lifestyle

Poor Tony Abbott. The pesky United Nations is picking on him again.

Poor Tony Abbott is having a hard time today.

Not because people are expecting him, as Minister for Women, to actually, you know, do something on International Women’s Day, but because the United Nations is picking on him. Again.

That pesky UN, with all their talk of “human rights” and “not torturing children”. They are such spoil sports.

“I really think Australians are sick of being lectured by the United Nations,” Tones declared today.

A new report prepared by the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, Professor Juan Mendez, has come right out and pointed the finger at Australia for breaching the international ban on torture, in its treatment of some asylum seekers.

The report says Australia should end the detention of children, who are reportedly suffering high rates of sexual and physical abuse in detention.

Related content: This is the effect of keeping children in detention.

Professor Mendez and his mean UN buddies also said that the Australian government “fails to fully and expediously cooperate” with the Human Rights Council‘s mandate, possibly because Tony Abbott doesn’t really believe that the UN is A Thing.

Now, Tony is already tuckered out from a hard day of International Women’s Day events, including visiting a fire station, shovelling some dirt with Mike Baird and posting a single meme acknowledging actual women. He’s in no mood for all this “international legal obligations” nonsense.

Related content: Australia’s treatment of some asylum seeker breaks the international laws on torture.

In fact, he would like Prof Mendez and his mates to please quieten the hell down.

“I really think Australians are sick of being lectured by the United Nations,” Tones declared in Parliament today.

ADVERTISEMENT

He also hinted that he would quite like the UN to give him a medal for discouraging desperate families from flee their wartorn homelands in search of safety stopping the boats.

“(W)e have stopped the boats, and by stopping the boats, we have ended the deaths at sea,” he said, as Fairfax Media reports. “I think the UN’s representatives would have a lot more credibility if they were to give some credit to the Australian government for what we’re been able to achieve in this area.”

Related content: Tony Abbott’s International Women’s Day report card.

Poor Tony.

All he did was ignore an international convention Australia signed 30 years ago.

All he did was  preside over a government that keeps kids in conditions known to induce self-harm, then harangue the human rights commission president Gillian Triggs for calling him out, then allegedly have right-hand man George Brandis ask her to resign.

All he did was ignore the UN’s repeated warnings over contravening the 1951 Refugees Conventions, the International Covenant on Civil Political Rights, and a bunch of other internationally respected treaties.

Now, if only they had a UN Convention on The Rights of Rich, White, Liberal-Voting Men Born in Australia. Our Prime Minister would get full points for compliance on that one.

Then, for once, poor Tony might catch a break.

Does Tony deserve all the flack he has been getting?