MS: You are the director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at Monash University. So, let's start please Sarah by defining and perhaps even partially listing just what we are talking about when we say human rights.

SJ: Human rights are the rights that people have simply by virtue of being human. We have these rights regardless of our race, our gender, our religion, our sexuality, and so on. Probably what people find hardest of all is that we have them regardless of whether we are a good person or a bad person; everybody has human rights.

There are lots of philosophical debates about "what are human rights". I dare say I would have quite a different view of the scope of human rights compared to, say, the Institute of Public Affairs. I think a very good and guiding list of human rights are those listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is the most important human rights document in the world, dating from 1948 and pretty much having universal general support in the world.

It includes civil and political rights like the right to be free from torture, the right to life - which includes things like a right not to be killed; it's not all about the debates we have here on abortion and euthanasia - the right of free speech. There are also economic, social and cultural rights, which are far less understood; a right to health, a right to food and a right to education. So those are some examples of human rights.

MS: I am hesitant to do this, but just very quickly picking up on one of the points you just made, one of my guests, in fact the first one for this year, was Tim Wilson, having moved from the Institute of Public Affairs to become the Human Rights Commissioner. And the topic was Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. And I have noticed in some of the research around that topic that you two were not that far apart necessarily on that.

SJ: No, but we were apart. I thought Section 18C could have been amended to accord more with international human rights law. 18C prohibits the publication of things which offend or insult or humiliate or intimidate on the basis of race.

Personally, I think that there is no right not to be offended and there is no right not to be insulted and therefore 'offend' and 'insult' was setting the bar too low. I think Tim would knock out `humiliate' as well and I'm not sure where he really sat on `intimidate'.

The IPA itself was quite happy to get rid of 18C altogether. I think the whole debate about Section 18C, though, was poisoned by many factors, because it was so focused on freedom of speech without any real acknowledgement, particularly on the part of the government - I think they sold it terribly, by focusing on the right to be a bigot - of other relevant rights such as the right to be free from racial discrimination.

MS: And, perhaps, to be fair to the government, that was a moment, shall we put it, by Senator Brandis, that marked a turning point, didn't it, in the whole debate. And, for the record, The Age took the position that you pretty much had, which is that the test was too low. It was really a hurt-feelings test.

SJ: Yes. It is a little bit more complicated than that, because the
courts have certainly interpreted "offend" to mean "really, really offend". But personally I think it is also ideal if laws can actually mean what they say, if words mean what they mean to the average person.

The other thing though, which cannot be discounted, is the optics of the whole debate. If we could go back in time to 1995, my preference would be that we did not pass a law including the words `offend' and 'insult'. However, fast forwarding, the image of reducing restrictions on racial hate speech or racially discriminatory speech was problematic in a way I can't necessarily understand, because I'm not from a racial minority which experiences this sort of thing regularly.

MS: Let's park that, because it talks to notions of complexity and competing rights, to some extent, and we are going to come to that. So let's keep that in mind, and I'm pleased we have talked about 18C, although I was not necessarily going to go there. Before we go on Sarah, can you please talk a little bit about the Castan Centre? Why it exists and what it does?

SJ: The Castan Centre is a research and teaching centre in the
Faculty of Law at Monash University. It is named after the late Ron Castan, one of Australia's greatest human rights lawyers. Our mission is to promote understanding of and respect for human rights through public education, research and student programs - and, increasingly, media and more innovative programs.

MS: And we will come in a moment to one of the most innovative of those programs, a series of videos that are actually on their way out at the moment and being produced. And I have had a taste of them and have enjoyed them. But before we get to that question, let's set it up a little bit.

You are concerned that human rights do not loom sufficiently large in the national consciousness – and that that is in contrast to other free democratic societies comparable to ours. It does not loom sufficiently large at the community level and at the public policy level. What is going on and why, in your view?

SJ: I do believe that the discourse of human rights in Australia seems weaker than in other liberal democracies, such as in Europe, in Canada and in the United States. Here, for example, there is a mistaken belief in many quarters that human rights are for criminals not "decent" folk.

I think there are various explanations for this. One is that we lack comprehensive national legislation on human rights, which tends to be a focus of media and a focus of discussion even in the UK, where there has been recently some negative press about the Human Rights Act.

