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17.
Such basic rights as the right to live, the right to
work, the right to an adequate standard of living and the right
to reasonable education are accepted by Australians, quite
properly, as inalienable.
Australians are equal before the law and are not
discriminated against on the grounds of race, colour, sex,
language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social
origin, property, birth or other status.
These rights, in my view, give us not only great
strength but great responsibility.
Not only should we insist on
the importance of these individual freedoms in our own society;
we should endeavour-to have them accepted beyond our borders, in
the words of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, in
'recognition of the inherent dignity of the equal and inalienable
rights of all members of the human family'.
The acts which have driven hundreds of thousands of
people from their homelands have no part in a world of the kind
we are helping to shape.
be opposed.
Persecution, oppression, barbarism and inhumanity must
Yet, you may say, the regimes of which we speak must by
now know our views and those of other civilised governments. Even
if, as it appears, they do not care about their own people do they
have no concern for their international responsibilities?
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