Bills of Rights - Sharia Law By Stealth?
Picture two recent reports; the banning of women wearing tight pants (jeans) in Aceh Province and the confiscation of 10,000 Bibles intended for Sarawak, a Malaysian state with Christian majority. Surely these are examples of blatant attack on human rights and freedom of expression that are afront to Australians, or is it? Now picture yourself wearing a crucifix to work and praying for a patient in hospital. You have just run foul of a national charter of rights that legislators in Australia are putting in place.
The State of Victoria and ACT took the lead in legislating Bills of Rights. One case brought to court under this legislation had to do with a sermon preached in a Christian gathering that was considered to be provocative against a sector of the community. The Hon John Howard, former PM, had these to say at this year's Menzies Lecture in Perth, "At present, the Government of Victoria appears to have established a laboratory of human rights in which all sorts of tests are being conducted. We have the Victorian Charter of Rights, a sort of poor man’s Bill of Rights. It states that a person has a right to join a trade union. Strangely though, it does not also say that the same person has a right not to join a trade union." On the danger of legislators passing to the courts the right to interpret the Charter, Mr Howard had this to add, "The essence of my objection to a Bill of Rights is that, contrary to its very description, it reduces the rights of citizens to determine matters over which they should continue to exercise control. It does this by transferring decision making authority to unelected judges, accountable to no one except in the barest theoretical sense."
What begun as a subtle act of the serpent in the pristine garden setting of Eden that combined the distortion of the Creator's command with the appealing offer of supreme knowledge had resulted in the wholesale destruction of human dignity and freedom which the Bible called Sin. Today, the same crafty serpent is questioning the foundation of Australian ethos, built on the teachings of the Bible, with humanistic appeals that are completely void of the holy fear of God.

It's time for The Peoples Charter (www.thepeoplescharter.net.au)
Nicola Berkovic in The Australian  October 23, 2009 writes:
THE nation's most powerful church leaders have united in a bid to scuttle efforts to create a national charter of human rights, warning the Rudd government it could curtail religious freedoms and give judges the power to shape laws on issues such as abortion and gay marriage.
Yes, exactly!  But isn't this exactly what is intended?
I can imagine the majority of the Rudd government reacting with silent glee.  After all it was the Labor government in Victoria that pushed the abortion agenda to the extreme with Queensland wanting to do the same. It was the Labor governments in Victoria and ACT that introduced Charters of Rights that specifically excluded abortion and the un-born (incredible but true).  It was the 2009 Federal ALP Conference that changed Labor's policy taking out the section defining marriage as being between male and female - even though at this point the Commonwealth Marriage Act has been left intact (can we call this a “victory”?). 
In the lead-up to the Human Rights Commission hearings, Commissioner Tom Calma  claimed “evidence of a growing fundamentalist religious lobby, in areas such as same-sex relationships, stem-cell research and abortion”… “pushing those beliefs on the rest of society.”  Our fear should be not just that a bill of rights can be used against us but that it is intended to be used against us. 
Will Kevin Rudd hold his Christianity high and hold back the torrent?  Will Labor MPs follow what should be his strong lead?  Or will our PM, for the sake of party unity, bow to their pressure?
Now that the battle lines have been clearly defined, will there be enough MPs to not pursue a Bill of Rights in parliament - even if only for fear of a Christian backlash?  Is the Christian vote strong enough to cause that fear?  Indeed are we awake enough and united enough?  Christians have failed dismally to be strong in such issues before.

We need more than just the Christian vote.  We need to show the general public how a bill of rights will erode freedoms that we take for granted.  We need to show - despite the rhetoric saying otherwise - that it will threaten the Aussie fair-go.

This is what The People's Charteris about.  It's time to push. Say YES to this and spread it around.

Lachlan Dunjey November 2009.