Epilogue: Cascade or Trickle?

Summary

The epilogue serves to summarise the findings of this book and utilise them to shed light on contemporary human rights issues in Australia. The idea of a “human rights cascade” is critically employed to make sense of the early 1990s, when there seemed a real possibility of positive engagement with human rights and international law to develop a new compact between Indigenous and settler Australians and remedy discriminations against LGBTIQ people. It is argued that this cascade in fact proved a trickle, as the openness of the Keating era gave way to the insularity of the Howard government. Particular attention is paid to ongoing policies of indefinite detention of asylum seekers – begun under Keating but expanded by Howard – and the many furtive attempts to find justice for Indigenous Australians, particularly around the Bringing Them Home report. In both of these cases, concerns around the rights of children have been weaponised by governments to weaken broader human rights protections, in such instances as the 2007 Northern Territory Intervention. Australia's continued failure to institutionalise a Bill of Rights is also viewed in light of the War on Terror's deep legislative impact.