either Europe or Australia); the burden on the UK could be eased; and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure how Australia ranks against these other states in its refugee protection, but it could agree to do more or less depending on how its efforts compare. Refugee status determination under the Convention would be done largely off-site - ideally, by officials of the states in question, but potentially supplemented by UNHCR. Successful refugees (or applicants for temporary protection, etc.) would be transported to the countries that accepted them at government expense, to be paid for by funds saved as the need to remove asylum-seekers (which transportation is also usually at government expense) decreases. Regard could be had to which refugees could settle successfully in which countries - e.g., a Togolese refugee could do better in France than in Germany for linguistic reasons. Family unity could also be considered, since it would assist in successful refugee transitions.

The fatal flaw in my proposal is that it requires international cooperation on a matter for which little political will exists in any of the relevant countries beyond "get them out of here." One problem is that the Convention was drafted to help white, sympathetic European refugees assimilate in their new countries of origin. The matter was so uncontroversial - even during the economically-strained post-war rebuilding period - that they were given unprecedented socioeconomic rights and accepted into their new countries with little refugee status determination, let alone the detention and other indignities to which today's refugees are subjected. Now that it is brown and black victims of persecution who disproportionately want in, things have changed. And I realize that it's oversimplistic to blame all of this on race, but so too would it be naive to ignore the reality that "they" are perceived as being "not like us," a demographic threat -- a problem that the original European Convention refugees mostly did not confront. That perception underlies all too much of today's refugee policy.

ETA I want to apologize for the fact that my posts on this topic are too international and not specific enough to Australia. That's for lack of knowledge rather than lack of interest. My asylum knowledge is essentially: US > UK > continental Europe > other common law countries > vague notions of TROTW. I'll be happy to read-up on Australia-specific asylum law and politics after the 6th, and maybe then I can make some more useful state-specific comments. With that said, I genuinely believe that a domestically-focused approach to the Refugee Convention - as states have followed for sixty years now - is exactly what has caused the current malfunctioning system, and more regional and international collaboration is needed.

[Túrin Turambar]

Essentially there are proposals for a scheme that you suggest – a regional processing centre or centres in Indonesia or Malaysia where most of the asylum seekers arrive, and arrangements with all the countries in the region to take them on after processing.

Following that, it would be technically possible to stop boat arrivals completely by making Australia itself, save for ports of entry, into an exclusion zone from which people cannot make asylum claims. Essentially what the Howard Government did with Christmas Island. I have no idea how that would fly under international law, but to be honest international law is pretty weak regardless.

[nerdanel]

A new Australian reality TV series is tackling these issues by placing show participants into the situations (refugee camps, boat voyages) that refugees face in trying to arrive in Australia.

[Túrin Turambar]

A new Australian reality TV series is tackling these issues by placing show participants into the situations (refugee camps, boat voyages) that refugees face in trying to arrive in Australia.

Go Back to Where You Came From on SBS.

It's been getting rave reviews in some circles. But good citizen that I am, I was watching The Big Bang Theory marathons when it was on .

[Túrin Turambar]

Seeing as Australia’s asylum-seeker policies are of a bit of interest here, I thought I’d update with a major development.

In a 6-1 decision, the High Court has held that the Gillard Government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Malaysia for processing falls foul of the Migration Act (which enshrines the provisions of the U.N. Refugee Convention in Australian domestic law). The decision has put a big question mark over the policies of offshore processing that successive Australian Governments have been pursuing for the past decade. It is rare for the High Court to make a high-profile political judgement like this, and the government has accused it of being inconsistent. Given their other problems, it is a severe blow. Severe enough that there has been widespread speculation in the media this week that Julia Gillard’s Prime Ministership is done for.

Per one of my favourite commentators, Peter Brent:

A government less popular than lawyers

There was a time when a High Court decision like yesterday’s would have been widely portrayed as further evidence that judges are hopelessly out of touch with the real world. When John Howard was Prime Minister, for example.

But such is the low esteem in which the Gillard government is held it can’t even win a public opinion stoush against a bunch of do-gooding lawyers.


A visitor to this country today would be baffled. This is the most important issue facing Australia?

Only in Australia does the latest development in asylum seeker policy scream across the headlines and lead the evening news. It’s an issue that most of the technocratic class would agree is second order, but it’s a political hot potato because voters feel strongly about it.

Which is well and good, but it’s not as if many Australians could care less about the Malaysia, Pacific or Timbuktu solutions. What they do reckon is that John Howard was tough on border protection and stopped the boats and the Rudd and Gillard governments softened and made a mess of it. Like they make a mess of everything.

That’s what’s important in today’s headlines: more government incompetence. Only “insiders” and policy and legal wonks will be read beyond the lead-in.

