Australia is seen as “soft on human rights” because it has failed to confront its own “uncomfortable” history including the mistreatment of First Nations people, a leading expert says.
Prof Renée Jeffery, who specialises in human rights and foreign affairs, will say in a speech in Canberra on Thursday that Australia has failed to openly condemn “some of the world’s most egregious abuses”, often choosing quiet diplomacy.
Jeffery will argue that “much of Australia’s discomfort stems from its reluctance to address its own human rights performance or to confront its own human rights history, from its exploitation of South Sea Islander labourers and efforts to curtail non-white immigration to its treatment of its First Nations people”.
Delivering an annual human rights lecture at the Australian National University, Jeffery will say Australia remains on the defensive over the detention of asylum seekers, the high rate of incarceration of Indigenous people, and slow progress in raising the age of criminal responsibility.
Despite successive governments vowing to speak up about human rights – and casting them as a core value of liberal democracy – Jeffrey says the issue is often given a lower priority than promoting “prosperity”.
Jeffery will point to Australia’s “bland and uncritical” language about atrocities against Myanmar’s Rohingya population in March 2018, just a month after Australia took up a spot on the UN human rights council.
While the US told the session it was “appalled by the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya in northern Rakhine State”, the Australian representative expressed “deep concern” at the “profoundly troubling” findings of investigators.
At the time, the Australian government also described itself as “a regional friend to Myanmar” and said it recognised “the complex challenges Myanmar faces”. Australia did not suspend military cooperation with Myanmar until after the 2021 coup.
Jeffery, a professor of international relations at the Griffith Asia Institute, will say human rights “occupy a curiously uncomfortable place in Australia’s international relations”.
Jeffery will highlight its “at times contradictory, often hypocritical” stances when she delivers the 2023 Alice Tay Lecture in honour of the late former president of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.
According to an advance copy of the lecture, Jeffery will say Australian governments have promised to advance human rights through bilateral talks and UN bodies.
“Yet Australian foreign policy is also marked by a deep reluctance to impose values on others, to take consistent and decisive action against countries that systematically violate their populations’ human rights, or to speak up against some of the world’s most egregious abuses,” she says.
“Preferring quiet diplomacy to overt criticism, Australia’s self-avowed pragmatism has earned it a reputation for being soft on human rights, for letting economic interests override democratic principles, and for signalling tacit acceptance of repressive regimes that routinely violate human rights.”
Australia has previously defended taking a hard line against asylum seekers who arrive by boat on the basis that a “well-managed migration program” is needed to ensure “the cohesion of our society”.
But Jeffery says a willingness to subordinate human rights to achieve such ends “raises serious questions about who we are and what we value”.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said he had raised human rights during a meeting with China’s premier, Li Qiang, in Jakarta on Thursday.
The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, met Tibetan community delegates at Parliament House earlier this week and promised to continue to speak out against “the erosion of rights and freedoms in Tibet”.
The government has also appointed an ambassador for human rights as part of an election promise to restore Australia’s leadership on the world stage.
But Human Rights Watch has called on Australia to address its own “alarming deficiencies” so it could more credibly stand up for human rights in the Indo-Pacific region.
The organisation argues while Australia has shown leadership in speaking out about human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, it has been “less willing to risk upsetting neighbouring governments”.
Former foreign affairs minister Julie Bishop said last week that a no result in the Indigenous voice referendum would send a “very negative message” to the world about respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