For example, the Cameron Government seems to be quite hostile to that Act. But even that at least creates media buzz about human rights, and people are aware of them and more aware of their parameters. In Australia we lack such legislation. The majority in Australia, and obviously in a multicultural society it is difficult to locate the majority, but I think we seem to have a fairly complacent attitude to human rights here, a feeling that "she'll be right".

Regardless of the fact that Australia comparatively has a good human rights record, we must protect them. And I don't think people think very much about them. We have, as I said, quite a complacent attitude and I think that is borne out in something we're going to talk about later, which is the metadata debate. I think it might be that people are just perhaps not aware of why human rights might be important.

I think very few Australians could sit back and name many human rights in the Universal Declaration or would know very much about the Universal Declaration at all.

MS: Maybe one way of looking at that, Sarah, is that it is a problematic but really lovely reflection on an incredibly decent society, in the sense that there are many people in many places around the world who are prepared to die to have a chance to approximate the lifestyle that perhaps gets taken to some extent for granted in Australia.

And that is because it is so normal, because we have such a strong situation. So perhaps there is some understandable complacency – or, as you, say a she'll-be-right attitude - because she has been right.

But, as we're going to see, there are a couple of issues where she ain't right, right now. But do you think there is any validity in that - that we kind of got it so right along the way, for whatever reason, that people are not aware that things are really crook elsewhere?

SJ: I think that is true, though I am not sure about your reference to "elsewhere" at the end, because that implies that human rights are not really a problem here. I doubt the indigenous people of Australia would feel the same way.

MS: Absolutely. The gap is the biggest blot on this nation, isn't it?

SJ: And the gap is disgraceful. For example, life expectancy of indigenous
people has been too low for too long, and is of developing world standards.

So, as I said, the majority can think things are fine and sunny and we've generally got a pretty good lifestyle. But I think it can blind us, to the importance of our own human rights, the human rights of others and the human rights deficits that others might be experiencing.

MS: Do you think Australia should have a bill of rights, particularly in light of your concern about lack of awareness of, and complacency about, human rights?

Yes, I think a bill of rights would assist in raising awareness, and also, obviously, in providing remedies for human rights abuses.

Clearly, a constitutional bill of rights is unlikely, given how difficult it is to pass constitutional changes through referendums. But a federal statutory charter of rights, like the UK's Human Rights Act or those in Victoria and the ACT, could still be enacted. Indeed, that was the recommendation of the National Human Rights Consultation Report in 2009.

The prevailing political wisdom in Australia, highly unusual amongst liberal democracies, is that human rights issues are best entrusted to Parliaments. Yet there are several instances of law-making at both federal and State levels which indicate to me that that trust in Australian Parliaments is not justified.

MS: Before we get to specifics, and we're going to look at asylum seekers and then we are going to look at the metadata and national security staff, do you want to talk about any other human rights deficits that you can identify in this country?

SJ: I have only learnt this myself quite recently, but Australia, compared to other liberal democracies, has quite a bad record of violence against women. This is something that stunned me only very recently. The issue is something that is raised regularly with Australia internationally.

Now, we are not talking about violence by the state against women, we're not talking violence by police against women, but we are talking about violence within society against women, which is evidence of the lack of a robust response by the state to try to stop that..

MS: And we should perhaps take this opportunity to underscore that notion, Sarah, shouldn't we, that human rights abuses are not necessarily committed institutionally or by a state? They often committed by one individual against another.

SJ: Yes, that is correct. Governments have various responsibilities including not to abuse rights themselves, and also to take reasonable measures to protect people from other people, which includes protecting women from violence.

MS: What you're referring to is captured by figures that have been well accepted throughout the community now, and that is that more than one woman a week is killed by a partner or former partner in this country. It is the leading preventable cause of injury and death for women.

SJ: Which is horrendous and absolutely astonishing.

MS: And unacceptable.

SJ: Totally unacceptable. And it is a human rights issue.

MS: And it makes me ashamed of my gender, it literally does. What is done to women by men is unacceptable.

SJ: By some men.

MS: By some men, but it is generally men abusing women, not the other
way round, and I have seen recent stuff out there trying to suggest that 40 per cent of domestic violence is committed by women against men and I look at this and think this is not helpful.