Asylum seeker policy—or “border protection” as it became known in late 1990s (the phrase formerly referred to customs and excise)—is big politics because most political players and observers (though not me) believe it saved John Howard’s bacon at the 2001 election. Everything flows from that.

The Coalition owns this issue and always will. It seems likely that the Howard government’s whole package, the uncompromising policy combined with the sometimes extreme language designed mainly for domestic consumption (eg “I don’t want people of that type in this country") produced a potent message that eventually filtered into refugee communities in Indonesia and Malaysia: don’t bother coming.

The Labor government can’t hope to compete in the rhetorical stakes. All they can do is try to find policies that slow the boats and get the issue off the front pages.

Back to the drawing board.

Speaking of front pages, the News Limited tabloids ran a picture of a boat with the headline ‘Here They Come!’ on their covers the day after the judgement.

[nerdanel]

Thanks for the update, L_M! I haven't yet read the High Court decision, but in principle I agree with it - both as a matter of Convention law and as a matter of ethics.

[Túrin Turambar]

While the government busily tries to figure out how to re-write the Migration Act to restore offshore processing, another odd little controversy has popped up.

The ABC (a taxpayer-funded public broadcaster) has been showing a comedy TV program based on the private life of the Prime Minister and her de facto spouse, At Home With Julia. I should probably put the word comedy in inverted quotes, because the consensus (which matches my own view, although I haven’t seen more than a few minutes) is that it isn’t funny. It seems to me that the premise of the program is that it is inherently entertaining when a woman is in a high-powered career and her partner isn’t (Julia Gillard’s partner, Tim Matheison, is a hairdresser). And while I’m hardly some sort of radical feminist, I can’t see how that joke could sustain a TV program anywhere this side of 1970. A secondary joke (and similarly unfunny) is provided by a parody of the Prime Minister’s thick working-class accent and habits of speech.

The most recent episode featured a scene of the first couple in a post-coital embrace on the floor of the Prime Minister’s office under an Australian flag. Gillard has practically no supporters left, but nonetheless the entire thing has united unlikely allies across the political spectrum] in condemnation. Feminists argue that it’s demeaning to women, while conservative MPS and some veterans are claiming that the program dishonours both the Australian flag and the office of the Prime Minister itself. The ABC has been unafraid to push the bounds of taste in comedy before – the Chaser’s ‘make a realistic wish foundation’ sketch making fun of terminally ill children, for which the Director was forced to apologise, for example, or more recently, Chris Lilley wearing blackface and singing a faux-sentimental song about a black man being hit by a car called ‘Squashed N----r’. And when it does, inevitably people ask whether taxpayer’s money has been well-spent producing whatever it was that caused the issue. This seems to have hit particularly hard over this episode.

[vison]

Sounds like a big cloud of Dumb has settled over Australia. Are you safe?

[Túrin Turambar]

The President of the United States has just made a flying visit to Australia. It is easy to forget that, outside the U.S. and among those disconnected from American domestic politics, he remains extremely popular and a potent symbol of the things people like about America. A co-worker of mine, an Indian who grew up in Saudi Arabia and who now lives in Australia, keeps a picture of him on his desk.

Besides, Australians like high-profile visitors from overseas. They make us feel less isolated from the parts of the world where events happen. Between the Queen and the President, the government’s political fortunes have risen. The first sitting American President to visit Australia was LBJ, in 1966 (he had previously been the country as a serviceman during the War). He was paraded through the streets and, aside from a few Vietnam War protestors, was met by cheering crowds. He was a far more astute politician and better communicator than Prime Minister Harold Holt, and it showed. Obama is certainly a smoother and more natural speaker than Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and his speech to the Parliament in Canberra showed a great deal of astuteness. He went for the angle of comparing the United States and Australia as being nations of immigrants that have achieved success from unlikely beginnings, and it was probably the perfect angle. Australians like it when powerful foreign leaders take their country seriously.

Obviously it was not a social call. While Europe and North America have been struggling with the financial crisis, China, India and the other nations in East Asia have turned their thoughts to warships and fighter jets. The growing power of the eastern giants has triggered an arms race. Obama’s visit allowed him to announce a greater American focus on the region – he has affirmed that America will be both an Atlantic and a Pacific power. The upshot of the meeting is that 2,500 U.S. Marines will be deployed to Australia (life is tough for some people, I know). It’s a decision that’s left me scratching my head.

