NSW Council for Civil Liberties Inc.

Postal address: PO BOX A1386 SYDNEY SOUTH NSW 1235 Office address: suite 203, 105 Pitt Street SYDNEY NSW 2000 Phone: 02 8090 2952 Fax: 02 8580 4633 Email: office@nswccl.org.au Website: www.nswccl.org.au

NSW Council for Civil Liberties 50th Anniversary Dinner 25 October 2013 S eech by CCL !resi"ent Ste hen #lan$s

Welco%e

Your honours, Senators, members of the NSW parliament, distinguished guests, civil libertarians and fellow travellers, it is my pleasure to welcome you here tonight, in my first official duty as the newly elected President of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties. Some of you may already be missing the familiar face of Cameron urphy, who has this wee! stepped down from the Presidency after at

least "# years. You can rela$, Cameron is here tonight and will address you shortly.

Cameron has been President of CCL for more than a %uarter of its &' year e$istence. While he has been the most commonly seen public face of the organisation over that time, there is, fortunately, significant depth to the organisation. (he e$ecutive and committee that was elected at the )* this wee! has a good mi$ture of e$perience and youth. )s we are celebrating tonight &' years of civil liberties advocacy, and the e$traordinary characters who were part of the movement during that time, we are developing the ne$t generation of civil libertarians to carry forward the Council+s core values for the ne$t half century.

,ne of the e$traordinary characters who features prominently throughout the whole of the &' years of CCL+s history is ichael -irby. ichael -irby+s first official appearance in CCL records is in "./0,

when he is recorded in the CCL newsletter 1issue no. 234 as providing legal assistance to students arrested at a demonstration. ichael -irby will be spea!ing to us tonight via video lin!.

We are here tonight to celebrate the past and en5oy each other+s company. We are privileged to celebrate our &'th anniversary with some of the significant people from those years. 6f 6 can single out a few for special mention, (erry ,+*orman, President of the )ustralian Council for Civil Liberties, who has come from 7risbane, 8al Wootten )C 9C , :avid -irby 9C, -ristine -lugman, who has come from Canberra, eredith 7urgman, ;va Co$, <im arsden and airi Petersen. Celebrating with us,

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we have a remar!able list of guests. <ustice =irginia 7ell, of the 8igh Court of )ustralia, 5udges of the Supreme Court of NSW, the :istrict Court of NSW, agistrates of the Local Court of NSW > 5udicial

officers too many to mention individually. (wo of NSW+ "2 senators, Senators Sam :astyari and Lee ?hianon are with us tonight, as is the 8onourable Paul Lynch, shadow attorney general of NSW, and other members of the NSW Parliament. (he mobile phone numbers of everyone in this room tonight are undoubtedly of interest to the National Security )gency of the @nited States of )merica. Perhaps they are already in its databases. Perhaps they have been provided by )S6,. We+ll probably never !now.

We are also here tonight to lay the foundations for the future. (hat is code for me reminding you that tonight is unashamedly a fundraising dinner. We are conducting a raffle > raffle tic!ets are on the table. Please ma!e sure that your table buys all of the tic!ets in the boo! on your table. )dditional boo!s are available on re%uest. :onations to CCL will be accepted. Aor those of you whose membership has lapsed or who have never been members, we can process your renewals or applications. Photographs from tonight will be on sale laterB the photographer, Peter -ingsley Photography, has !indly agreed to donate part of the proceeds of sale to CCL.

&oast to the foun"ers

)t the outset of tonight+s celebration of &' years of civil liberties advocacy, 6 wish to propose a toast to two of the giants of the CCL since its foundation, 7erenice and -en 7uc!ley. (hey deserve continuing recognition for providing the impetus for the foundation of the CCL, and its influence over the whole of its e$istence. (heir involvement continued without brea! for more than 0' years. (he fitout of our office in Pitt Street was made possible with a be%uest from 7erenice 7uc!ley, and is a tangible lasting legacy to their memory. ,ur special guest spea!er <ustice Carolyn Simpson will have more to say about the 7uc!leys tonight, but let+s start the night with a toast > to 7erenice and -en 7uc!ley.

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'ntro"uction to the (on )ustice Carolyn Si% son

Civil libertarians, it is my pleasure to introduce our guest tonight, the 8onourable <ustice Carolyn Simpson to reflect on the past &' years of civil liberties advocacy by NSWCCL. )ccording to the official history of CCL, by Scott and :orothy Campbell, who we are honoured to have with us here tonight, Carolyn Simpson 5oined the CCL in the early ".C's, was elected to the committee in ".C# and became President in ".C&. She served a further term as vice president in the ".D's.

She was particularly concerned with social issues such as welfare of children, the rights of those with mental health problems, and the reform of laws relating to victimless crimes. She was a civil libertarian for the forgotten people > children, mental patients, prisoners, drug addicts and vagrants. She spearheaded CCL campaigns in areas such as human relationships, drug law reform, )S6, and rape law reform. 6n the ".C's, under Carolyn Simpson+s leadership, CCL recognised )boriginal land rights as a civil liberties issue.

6n those days, CCL was truly a leading and influential organisation. 6ts membership numbers were several times the numbers we have today. )s ichael -irby said in his speech, many of CCL+s

leaders went on to become 5udges. Carolyn Simpson is one of those, having been appointed to the Supreme Court in "..0.

(onight, <ustice Simpson will reflect on the history of CCL+s advocacy. (he ability to reflect on the long history of CCL is undoubtedly one of this organisation+s strengths. )s she does so, we should !eep in mind the civil liberties challenges we face today. (hey are no less serious than those issues which the CCL fought in the /'s, C's and D's. 6ndeed, despite all of the influence and successes CCL has en5oyed in the past, 6 thin! we face today issues of more fundamental importance than ever before.

)t the top of my list is an issue that was nowhere on the radar in public debate until the Aederal election this year, and that is the failure of the voting system for the )ustralian Senate to produce a result that meaningfully reflects the wishes of the people. :emocracy is in dangerous territory where candidates are elected on the basis of misleading party names and without any real
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participation in public discourse. We are in more dangerous territory if the ma5or parties stitch up a solution that suits themselves, and loc!s out genuine minor parties. ) properly representative government should be the first demand of civil libertarians. (he second demand should be to recognise proper limits on the power of democratically elected governments to pass laws by reference to internationally recognised human rights standards. )lmost all of the issues about which civil libertarians are concerned can now be analysed through a human rights framewor!. (here are profound benefits of such an approach > the development of a human rights 5urisprudence around the world provides a common language and intellectual framewor! for dealing with many difficult issues. )ustralia is presently the odd man out in the international legal framewor!, and the failure of the civil liberties movement to achieve meaningful human rights protection when there was perhaps an opportunity a few years ago is a profound and disappointing failure.

Ne$t, 6 must mention national security. )s civil libertarians, we are committed to campaign against e$traordinary and dangerous powers given to )S6, in the past decade in response to fears concerning national security. 6n the past year or 2, there have been several serious reports by government appointed committees recommending repeal of at least some of these powers. @ndermining the ideals of a free society in peacetime, indefinite detention is imposed on people in )ustralia on national security grounds > not as a result of conviction of any crime following the processes of the criminal law, but merely on an assessment that would not stand up to a moment+s scrutiny in any Court. (he fact that the victims of this situation are not )ustralian citiEens does not diminish the enormity of the outrage. CCL is conducting an ongoing campaign on )S6,, launched at last year+s dinner. )S6, was a big issue in the period when Carolyn Simpson was involved in CCL, and her advocacy led to fundamental reforms through the 8ope ?oyal Commission.

(here is another perennial sub5ect that has never gone away, and that Carolyn Simpson was closely involved with, and that is the NSW Police. 6n the C's, there was a campaign in relation to summary offences > the Wran government repealed the then discredited Summary ,ffences )ct, but placed many of its controversial provisions in other legislation. (here have been further substantial reforms since then, but today it is apparent that there are serious deficiencies in the NSW Police which have been e$posed in the Police 6ntegrity Commission and in the Coroners Court, arising from needless deaths, police brutality and then subse%uent cover ups. CCL remains active in the field. ,n
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onday,

we are meeting with the former Aederal )ttorney *eneral, ?obert

cLelland, who is conducting an

in%uiry into police critical incidents for the NSW government. )t the other end of the scale, CCL continues to arrange legal representation for protesters arrested at demonstrations, and through doing so, gains detailed !nowledge of unsatisfactory police behaviour.

CCL remains committed to campaigning on a wide range of issues. )t our annual general meeting earlier this wee!, we passed detailed resolutions dealing with asylum see!ers, global surveillance and data collection, whistleFblowers and the rightFtoF!now, and censorship. (he last of these has been another perennial issue in which CCL has always been involved.

)s we deal with the civil liberties issues of today, we do so with the depth of &' years of history. (his places CCL in an enviable position. any of you here tonight have been part of that history, others

of you are part of the future. 6t is on nights li!e tonight that we can bring the past and the future together. (onight will probably not bring the controversy that CCL+s infamous 2"st birthday celebration brought > when Premier Wran discarded his prepared speech and launched into a vicious attac! on what he saw as the timidity of CCL. Carolyn Simpson was there, as she was in all of the important civil liberties debates of that time.

6t is my honour to welcome the 8onourable <ustice Carolyn Simpson to address us tonight.

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