SJ: And social media has really thrown a spotlight on this. I'm quite an active participant in social media, particularly Twitter, and I believe I am generally treated with respect. I do not get many trolls, and those I get are not particularly awful.

But I really do see how many prominent women, particularly those who speak a lot about feminism - and I don't tend to - but those who focus on feminist issues can get a really hard time. They get threatened with violence and rape online.  And I think: where is that coming from?

MS: I think one of the problems is the expression `social media'. I think people should think about it as open media and realise that you are on a publishing platform and that you are liable to the laws of the land - defamation and anti-harassment and the like.

SJ: I agree with all that. I have had some myself where people will say something horrible and I have thought wow, that is like metaphorically you have just spat in my face. Why would you do that?

Obviously people do feel able to say things on social media to people they have never met in a way that they would never do on the street. .

MS: And particularly behind the veil of anonymity.

SJ: Yes, but to actually threaten someone with rape or violence; that is another level altogether which I think is indicative, ok, of a problem with social media but also of a problem with society.

Because why would you even go there? Why would you even think of that? Whereas, I can understand if somebody's thinking while I'm talking `oh, shut up you lefty academic'. It's rude, but it is not horrible. But to threaten somebody with rape is a crime. Why would you even think of that?

MS: And I do not know, so let's leave that hanging. Because neither of us know, and both of us are active on social media and sometimes think gee, that is strange.

SJ: It sort of has shone a light on the reality of the problem of violence against women. There is obviously the raw hard reality of that statistic you raised of one death a week, but there is also the reality, not as serious but still dreadful, of these regular threats that women get on social media.

MS: Before we went off on that tangent, which was worth doing and is relevant to what we are about to talk about, we were heading into a discussion about a special project the Castan Centre has got going. It has to do with raising awareness in the context of what we were saying earlier - that there might be a lack of awareness in this country about human rights. So there is a video project going on. Could you please tell us about that?

SJ: This is a project we are very excited about, which people can access at a website called haveyougotthatright.com

What we're doing is releasing little videos of around two to three minutes each. We hope that they are humorous, and they all illustrate a particular human rights issue. We have already our first on the issue of same-sex marriage.

The issue there is, is there a right to marriage equality in international human rights law? So there is a little skit involved with that question and then an academic and some very cool graphics by a great company from South Melbourne called Jumbla.

The project is designed to make human rights questions interesting, engaging and also comprehensible to people. One issue that academic centres have is to make their expertise accessible to other people. As an academic I spend a lot of time writing books and writing journal articles and I love doing that, but I don't pretend that those articles are necessarily accessible to most people.

It is not because they're too smart; it is often because the language we use is jargon and the language we use is actually quite boring to other people. So one conscious effort we make at the Castan Centre is to try to make human rights accessible and interesting for people so they can ultimately make up their own minds about them. We want them to at least know the basics and to hopefully want to find out more.

This is probably our most innovative effort in this regard. We are going to be releasing 10 videos in the first season. There will be a break over Christmas, so we will release the last one for this year on December 10, which happens to be Human Rights Day, then we will have a break until Australia Day or so. We are using YouTube.

We're also - and it has been a really interesting project because of this - working with the sorts of people you don't usually have the pleasure of working with in academe. We have had some great pro bono support, and here I must give a plug to Robert Hall, our pro bono producer of the whole series. There are great actors and great video people, and great students who have written all the scripts. I would urge people to go and have a look at the website haveyougotthatright.com

MS: We will put a link to that and to the centre. Let's go and have a look at some specific issues. I will talk about same-sex marriage in the article. For me that issue has always been a no-brainer; the only thing that is going to happen when the right of people in love to get married is properly acknowledged is that people will get married.

SJ: Exactly.

MS: Let's have a look at some specifics. This very day, the United Nations has told Australia the conditions in which asylum seekers, people we all know are among the world's most marginalized and vulnerable and desperate people, the conditions in which they are being kept on Manus Island and Nauru are inhuman and unlawful.

The UN has advised that today through a committee. There has long been concern about this nation's treatment of asylum seekers, and it is not one side or the other, it is both, started by Paul Keating's mandatory detention move, and I share these concerns and disclose here that I am an ambassador for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre. It is a big area of public debate. What is your view of the situation through the prism of human rights?

