Today's guest in The Zone argues one reason for a lack of appropriate focus and context in public discourse is that Australians are complacent about, and relatively ignorant of, human rights. Professor Sarah Joseph heads the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at Monash University. She is one of the nation's most respected and knowledgeable thinkers about rights. "The discourse of human rights in Australia seems weaker than in other liberal democracies, such as in Europe, in Canada and in the United States. I don't think people here think very much about them [human rights]. "People are just perhaps not aware of why human rights might be important. Very few Australians could sit back and name many human rights in the Universal Declaration or would know very much about the Universal Declaration at all." The United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, largely in response to the horrors of World War II. As Australia does not have a constitutional bill of rights, and is unlikely to get one, given the difficulty of achieving a majority vote in a referendum, the Universal Declaration is the best guide we have to human rights. "Human rights are the rights that people have simply by virtue of being human. We have these rights regardless of our race, our gender, our religion, our sexuality, and so on. Probably what people find hardest of all is that we have them regardless of whether we are a good person or a bad person.

"[The declaration] includes civil and political rights like the right to be free from torture, the right to life – which includes things like a right not to be killed; it's not all about the debates we have here on abortion and euthanasia – the right of free speech." There is a link below to the Universal Declaration. Other human rights include: to marry; to seek asylum from persecution; equal access to public services; liberty and personal security; to own property; equality before the law; religious freedom; to work, and to rest; to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being, including food, clothing, housing and medical care. A video statement by Joseph and the full transcript of our discussion are at theage.com.au/federal-politics/the-zone. She will be online for an hour from midday to respond to questions and comments, which can be submitted from this morning. ‘‘Human rights are the rights that people have simply by virtue of being human. We have these rights regardless of our race, our gender, our religion, our sexuality, and so on. Sarah Joseph She argues our complacency is reflected in the widespread attitude of "she'll be right". Joseph is not suggesting Australia – with its unfettered democracy, open markets and robust respect for the rule of law – has a poor record on human rights. Rather, she argues that the very success we have achieved generally can mask specific human rights abuses – including rampant violence against women, the bastardisation of asylum seekers and the gap between the social, economic and health outcomes for indigenous Australians and the rest of the population.

The Castan Centre is named after Ron Castan, one of Australia's most renowned human rights lawyers. It is a non-profit, non-partisan research and teaching organisation with a mission to promote respect for and understanding of human rights. It is increasingly trying to do so innovatively, and has just launched a series of fast-paced, humour-laced videos titled Have You Got That Right? (The series is at http://www.haveyougotthatright.com) The first episode is an overview. The other two released so far cover marriage equality and surveillance. There will be seven more. The next one, to be released on Wednesday, is on euthanasia. After that, on Human Rights Day on December 10, comes an episode on legal aid. The remaining topics will be the right to vote, the environment, corporations, detention and, finally, asylum. Joseph is "appalled" by the treatment of asylum seekers by Australian governments in recent years. "Australians would be genuinely shocked if they really paid attention to the conditions and the trauma that we are subjecting human beings to." She stresses that Australia remains responsible for the asylum seekers it ships to Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Not only have our governments demonised some of the world's most vulnerable and desperate people, they have done so at massive cost to taxpayers. Our government is spending more than $3 billion a year on mandatory detention. It costs about $400,000 a year to keep an asylum seeker in offshore detention, four times the cost of onshore processing.

"This is interesting in the context of all these debates about the budget and all this money we have to save and $7 doctor's fees etc. There does not seem to be a lot of attention paid to the absolutely enormous and skyrocketing costs of these detention centres offshore. "And then there are the conditions in which people are being held. There is the secrecy being imposed by a government that was happy to scream to high heaven every single time a boat arrived when in opposition. Suddenly it has become a national security issue, so there is secrecy involved." The situation is rendered even more ridiculous and shameful given that as many as nine in 10 asylum seekers who arrive by boat are found to be genuine refugees. Joseph attributes the lack of widespread community outrage about the treatment of asylum seekers to lack of awareness and, again, complacency about human rights. "There is [also] a fair bit of propaganda – the insistent use of words like 'illegal'. It is not illegal to seek asylum. The constant use of words like 'queue jumper'; go and find the queue, there is no queue. There is a massive number of refugees in the world and we are enacting policies to try to make sure that the rest of the world can deal with that and it is not in our backyard." There are about 43 million displaced people in the world, many of them seeking asylum, yet Australia, a signatory to the UN Refugee Charter and one of the richest nations, has cut its humanitarian intake from an already parsimonious 20,000 a year to 13,500 a year.

In recent days, the United Nations told Australia the conditions in which asylum seekers are being kept on Manus Island and Nauru are inhuman and unlawful. Joseph is concerned, too, that our rights are at risk in the current debate about terrorism, which has been focused on the government's move to compel internet service providers to store for two years of data about what their users have been doing online. "Terrorism is horrible. And, make no mistake, if it happened to me or a loved one I would be absolutely horrified, as would anybody. But I do think around the world governments find it hard to resist the use of the terrorism argument to accrue power for themselves. The danger of terrorism is completely inflated." She contrasts the hype about terrorism with the lack of effective action to counter one of the most widespread abuses of human rights in our nation – violence by men against women. Each week in Australia, a woman is slain by a man, usually her partner or a former partner. It is the leading preventable cause of death and illness for women aged 15 to 44, a shocking fact Joseph says is often raised with her when she is at forums overseas. "Imagine if one person a week died from terrorism. We would have police on every street corner and it would be an absolute national emergency. I am going to touch wood now, but there are not many Australians who have died of terrorism in the last 20 years or so. It is nothing compared to violence against women or the road toll or workplace safety."

The Coalition government has been pushing to "end the age of entitlement" and usher in "the age of responsibility". That might be helped were human rights given greater prominence – by the government and the community – in discussions about snouts and troughs and equality of opportunity. LINKS: haveyougotthatright.com law.monash.edu.au/castancentre un.org/en/documents/udhr