It is obvious that the U.S. is going to be shifting its forces from Europe and the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific, but I have no idea what purpose sticking 2,500 Marines in Darwin serves. Is it to deter enemies from attacking Australia? If so, whom? And what difference would a force that size make to the Australian Army, which has 30,000 regular troops and a similar number of reserves, or the millions-strong PLA? Are they there to allow for a more rapid deployment to Asia? The difference between Northern Australia and California would be about ten hours, hardly worth the effort.

Australia’s defence problem has always been that is has never (and probably will never) have the resources to control the vast air and sea spaces around it and its immediate allies, like East Timor and Papua New Guinea. That is why Australian foreign policy has always been built around maintaining a close relationship with an ally powerful enough to keep a fleet in the Pacific – first Britain, then after the Fall of Singapore, the United States. The arrangement seems to work well enough for both countries. Marines in Darwin in peacetime seems like a symbolic gesture, and I have no idea what it is meant to symbolise.

[Túrin Turambar]

Popular statistically-minded politics blogger Possum Comitatus has written a forceful article arguing that the policy achievements of successive Australian governments over the three decades since the early 1980s have created a society that is easily one of the most successful in the world, and yet we remain stubbornly unwilling to acknowledge our own affluence and privilege, seeing ourselves instead as struggling victims of forces beyond our control:

Never before has there been a nation so completely oblivious to not just their own successes, but the sheer enormity of them, than Australia today.

In some respects, we have a long standing cultural disposition towards playing down any national accomplishment not achieved on a sporting field – one of the more bizarre national psychopathologies in the global pantheon of odd cultural behaviours – but to such an extreme have we taken this, we are no longer capable of seeing an honest reflection of ourselves in the mirror.

We see instead a distorted, self absorbed cliché of ourselves bordering on parody – struggling victims of tough social and economic circumstances that are not just entirely fictional, but comically separated from the reality of the world around us.

Most of the article is taken up by comparative analysis of key economic indicators, but I will quote from his conclusion:

So this is our economic reality – we are the wealthiest nation in the world with 75.5% of our adult population making it into the global top 10%, our economy has grown faster than nearly all others (certainly faster than all other developed countries), our household income growth has been one of the fastest in the world (including our poor having income growth larger than everyone else’s rich!), we have the highest minimum wages in the world, the third lowest debt and the 6th lowest taxes in the OECD and are ranked 2nd on the United Nations Human Development Index.

And this didn’t happen by accident.

This happened by design.

This happened because of 30 years of hard, tedious, extraordinarily difficult policy work that far, far too many of us now either take completely for granted, or have simply forgotten about. We have, without even realising it, created the most successful and unique economic and policy arrangement of the late 20th and early 21st century – the proof is in the pudding. A low tax nation with high quality, public funded institutions. A low debt nation with world leading human development and infrastructure. The wealthiest nation in the world where even though our rich get richer, our poor have income growth so extraordinary that it increases at a faster rate than the rich expect to experience anywhere else in the world but Australia. A nation where we enjoy the highest minimum wages in the world.

But so many of us simply deny it – the conservatives deny it because it’s more convenient to whip up hysteria about their political enemies. Filling the heads of Australians with complete lies for partisan advantage and not giving a pinch of the proverbial about the human damage that would be wrought if they ever succeeded in getting us to talk ourselves into a recession of our own making . That’s not to mention many of their ideologues – denial is an absolute must when any acknowledgement of our actual economic and social reality would be to admit that their extreme policy fetishes are just pissing in the wind.

The broad left in Australia deny it, because to admit our economic and social reality is to admit that we’ve actually solved most of the big problems that other nations are still grappling with, and they had little to do with it. The problems we have left in Australia are difficult and sophisticated, requiring a level of thoughtful engagement far beyond the scope of occupying [edited] Knows Where in tents. If the US government responded to the Occupy Wall Street movement by implementing a large policy program that Australia already has – Occupy Wall Street would declare victory and go to the pub!

Then we have the ordinary Australian – who appears to be getting more ordinary with every passing day.[…]

The article has triggered some interesting discussion in the blogosphere, which I find highly welcome. There are some obvious questions one can raise about Possum’s analysis – he does not look at private sector debt, for example, nor balance of trade. And while Australia’s poor have done comparatively fairly well and its middle class has burgeoned, inequality has increased since the 1950s. And finally (and most significantly, perhaps) no policy-maker decided to stock the country with iron and coal and stick it next to the massive and ravenous economies of East Asia. We have been very lucky.

That isn’t to say that I don’t think that his point is broadly correct – nothing can be done about petrol prices and housing prices, both of which are based on the supply of a finite resource (oil and land) but the bi-partisan policy package of the 80s, 90s, and 00s has worked exceptionally well. But the question is whether our political classes still have both the skill and courage to keep the momentum going.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Interesting!

[Túrin Turambar]

An expert commission has just handed down a report calling for certain changes to the Australian constitution with respect to aborigines to be put forward for referendum. I have written an article on the historical background to these changes on my website here (now with social media buttons!), but suffice to say that the recognition of aborigines within the Constitution has long been a topic of debate. Here are the proposed changes, quoting from the expert panel’s report.

These provisions are to be removed:

25. For the purposes of the last section [apportioning seats for the federal House of Representatives], if by the law of any State all persons of any race are disqualified from voting at elections for the more numerous House of the Parliament of the State, then, in reckoning the number of the people of the State or of the Commonwealth, persons of the race resident in that State shall not be counted.

In other words, a state cannot disenfranchise members of a certain race and then still count them as electors for the purposes of apportioning numbers of seats of the federal parliament between the states. To my knowledge, the last legislation restricting voting rights based on race in Australia was repealed when Queensland granted aborigines the vote in 1965. Since then, this section has been redundant.

51.The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to: -
(xxvi.) The people of any race, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws.

This section was added as a back-up to the immigration power to allow the federal government the power to pass comprehensive laws upholding the White Australia Policy. It famously originally read “for the people of any race, except aboriginal race, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws” – the states refused to cede their powers to manage their own aboriginal populations to the Commonwealth. The section was changed in the celebrated 1967 referendum, which is an important symbolic moment in aboriginal history in Australia (see my linked post).

The commission also recommended that these sections be added:

Section 51A Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

Recognising that the continent and its islands now known as Australia were first occupied by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;
Acknowledging the continuing relationship of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples with their traditional lands and waters;

Respecting the continuing cultures, languages and heritage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;

Acknowledging the need to secure the advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples;

the Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

This will allow the federal parliament to continue to have the power to legislate on aborigines, affirmed by the 1967 referendum.

Section 116A Prohibition of racial discrimination
(1) The Commonwealth, a State or a Territory shall not discriminate on the grounds of race, colour or ethnic or national origin.
(2) Subsection (1) does not preclude the making of laws or measures for the purpose of overcoming disadvantage, ameliorating the effects of past discrimination, or protecting the cultures, languages or heritage of any group.

Section 127A Recognition of languages
(1) The national language of the Commonwealth of Australia is English.
(2) The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages are the original Australian languages, a part of our national heritage.

Note that, at present, Australia has no official language, although obviously English is used for all official purposes.

I am confident that, if these proposed changes were put to referendum, they would die horrible deaths. Not because of some sort of innate racism, but because Australians are extremely suspicious of changing their Constitution. Of 44 proposals, only 8 have passed. I expect that a simple repeal of 25 and 51(xxvi) would pass easily, but s. 116A is seen by conservatives as a back-door attempt to introduce a bill of rights and would never garner bipartisan support. And without bipartisan support, referenda in Australia always fail. I would almost certainly vote against the measure myself – I do not trust the federal courts to determine what is and is not racially discriminatory. I also happen to think that the correct place for the recognition of aborigines is in the preamble, and that the text of the constitution should be left to the mechanics of government. An attempt to change the preamble put forward with the Republic proposal in 1999 also failed.

[axordil]

I gotta ask: why would conservatives oppose a bill of rights?

[Túrin Turambar]

Because it allows unelected judges (often left-leaning members of the political establishment) the power to override laws passed by Parliaments. Parliamentary sovereignity is the prime directive of the Westminster system, if you will, and obviously given its successful operation over the past few centuries conservatives have become quite attached to the idea. Plenty of Australian (and British, Canadian, etc) conservatives admire the American Bill of Rights, but one written today would read nothing like it.

I've written on this topic before from my perspective here. Like most conservative-leaning Australians I am pretty strongly opposed to a bill of rights, moreso than many, in fact, as I'm not all that enthusiastic about things like the Second Amendment that they might admire.

[axordil]

So what, other than custom, protects the rights of those not in the majority?

[Túrin Turambar]

So what, other than custom, protects the rights of those not in the majority?

What, other than the Bill of Rights, protects the rights of those not in the majority in the United States?

In all honesty, I’m not convinced that a codified bill of rights is a better guarantor of rights than common law and parliamentary democracy. The U.S. bill of rights did nothing to stop slavery, native dispossession and segregation for example, almost certainly the three biggest human rights abuses in American history. I can’t imagine that a bill of rights would have done anything in my country to prevent things like the exclusion of aborigines from society or the White Australia Policy. And on the flipside, you don’t end up with unintended consequences (Roe v Wade, Citizens United, D.C. v Heller, etc, depending on your politics).

[axordil]

Historically the creation of law has been a following indicator of morality, it's true. A society's laws can be more moral than its practice, but not than its aspirations.