SJ: I am appalled. I think most Australians would be genuinely shocked if they really paid attention to the conditions and the trauma that we are subjecting human beings to.

First let me make clear that Australia retains responsibility for these people. We may try to pretend that by sending them to Nauru and Papua New Guinea they become the responsibility of those two countries.

Those two countries share responsibility for those people, but Australia is paying for the detention centres and we are paying for the staffing of the detention centres. By the way, we are also paying an absolutely enormous amount for this so-called solution. This is interesting in the context of all these debates about the budget and all this money we have to save and $7 doctor's fees etc.

There does not seem to be a lot of attention paid to the absolutely enormous and skyrocketing costs of these detention centres offshore. And then there are the conditions in which people are being held. There is the secrecy being imposed by a government that was happy to scream to high heaven every single time a boat arrived when in opposition.

Suddenly it has become a national security issue, so there is secrecy involved. There was a man murdered on Manus Island, and our government has responded with an astonishing lack of curiosity as to how that happened and an astonishing lack of apparent care about the fact that it happened. There has since been a second man die, of septicaemia.

Not only that, we do keep on hearing from credible sources - the few credible sources that can go in and visit and talk to these people - about the massive mental health emergency that is emerging. Then there are things like the fact that toilets are not cleaned very often.

Collectively all of this is wanton cruelty. And it is being perpetrated in our name. I do worry about the fact that even though we do read about such stories for example in Fairfax, the Guardian and sometimes on the ABC about the terrible conditions, alongside it you might see a story about how Scott Morrison is doing well as a Minister because he is actually achieving what he said he would achieve, which is to "stop the boats".

That is not to have a gratuitous go at the media. But okay, he stopped the boats but at what cost? Surely the means and the consequences must matter. I just fear that there seems to be an attitude amongst the population of out of sight, out of mind. Unaware of what is happening out of sight.
 
MS: Do you think that lack of uprising by the citizenry against that sort of bastardry, and I think it is bastardry…

SJ: I would agree…

MS: Do you link that to your earlier idea about lack of awareness of human rights?

SJ: Lack of awareness and also a certain complacency. I think also, with asylum seekers, there is a fair bit of propaganda - the insistent use of words like `illegal'. It is not illegal to seek asylum. The constant use of words like `queue jumper'; go and find the queue, there is no queue. We are trying to instruct desperate people on how to flee properly, or in a way that suits us.

There is a massive number of refugees in the world and we are enacting policies to try to make sure that the rest of the world can deal with that and it is not in our backyard. And the government, I think, is getting some sort of reward for it.

They are being held to account to an extent by the media, but it is hard for the media to do so, the media is under all sorts of economic pressures and the government is not giving out the information.

MS: It is one of the greatest mysteries to me in public discussion in our nation that there is not an outcry.

SJ: Well, the bipartisanship does not help. I mean, we have got both major parties largely in agreement. There are a few details where they might not be in agreement - that's about tow-backs and so on - but they both buy into "queue jumping" and they both buy into the idea of "illegals".

MS: But even so, just because your party says it- I do not see why that would stop thoughtful human beings from saying that is just not right. That is not what ought to happen and it is not based on facts.

SJ: I cannot enlighten you any more about this. Except that it is not new.

MS: Okay, we are both stumped. We need to move on. I'm completely confounded by this one. So are you. It distresses me. Another apposite situation, and related, because you're talking about national security, which has been conflated with asylum seekers…

SJ: Which is particularly ridiculous, because this is people seeking our help who are arriving without guns. By the way, they say we have lost control of our borders. We actually intercept the people from the boats; that is actually not "losing control of your borders". And the fact that you have to process people and decide whether they are refugees or not is not losing control of your borders.

MS: I agree with you and remain confounded. The next subject, where we're looking at a real-time and real-life issue that involves human rights, and in this case also a need to balance conflicting rights, that is the right to privacy and the need for community security, is the metadata etc situation, which includes the notion that somebody like me could go to prison for 10 years for doing my job, effectively. What is going on with this one?

