DAVID ADAMS speaks to Martyn Iles about the creation of the Human Rights Law Alliance…
A new Christian organisation which its founders say is aimed at protecting “fundamental freedoms” such as free speech and freedom of religion has been launched in Australia.
In what is believed to be the first organisation of its kind in Australia, the Human Rights Law Alliance has been established within the political lobbying organisation, the Australian Christian Lobby, with former ACL chief of staff Martyn Illes, as its managing director.
“[W]hen…laws that are made in Parliament are contested or when they are applied in ways that are maybe unforeseen or in ways that are unjust, the Human Rights Law Alliance can come in and assist with litigation that contests those laws and hopefully, protect and preserve fundamental freedoms.”
– Martyn Iles
Mr Iles, a lawyer who was chief of staff at the ACL for two-and-a-half years up until April this year, says the Canberra-based alliance has been established to “run cases or to implement legal strategies that protect fundamental freedoms”.
“The Australian Christian Lobby is a political lobbying group, lobbying Parliaments; they do policy advice, they advocate for good policy. The way that the Human Rights Law Alliance is different is that it’s somewhat downstream from that,” he says.
“It essentially advocates in the courts. So when these laws that are made in Parliament are contested or when they are applied in ways that are maybe unforeseen or in ways that are unjust, the Human Rights Law Alliance can come in and assist with litigation that contests those laws and hopefully, protect and preserve fundamental freedoms.”
Mr Iles says that while it is envisaged that the HRLA, which is initially operating on what he describes as a “small budget”, will eventually operate independently, it currently operates as a “department” of the ACL which, along with other private donors, has provided seed funding for the initiative.
“I suppose it’s true to say it was ACL’s idea to do something for the people that ACL had known about who had been struggling with these issues. The barrier has been cost and expertise. So that’s been a long process where there has actually been people within ACL thinking for a long time about how this might work, speaking to a lot of lawyers,” he says.
Mr Iles says the HRLA – the creation of which came after an examination of how similar organisations run in a range of countries including the US, UK, and India as well as in Latin America and Europe – has already been involved with a number of cases.
These have concerned such issues as the rights of street preachers, the rights of doctors to conscientiously object to certain procedures or forms of treatment, free speech including the right to express one’s beliefs in the workplace, and, buffer zones around abortion clinics.
“All of these cases are actually run through allied lawyers,” he says. “We’re not a law firm, we’re a clearing house, we have people who work closely with us – they’re experts in these fields and we sort of refer the case out, we monitor it and we make sure everybody gets justice.”
While some of the cases will be handled pro-bono, others may be carried out at discounted rates.
Mr Iles says that while the HRLA is a Christian organisation, it’s not necessarily only going to have “Christian work”.
“It is set-up as an organisation that broadly engages with fundamental rights and freedoms so we are able to give advice relating to most human rights issues. And the cases that we will run, whilst many of them will involve Christians just because of the way we’ve started up, some of them may not – they may just have strategic implications for freedoms, of speech, association of religion etcetera, and we will run those as well. So it is run by Christian people but it won’t always be doing Christian work.”
Acknowledging there have been criticisms that the group has focused on too few issues with regard to human rights, Mr Iles says that the association’s approach is a “comprehensive understanding” of human rights and freedoms, such as might be found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“[W]e believe in all of those rights and freedoms which are fundamental and which are important to our Western democratic way of life and culture and heritage.”
Martyn Iles
“[W]e will not protect fundamental freedoms at all costs. We will protect all human rights and freedoms in a cohesive and careful way.”
– Martyn Iles
But Mr Iles believes that there has been a “shifting of emphasis, away from those rights that guarantee people certain freedoms to live out, to associate around, to express and to speak about their vision of the truth”.
“Those freedoms have been limited at the expense of other rights which have taken a wrong turn. Now we believe in the right for non-discrimination, we believe in equality rights. However the way in which they are being applied today in Australia is somewhat different to what they were designed to be.”
While he acknowledges there will be instances in which various rights will have to be balanced against each other – such as the right to non-discrimination and the right to religious freedom, for example, Mr Iles says the HRLA will seek to bring a “robust, and cautious and well-grounded philosophy to these things”.
“So we will not protect fundamental freedoms at all costs,” he says. “We will protect all human rights and freedoms in a cohesive and careful way…We’re not going to come into this with a theocratic worldview where Christianity prevails at all costs…There may be cases where balancing has to be struck and Christians may have to back off or the others may have to back off. It’s just depends – every case is so complex and different.”
That said he adds that there is always a need for some kind of “moral system of thought” to rein in freedom “so that society is directed in the right direction”.
“We don’t apologise for the fact that our system of thinking that underpins ‘what is good freedom, what is bad freedom’ is the Judeo-Christian worldview. We make no secret of that.”
