VICTORIAN HUMANIST

SUBMISSIONS REPORT

Inquiry into the Definition of Charities and related Organisations. In we made these points:

• Humanist lifestance: its precepts and aims and areas of interest.
• The HSVs activities; its voluntary, not-for-profit organisation, its provisions for continuing education, for participation in debates on ethical and social issues and contributing an informed view to surveys of public opinion, and for social interaction and group participation.
• Charities should be defined as organisations which offer constructive help irrespective of recipients' commitment, gender, ethic origins and in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
• The current social environment in Australia is increasingly secular as shown by several indicators.
• Commercial and non-commercial activities of charities and related organisation should be distinguished in their classification.
• Lobbying should be defined as an action which fosters commercial or political gain, and not that which responds to calls for public opinion (such as this submission).
• The HSV is excluded from obtaining tax deductibility status and other privileges accorded to the churches in Australia. We contrast this with systems in some countries - Norway, Holland, Belgium, where state funds are allocated on equal basis to secular groups and churches.

In our submission on the Treatment of Asylum Seekers sent to Minister P. Ruddock and the Prime Minister we made the following points:

• Conditions in which the asylum seekers are detained breach the guidelines of the UN High Commission for Refugees
• The remoteness and the prison nature of the detention camps prevents contact with support groups and scrutiny of management procedures
• The private prison management is trained to deal with criminals only: most asylum seekers are genuine escapees from political and religious persecution.
• The length of detention under punishing conditions compares poorly with other countries with comparable number of asylum seekers, e.g. Sweden, where the maximum time is two months. Given good will and modern technology, health and security screening and status assessment should be a matter of a few weeks only.
• The extraordinary refusal to allow the UN, NGOs and church working groups to visit and observe our system of dealing with asylum seekers, justifies suspicions of malpractice.
• We strongly urge the Government to heed the call by Amnesty International to release children and their mothers held in this type of detention.
• The current investigation into these matters should an impartial, full and open inquiry and not a departmental one.
• We note that Australia was one of the original drafters and a signatory of the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees.