The Canberra Times 3 April, 2000

The Federal Government would not walk away from its membership of the United Nations, but the UN committee system was being abused by some prepared to travel to Geneva and make trouble for Australia, Prime Minister John Howard said last night.

In a thinly veiled attack on the lobby groups that pressed the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to criticise mandatory sentencing, Mr Howard nevertheless softened a little his Government's strident attack last week on the UN.

The UN committees had not behaved well, Mr Howard said, but ' of course' Australia was not going to walk away from its commitment to the UN, an institution that had praised Australia as a role model for its peacekeeping effort in East Timor.

Those who had argued before the UN that mandatory sentencing laws or native-title legislation were racially based were wrong, and it was absurd to let a foreign group decide such issues from afar. ' I mean, can't these things be resolved by Australians in Australia and not us having to dance attendance on the views of committees that are a long way from Australia,' Mr Howard said.

'I mean, that's in the end what I am saying. I mean we are mature enough to make these decisions ourselves.'

Last week, Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer announced a review of Australia's involvement in the UN's committee system after one committee issued a report condemning the treatment of Aborigines, especially over the controversial issue of mandatory sentencing.

Australia has been a member of the UN since it joined the body shortly after World War II, and the federal Cabinet's decision to review involvement with the committee system has raised the spectre of an international stoush with the world body.

However, Mr Howard said Mr Downer's statements ' as such' did not represent a desire to walk away from the UN and its treaty system. Rather, there was an impression that the committees were listening to the wrong people and ignoring the genuine contributions of countries like Australia.

Mr Howard was joined in his views by the Family and Community Services Minister, Jocelyn Newman, who said Australia was not walking away from its treaty obligations, but the UN committee system needed to be reformed.

'I do think we have some people who are quite extreme in the Aboriginal community as compared with the majority of people,' Senator Newman said.

'Australia, over some time now, has been trying to change the administration of those committees, change the way it impacts on the public sector here,' she said.

Greens Senator Bob Brown said he would move today to cut the Government's privileges in the Senate. These allow ministers to expedite their business, including fast-tracking Bills, setting the day's agenda and gagging debate.

This was in response to the decision by Mr Howard to gag a debate in the House of Representatives over Senator Brown's Private Member's Bill which, if passed in the lower House, would override mandatory sentencing laws in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

The Canberra Times

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