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- 8 June 2005
Council for Civil Liberties
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Page: 16630
The Hon. JAN BURNSWOODS [10.40 p.m.]: I wish to share with House excerpts and comments from an article in the latest issue of The Hummer, the quarterly publication of the Sydney branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History. As usual, the publication contains a large number of interesting articles. The article I wish to speak about is written by Ken Buckley, a former Associate Professor of Economic History at the University of Sydney. In March this year Ken Buckley delivered an address to the Sydney branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History. He spoke at length about his early life in Britain, his period as a student, his decision to join the Communist Party, his several years in the army, and his life in Australia from the time of his arrival in this country in 1952.
In particular, I want to draw attention to Ken Buckley's comments about his role in helping to found the Council for Civil Liberties in New South Wales, and some of the interesting work and achievements of that body. The Council for Civil Liberties was established in 1963 following an incident involving three police officers, one of whom turned out to be the head of the Vice Squad at Kings Cross. The emphasis that was given to the Council for Civil Liberties, no doubt by deliberate decision, was to make it as broad and representative as possible, and to ensure that its membership comprised a large number of lawyers, including quite conservative lawyers. Its early emphasis was concerned with the censorship of literature, plays and films, along with abuse of power by police, prison warders, and public service bureaucrats, particularly in relation to marginalised people such as Aborigines.
It is interesting to look at some of the detail that Ken Buckley provides on the history of the Council for Civil Liberties. While the organisation is now perhaps only a shadow of its former powerful self, given some of the debates in this House and elsewhere over recent weeks and months it is an organisation that I believe is very much needed. Ken Buckley was the first secretary of the Council for Civil Liberties, an honorary position that occupied a lot of his time. He spoke about the aims of the organisation, and particularly its aim to protect and extend a broad range of traditional civil liberties, such as freedom of speech, publication, assembly and organisation.
He referred also to the organisation's aim to extend civil liberties that we would probably refer to as human rights, taking those earlier attitudes about personal freedoms somewhat further. He gave some interesting examples of cases in magistrates courts and referred to some of the well-known arguments. He referred, for example, to charges such as offensive language or behaviour and resisting arrest, and the fact that the defendants generally came from areas such as Redfern. He said they also included a sprinkling of people involved in protest demonstrations. Areas such as Vaucluse did not come into the picture.
Over the years since 1963 the Council for Civil Liberties has had a number of victories, and I think it is important to place them on the record. One of its well-known victories was its effort in dealing with the customs department censorship of books, mostly imported books listed as obscene, and the way in which the council got around it and finally overturned much of the censorship of literature by its backing of the publication in Sydney of the Penguin book Trial of Lady Chatterley. As honourable members may remember, that was a very important step in ensuring that the customs department backed down so Australians could become far more free to read and view what they wanted, in the theatre and elsewhere. Ken Buckley referred in detail to more recent events, for example, in relation to the Vietnam and Iraq wars, which I do not have time to go into. However, I recommend the article because it provides a very interesting history. [Time expired.]
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