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Australia not to be

lectured by outsiders

about human rights

CANBERRA: Prime Minister John Howard warned Kofi Annan on Friday that he will not be lectured by outsiders about human rights as UN Chief arrived in Australia for a five-day visit.

The main purpose of Annan's visit is to thank Canberra for its swift military intervention in East Timor.

But he is also expected to raise concerns about the human rights implications of controversial mandatory sentencing laws in one of the Australian state.

"No doubt if he has any particular concern he'll raise it," Howard told ABC radio.

"Of course Australia decides what happens here in this country through the laws and the parliaments of Australia, but in the end we are not told what to do by anybody. We make our own moral judgement."

The issue hit the headlines last week when a 15-year-old orphan boy, hanged himself in a Darwin detention centre last week, prompting national outrage about the laws and demands for their repeal.

Two others were jailed for a year and a third for 90 days for stealing biscuits and cordial because they were hungry on Christmas Day.

Howard said he would meet the UN Secretary-General for talks in Canberra, adding: "No doubt if he has any particular concern he'll raise it. "Of course Australia decides what happens here in this country end we are not told what to do by anybody. We make our own moral judgments."

Various national and international bodies including Amnesty International, the Law Council of Australia and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) have voiced strong concern about the laws.

Mandatory sentencing, which requires magistrates to send third-time offenders to jail no matter how serious the offence, has been assessed by some observers as breaching two international conventions to which Australia is a signatory.

Howard refuted ideas that Australia was accountable to the rest of the world on this and other human rights issues and told ABC radio the mandatory sentencing issue was a difficult issue.

"I'm not going to have a situation where people are denigrating the human rights reputation of Australia," Howard said. "Australia's human rights reputation compared to the rest of the world is quite magnificent.

"We've had our blemishes and made our errors and I'm not saying we're perfect but I'm not going to cop this country's human rights name being tarnished in the context of a domestic political argument."

He conceded that his government had legislated in 1996 and 1997 to exempt the Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island from similar state laws in Western Australia, the so-called "three-strikes, you're-in" law.

"Traditionally these matters are the prerogative of states," he said. "If you have federal government seeking to overturn laws of this kind, we really are remaking the rulebook," he said.ÑAFP