SJ: Australia is not unique in this. I don't want to downgrade the effects of terrorism. Terrorism is horrible. And, make no mistake, if it happened to me or a loved one I would be absolutely horrified, as would anybody.

But I do think around the world governments find it hard to resist the use of the terrorism argument to accrue power for themselves. The danger of terrorism is completely inflated. We talked before about violence against women, and you mentioned the statistic that one woman a week dies. Imagine if one person a week died from terrorism.

We would have police on every street corner and it would be an absolute national emergency. I am going to touch wood now, but there are not many Australians who have died of terrorism in the last 20 years or so. It is nothing compared to violence against women or the road toll or workplace safety.

It is also an argument that I think seems to be used to scare people. The world had a right to be astonished and horrified completely by 9/11. But now we have gotten to the point where a very tragic killing of a Canadian soldier is interpreted as a threat to Australia.

MS: Are we going too far here, and are we getting the balance wrong?

SJ: I believe so.

MS: Specifically how?

SJ: It is disproportionate to be collecting data on everybody and surveilling everybody without due cause. It is still incumbent upon our law enforcement authorities to come up with reasonable suspicions regarding people who are credibly exhibiting the behaviour of being terrorists. And privacy matters.

MS: We need to rush on because of time, but just a final question on this one: do you think the case has been sufficiently established to compel the mandatory collection of metadata?

SJ: No.

MS: Why do you do what you do? Why do you care?

SJ: I have always been very interested in international affairs and the human condition, and I believe that I am doing something good and that is nice, too. I am very fortunate to actually love what I do. I also get to work with some really inspiring people, including my students, many of whom have gone on to human rights careers.

MS: Around the time that the Declaration of Human Rights was being made in 1948, people were still - and continue to be - but were freshly in shock. One of the turning points in your life was visiting Auschwitz. Can you talk a little bit about that, please?

SJ: I had just finished a Masters degree in the UK and I then wanted to travel. The Masters degree whizzed by; it was only nine months long. I needed a job if I was to travel more, and I believed that I was only qualified to be an academic. In those days I thought being an academic was quite daggy, so it was not actually my aim in life, but in the short term I thought it would be fine.

I ended up, strangely enough, as human rights, by the way, was my worst mark in my Masters, getting a provisional job at the University of Nottingham in the area of human rights. It was provisional as it required grant funding, which I wouldn't find out about for several months - and so in the meantime I went travelling with some friends who were in a busking band.

We went to Eastern Europe. My friends ended up going to a competition in Italy, whereas I was quite fascinated by Eastern Europe. I ended up going to Krakow, and at that stage I had no idea that Auschwitz was close by. But I ended up going there and standing there in that awful field at Birkenau. It was 1992 and it was not then a tourist place. Poland was only just opening up so you had to make a bit of an effort to get there, so there were hardly any people there.

And standing in the middle of this field and taking in what had happened there, it suddenly dawned on me how much I really wanted that job for what it was, rather than just as a means to an end for more money for more travel.

MS: The final question, Sarah, to every guest in The Zone is what is the hardest thing you have ever had to do?

SJ: First of all, I might say, answering this question. Second, I might just quickly say `yoga'.

Third, I am a very urban person. About 25 years ago some girlfriends and I travelled to Fremantle for the Americas Cup. And we ended up getting stuck in Margaret River because it was so great.

I loved it there and it was great hanging around. But we had planned for quite a while that we would go caving, the caves are famous in Margaret River. And it started to loom large in the back of my head: oh my god we are going caving. I don't really know what I was worried about - maybe falling and breaking a leg, maybe ruining the whole adventure.

And there is a picture, I remember it but I don't actually have it anymore, of me getting obviously to the bottom of the cave. And you can see from my face - I'm opening a bottle of champagne - that I look elated. In fact it was a wonderful experience but, wow, I was so frightened going into that cave. And it was not the fact that it was dark or anything like that, it was more this thing that had become bizarrely big in my head.

MS: I suppose pulling that together one could reflect that there is no growth in the comfort zone.

SJ: Another thing I would say is just growing up. Coz it never stops.

MS: Yes, growing up is a rich and difficult time for all, isn't it? Sarah it has been a privilege and a pleasure to spend time with you. I have appreciated it, thank you.

SJ: Thank you Michael.