Macquarie University Diversity Awards
Graeme Innes AM
Race Discrimination Commissioner
and
Disability Discrimination Commissioner
Sydney, 3 August 2009
Thank you for asking me to speak with you today. I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet.
Today, as the first day of your diversity week, is clearly a busy occasion, if the crowd in the courtyard outside is anything to go by. And the range of activities typifies the diversity theme.
Today is an auspicious day for the opening of diversity week. On this day in 1492 Christopher Columbus set out from Spain to find the new world. His was perhaps the first voyage towards diversity in our world.
It's also appropriate that I was asked today to speak about diversity and human rights on the day that I will launch your university's social inclusion plan. Because recognising and respecting diversity should automatically lead to inclusion. This however, is not always the case.
For many years, the Australian Human Rights Commission has sought to protect groups which were identified as being vulnerable to discrimination. This is one of the rationales for human rights theory. However, human rights are not just about protectionism from institutions that own and dole out opinions on what justice is. Human rights should inspire individuals and groups to seek that protection, even if sometimes they find it difficult to know where or how to articulate those rights.
The Commission's new vision- is human rights: everyone, everywhere, everyday. It's a good vision, and not difficult to support. It is not however, as most of us would know, a simple concept to implement. Your university is making steps to do so today, with the launch of a social inclusion plan.
These ideas are simple to think about, receive unanimous support, but why are they so hard to implement? One word: Diversity. It's the key to making life interesting, but also sometimes leaves human rights in a grey area. This is why inclusion is such an important concept to understand, as sometimes the method of exclusion is not always apparent. Gone are the days where laws prevented people of two different skin colours from marrying. No longer are doctors allowed to lock someone away, with no recourse for appeal, because they were irredeemably considered to be "mad". Gone are the legal barriers which prevented women from inheriting property, owning a business, or being allowed into a pub. These laws and powers labelled and segregated us by what were seen as our defining features. They segregated people who were seen to be outside of what was considered "normal".
Exclusion these days is not usually so obvious. It is still very insidious. The Commission has been working with the disability sector for 10 years to try to implement Disability Standards on Access to Premises. These will regulate accessibility of buildings for people with disabilities. Because whilst if I called a meeting to discuss a particular issue, and said that women could not attend, society would be outraged. But we, as a society, regularly exclude people with disabilities from attending meetings, employment or community activities by constructing barriers such as steps, or lifts which do not announce which floors they are on, which exclude us from buildings. We have the technology and the know-how to make buildings accessible. So why don't we do it?
I notice, that your new library will be opening next year. I see it has an established, and annually reviewed, Accessibility Policy for the building, and the access to its contents. I trust that this means that students with disabilities will not be excluded from attendance there, or use of the contents. This library, I hope, will serve all the industrious students of this campus for many years, inspiring with the knowledge it will contain. Libraries are significant barometers of the society for which they were built, for they contain learned knowledge and stories of the community.
But let's think about some of those stories. The stories that inspired us as we grew up are driven by tales of exclusion, oppression, and the morality of the just defence of the more vulnerable groups in society. Fairy tales, mythology, even the epic space opera Star Wars, gives us lessons in inclusion. It sees the selfish use of power by the dark side of --the Force-- by the Sith in Star Wars is undone by the actions of a selfless few, liberating others like the Ewoks. This is a hero story, and admirable, but it doesn't go far enough for me. A human rights based approach to protection of rights, in this case, the right to live alongside annoying animated characters, demands that all should be versed in respect for diversity, and the genocide of an entire planet should be universally understood as a bad thing, and fought against by all.
Let's move to a more recent phase in our cultural mythology- the world of Harry Potter. Harry's efforts in saving the world from the oppressive force of Voldemort is obviously applauded, and metamorphoses him from a celebrity for survival into a celebrity for being a hero. This experience, however, can be contrasted with Hermione's quest to save the house elves from their slavery, admittedly not appearing to be a world threat. However, the reactions of many of the characters do reflect the attitudes of people when someone wants to change the status quo. In trying to liberate others from being excluded and oppressed, Hermione is mocked, and greeted with justifications such as that the elves are happy as they are, or that she is disrupting the natural order of things. How different are those arguments to the ones we heard for keeping people with disabilities in institutions, or Aboriginal Australians in their homelands.
Some readers of these novels have been inspired by the word of Dumbledore to do more than just read the novels and enjoy them. Recent media reports indicate that activist groups are being formed around Dumbledore's philosophy, let's hope not his dress sense as well.
Recent media reports have also detailed the far more serious situation of violence and exploitation of international students. A system appears to have been created where these students have felt extreme exclusion. Excluded by violence, by fraud, and by limits to the help that they can seek.
Exploitation of any group is to be condemned. However, there is something more visceral about exploiting someone's desire to learn. As newly appointed Race Discrimination Commissioner, these stories concern me greatly. Education is one of the corner stones for acceptance of diversity. In fact, education and human rights are both striving for the same thing- betterment through understanding. Ill-informed prejudices limit a person's possibilities, and prevent us all from learning.
The distinction must be made between inclusion and assimilation. Inclusion doesn't mean one-size fits all. On your campus, for example, you have multi-faith dialogues, and several prayer rooms for different faiths. People can learn in an environment which supports difference.
Rights should be transformative, to individuals, to organisations and to society. When each layer of society has a system for inclusion, whether moral or sometimes - more forcefully - legal, decisions will include forethought for a diverse range of needs and groups. Human rights principles build much on diversity. And diversity stops the world being a very boring place. Diversity is merely one way of describing a world where tolerance is key. Inclusion of diverse groups and needs isn't just a theoretical idea. It is the only way in which rights for humans can exist.
I see that your social inclusion plan, which I am launching today, contains - amongst others - goals of building a more diverse student population, and ensuring a safe, positive and supportive experience and environment for all students and staff. Essentially, the plan seeks to reach people involved with the university- both inside and outside it - and engage them more by identifying areas of disadvantage, opportunities to diversify, and possibilities of development. These are the sorts of directions which put the human rights principles I have been discussing into practical effect.
Decisions about building accessibly, or a dilemma about whether to wipe out a planet for a super highway, or just because you need to test out your death star, could, and should, be informed by opinions from those that it will affect. We should take inspiration from those that accept the responsibility, and respect the rights of, others. People such as Dumbledore, and the creators of your social inclusion plan. I'll leave the decision about whether to follow their fashion style to you.
I am pleased to launch this plan, and thanks for the opportunity to speak with you today.
