December 6, 2005
Gerard Henderon in the Sydney Morning Herald has an op ed. on the responses to the sedition provisions of the Howard Government's anti-terrorism legislation. He says:
So it has come to this, apparently. The passing by the Senate of the Federal Government's industrial relations legislation, and the likely passing this week of its national security legislation, has led to the creation of the Howard fascist police state. All courtesy of Mark Latham's disastrous performance as ALP leader in last year's election, which led to the Coalition obtaining a Senate majority.
Henderson gives instances of those Australians who talk in terms of Australian fascism---an Australian police state.

Moir
Henderson calls for a dose of realism. Rightly so. What is happening with the camps, the roll back of civil liberties, and the use of fear by the national securitry in Australia ais not the same as the totalitarianism of Stalinism and Nazism. As Henderson points out, unlike real totalitarian regimes, the so-called Howard fascist police state will go to the polls in just two years' time.
But that does not mean that something has not shifted in the Australian body politic. What Henderson does not address is the move away from liberalism to conservatism. That shift is marked by increasing power to the state at the expense of the individual. Yet academics are not addressing the significance of that newly forming conservatism.
What has shifted is that the Executive is using the threat of terrorism to introduce laws that put our most basic liberties under threat. What we have is the power of the executive being used to put someone--a citizen--- into detention/prison without formulating any charge and denying the citzen the judgement of his /her peers.They can then be held under house detention.
Is this not the mark of dictatorial regimes? Do we not have a situation in which Australia is fighting a war on terrorism to defend liberty and is losing its own liberty in the process? Isn't this what the Law Council of Australia, and all state law councils, have drawn attention to?
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The media, particularly that owned by Murdoch is running a fear campaign which is very successful at present. The Australians editorial piece in which it is claimed Australias anti-terrorism legislation must be okay primarily because it is not as restrictive as the US Patriot Act, or the new bill the Blair govt is trying to push through, is a fine example of a salesmans glib response....its not very good, but its better than the competition. Every move we make to combat terrorism by removing or curtailing freedom in our Society, weakens what we are, and why we are so different from the type of Society the Islamic facists would impose on the World. Bin Laden must be very pleased with these responses.....its exactly what he and his colleagues hoped for.
My own fears of what will happen with this type of legislation is not that the govt will use it to silence any inconvenient voices, although that is a potential problem, but rather that petty bureacrats now have a very handy tool to make many poor innocent bastards lives miserable for no good reason.
I am not in Oz so I am not familiar with all the debate over this, but has anyone asked.....What happens when we win the War on Terror and the world is safe for peace loving citizens once again......will this legislation be repealed???