Before the starting gun has even been fired the conservatives are working up the mother of all scare campaigns against the idea that Australia should do what every other serious and functioning democracy does — protect human rights through law. Today, The Australian, in announcing that priest Frank Brennan would chair a consultative committee to look at the issue, quoted former Blair government Home Secretary Jack Straw as an opponent for a charter of rights.

Mr Straw calls it a “villains charter.” This is the same Mr Straw who was part of the Blair government which introduced section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 that has been used to arrest peace activists. As The Independent noted on 27 July 2007, this law has been used to detain “Walter Wolfgang, the veteran peace activist who heckled Jack Straw, when he was Foreign Secretary, at the 2005 Labour conference.”

And “in the same year, John Catt, 81, was detained as he walked towards the seafront for an anti war demonstration near the conference hall in Brighton. He fell foul of the police after he was spotted wearing a T-shirt accusing Tony Blair and George Bush of war crimes. The police record said the ‘purpose’ of the stop and search was ‘terrorism’.”, The Independent reported.

And this is the same Jack Straw who supports the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act of 2005 which, again as The Independent pointed out, has been used to stop a woman from reading out a list of the Iraq war dead on the Cenotaph in Whitehall and against a tour guide who organised an anti-war tea party opposite the House of Commons.

If Mr Straw is to be a poster boy for the conservatives’ anti-human rights charter campaign then we can all sleep easy at night.

Frank Brennan’s appointment reflects the conservatism of the Prime Minister. Brennan is a human rights activist of sorts, but he recently went ballistic over abortion law reform in Victoria and argued that Catholic doctors should be able to turn away a pregnant woman who wants an abortion, without referring her to another doctor. So human rights is a relative concept for Brennan.

His father, Gerard, who was Chief justice of Australia from 1995 to 1998, is a long-time supporter of a bill or charter of rights. One hopes that some of this wisdom influences Frank as he embarks on what could be, if firmly grasped, the opportunity to make the lives of ordinary Australians a whole lot better by allowing them to enforce their human rights.

One furphy that needs to be put to bed at the outset is the absurd notion that a charter or bill of rights gives the courts too much power. This is a line Mr Straw has been trotting out of late, and it is mantra for conservatives.

Don’t these people understand democracy 101? It appears not. If they did, they would know that the judiciary is an equal partner, with the executive and the parliament in our system of democracy. And they would recognise that one of the fundamental roles of the courts is to give individuals protection from the excesses of the executive.

Oh and by the way, Canada has had a Charter of Rights and Freedoms since 1982 and it is supported across the political spectrum and by over 90% of Canadians — not a bad electoral road test for something that, according to its misguided and intellectually barren critics, threatens to end the world as we know it.