It is a very common criticism of the Australian constitution that it lacks anything comparable to a "Bill of Rights". It is not just that it doesn't have a section by that title, it is that the content is largely missing. The Australian constitution is largely lacking protections for individual rights.

Australia had a referendum in 1988 to add a Bill of Rights to its constitution. It failed by a 69-31 margin – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Australian_referendum#Rig...

It's a very common criticism of the US Constitution, that there isn't a direct enshrinement of "innocent until proven guilty." Again, that's not what matters.

Do you, or do you not have rights as an Australian? Again, it's the principles in practice. If you answer yes, you've lost your argument. If you answer no, I should think you're lying.

Constitutionally entrenched rights are quite limited. There is the implied right of political communication, which is a lot less expansive than the US first amendment – it only covers political speech, non-political speech is not protected. Also, as the word "implied" specifies, it is not something explicit in the constitutional text, it is something the High Court has read into the constitution through its case law

There is a prohibition on establishment of religion or religious discrimination by the federal government (section 116). There is a right to jury trials in federal cases on indictment (section 80).

That's basically it, most of the provisions in the 2nd through 10th, and 13th through 15th amendments have no analogue in Australian constitutional law.

A coworker of mine once referred to Australia as "that policed state." I guess that's why.

something the High Court has read into the constitution through its case law

Have you just given a complete accounting of that? Are you saying that no principles from the Magna Carta come down to you through Australia's legal heritage in the commonwealth?

Do you, or do you not have rights as an Australian? Do you, or do you not enjoy the benefits of rule of law? Do you have protected property rights? Can you reliably conduct business? Do you or do you not have rights?

You try and weasel out of this, with your use of the qualifiers "establishment" and "entrenched."

Well, if your position is that you don't actually have rights, that the government can take those things away from you on a whim, then you've lost your argument, because that, right there, is what is so great about the US Constitution. There are certain things the government is not allowed to do to us, which guarantees our freedom. Is it perfect? No, but it gives us a fighting chance.

On the other hand, if the case law basically amounts to your having rights, then your argument in the thread above also falls apart, because then Australia has the same things in principle that the US Constitution has.

So which is it? (Hey, I'll also accept a nuanced alternative between!)

I would feel sorry for you, if in principle, you do not have actual rights, and the government could play whatever games it wanted with you. That's basically the situation in China. (My wife is from Fujian, so I have a pretty nuanced view of the Chinese system.) And yeah, the US isn't perfect.

https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-a...

But here, we at least have a fighting chance. Just by existing in that state, the United States keeps the world as a whole from sliding further towards tyranny. IMHO.

(Another point of history: When Hitler took power in Weimar Germany, the Nazis already had most of the legal framework for totalitarian rule in the laws as written. As it was, all of the laws touching on human rights had an out for the government, in case of emergencies. I hope you Australians aren't in that situation. It's not as if we in the US are completely free from shenanigans like that, as the Korematsu ruling illustrates. Though some of the current justices have said they'd do something about it, if they got the chance.)

It isn't a black-and-white thing "you have rights or you don't".

Constitutions serve several purposes – to lay out the basic structure of the national government (the executive, legislature, judiciary, etc); in a federation, to establish the division of powers between the federation and its constituents (states/provinces/etc); to establish procedures for amending the constitution; and to protect individual rights.

Different constitutions differ on how much they have to say about that last topic. Some constitutions say a lot, others little. The American constitution originally had little to say on that topic, but then the Bill of Rights and Reconstruction amendments added a lot. The Australian constitution is somewhere between the two: it has a bit more to say than the original (pre-Bill of Rights) US constitution had to say, but a lot less than the current US constitution has. Protection of individual rights is not an either-or, it is a matter of degrees, and the Australian constitution provides significantly less of a degree of it than the US constitution does.

It is however possible to have rights in practice without them being guaranteed constitutionally. In Australia, there is no constitutional right to freedom of non-political speech, but in practice the law allows a wide freedom for that–but not unlimited, and narrower than US law does. Part of it not being a constitutionally entrenched right, is that Parliament could change the law tomorrow to significantly narrow it, and one would have no recourse against such a law through the courts.

You seem to view constitutional law as being all about individual rights, when there is a lot of constitutional law which has nothing directly to do with that topic.

No. I view the important parts as the individual rights. This is the reason why the United States wins: It guarantees individual rights. If Australia does that as well, then this is why it also wins. If it's just pretending, then it may not win in the long run.