The row over human rights law is usually fought as a slogan against a slogan. Underneath it's a real and unresolved question: who should make the law when a court and an electorate disagree - and both answers have a cost.
Crossbencher · 19 July 2026
Two things are true at once. Most of the argument is people clutching one and denying the other.
The first: entrenched rights exist for an excellent reason. Majorities turn on minorities - more easily, and more suddenly, than calm times let you believe. A right that can be voted away in a panic is barely a right. That's the whole point of putting some protections beyond the reach of an ordinary majority. There are moments, after an atrocity or in a fright, when the majority shouldn't get what it wants that week, and will thank itself later for being stopped. A country that could suspend its own principles by a show of hands on a bad afternoon wouldn't keep them long.
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