The expatriate Queen’s Counsel Geoffrey Robertson sets out a legislative Bill of Rights he proposes for Australia in the March 2009 issue of The Australian Literary Review.
This is not the first time Mr Robertson, who is said to be both a British and Australian citizen, has returned to campaign to the country of his birth. In 1999 he argued for the Yes case in the republican referendum.
The first recital of his Bill of Rights reads:
“ Concious of its democratic duty to uphold protect and advance the hard-won liberties of the Australian people , united in one indissoluble commonwealth….”
We may ask what “hard – won liberties”?
There was little resistance and every cooperation from the British to make Australia one of the most successful democracies on earth.
We may also ask why Mr Robertson has omitted three essential parts of the legal nature of our nation, an “indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown…and under the Constitution. “
Why we wonder, does Mr. Robertson only include two aspects and omit references to the Federal nature of the Commonwealth, that it is under the Crown and that it is und er the Constitution?