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August 14, 2009
The Attorney-General, the Hon Robert McClelland MP, recently released a Discussion Paper for public discussion on the proposed legislative reforms to Australia’s counter-terrorism and national security legislation. The context is that here hasn't been a terrorist episode in Australia and there has been effective law enforcement under the existing laws
He said that:
the amendments proposed in this Discussion Paper seek to achieve an appropriate balance between the Government’s responsibility to protect Australia, its people and its interests and instil confidence that our laws will be exercised in a just and accountable way...The Government has endeavoured to address the concerns and issues raised by recent important reviews of national security and counter-terrorism legislation with a view to achieving the right balance between strong laws that protect our safety whilst preserving the democratic rights that protect our freedoms.
The Discussion Paper is difficult as it consists of amendments to various acts and its audience is more lawyers than anyone else. It is good to know that Rudd Labor acknowledges that citizens in a liberal democracy have democratic rights and freedoms. I wonder what rights these are?
Richard Ackland in the observed in the Sydney Morning Herald that:
The paper seems to be about softening a few things at the edges (for example, limiting the time someone can be held without charge to seven days) and cranking up other powers (no need for warrants in certain circumstances, the expanded definition of terrorism and new offences dealing with hoaxes and incitement).The Government is selling this as a balance between the rights of citizens and the security of the nation but, overall, there is much more cranking up than watering down. None of which guarantees that, if you have wider definitions and more powers, detection and prevention become more effective.
There is a proposal to allow police to conduct searches without warrants or judicial oversight where there is a ''material'' threat to public health or safety and a seven-day cap on detaining suspects without charging them. How is that balanced? Balanced by what? My rights?
What democratic rights do I have then that ensure my freedom? In in The Age Nicola McGarrity says that:
There is no attempt to tackle many of the most problematic aspects of those laws. The Government does not propose, for example, to repeal the control order or preventative detention regimes (the latter has never been used). Or to repeal the status offences in the Criminal Code - those offences that target a person's identity as a ''member'' or ''associate'' of a terrorist organisation rather than his or her role in assisting a terrorist act.
However she makes no mention of the freedons that citizens enjoy or how these freedom are under pinned by rights. Where do I go find out what these rights are?
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It's a far cry from 2007, the Haneef debacle and hints from the Labor saviours that these nonsenses would be rolled back.
Good conservatives never forget and never learn, De Tocqueville more or less said back in the nineteenth century and this appears to apply to the Ruddbots, apart from their opportunist, reflexivity devoid comprehension of the nature and uses of their inheritances fiscal and social, from the Howardists.
The Age article, tho useful, pulled its punches and was way too cautious. Ackland is a lot closer to the sense of it all, as are others who point to recent bizarre changes of a like nature in NSW.
Then there was ABC doco this week about the snowballing sophistication of the advertising and marketing driven commodification of children- give me the child; I' ll give you the adult(sucked dry!).
Why do I digress?
Because various tendencies when viewed together holisyically reveal a Baudrillardian simulacra monster which is far more significant cumulatively than the sum of (apparently) unrelated parts. This starts with seemingly unrelated issues like the wars in the Western Asia, the Wall st Bailout and AUSFTA and defence type instruments that effect "harmonisation".
Consider a whole lot of evidence, from tasering, to terrorism beat-ups, to O and Sandilands ( incomprehensibly let again off the leash by Austereo mangement despite the outcry, after a shameful ennabling peice from Grimeshaw's ACA ).
Add the coercion involved in Aboriginal policy and consider the article in the Adelaide Advertiser this very day, of police arresting women on trivial offences, forcibly stripping them and leaving them in padded cells prone, under the gaze of intrusive recording cameras.
These all show the out workings of the current model of, for want of a better word, "globalisation", at the local level.
And, of course we don't even consider what life must be like for the third world majority subject intheir billions to true harms from the over arching system.
No, the McClelland legislation is as unnecessary as it's offensive and incomprehensible, from a social democratic point of view- one wonders what sort of parallel universe the likes of John Howard junior and his confrateres exist in, to produce such monstrous stage managed trash and pass it off as a "discussion paper",