Foreshadowing changes to Australia’s anti-terror laws which will apparently “make them tougher”, Robert McLelland warns us not to get too comfortable:
Mr McClelland says because an attack has not happened yet here, Australians may be becoming a little too comfortable and relaxed.
“I do think there is a danger of complacency and I do see evidence of complacency,” he said.
He says he is about to unveil a raft of changes to Australia’s counter-terrorism laws, including one targeting those who radicalise people, then try to tip them over the edge into launching an attack based on political views, ethnicity or religion.
When news of this measure first broke, it caused a stir with some defence lawyers arguing that the laws are already too wide but Mr McClelland says the risk of incitement is real.
“The reality is the Government isn’t contemplating this law out of a vacuum. We are contemplating it in light of knowledge that we have,” he said.
Nobody has died in a terrorist attack in Australia since 1986 – and in that case, the only person who died was the bomber. Given that the government has doubled the size of ASIO, and passed a whole raft of fairly draconian laws relating to terrorism, don’t we have the luxury of asking, at a measured pace and with actual public debate, whether the threat really merits further restrictions?
This kind of talk just plays into the terrorists’ hands. They want us to be complacent, Robert. You probably think the Reichstag fire was an ‘accident’. Only when we have passed an emergency Enabling Act can our National Security be finally assured.
I agree with you Robert.
The only complacency I see here is, that generally, Australians don’t see their once held “rights” just evaporating before their eyes.
Fear is used as the means by which these rights are removed.
As every day passes our need for a Bill of Rights increases exponentially.
You’re absolutely right Ben. This complacency is putting us all in deadly danger. Australia should really refrain from indulgences like allowing those of dubious loyalty to roam free, elections, and so forth until the War on Terror has been decisively won. I trust our noble leader McLelland to safeguard us through these dark times.
I don’t think we should get complacent when those who say we shouldn’t get complacent are openly admitting that they want to create a kind of police state regime.
Common law incitement: the act of persuading, encouraging, instigating, pressuring, or threatening so as to cause another to commit a crime.
The Commonwealth Criminal Code has codified the common law:
My question is, why isn’t this law enough? Possibly per subsection 2, “intent” “that the offence incited be committed.” is to be removed? In which case a reading by sky fairy fear mongers in a church/mosque of:
(1)The Old Testament: “stone the adulterers” (whatever);
(2 The Koran “death to the infidels” (whatever);
would be incitement?
Slippery slope methinks–on top of what are draconian absolute liabilty tosh, thought crimes etc
I was wondering last night if these laws might end up catching someone like Allan Jones?
McClelland is behind the times. The way to fight terrorists at home is through the wholesale distribution of fridge magnets.
Watch out! Don’t get on that bus, look out for bombs. Do they look suspicious? Report them! Don’t go there, they might try to poison you. Boat people are dangerous. Keep an eye out. Believe it all, and be controlled. Brought to you by your friendly government.
No one had used box cutters to hijack fully loaded passenger planes and then use them as piloted missiles before 11 Sep 2001. Haven’t since – maybe we should drop all the security at airports now.
Razor re:
Went through Sydney airport today. They “confiscated” a set of nail clippers from me with two half inch rather blunt cutting edges (bit like a miniature set of side cutters). A woman before me, similiarly with a nail file FFS!!!
Now a ball point pen (in someone’s eye) in my book, is a far more lethal weapon. It’s legislative/bureaucratic bs writ large, and a disgrace.
Australia’s secret weapon in the GWOT?
Plastic knives on all flights into and out of Australia. Such a cunning plan that Vanny Vanstone even laughed at it. It always underlines a return to common sense when the old steel knives and forks reappear once we’re flying over India, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq, and other countries miles away from the terror hotspot that is Australia 2010.
I’m backing Razor on the increased vigilance at airports.
Razor: it’s kind of offtopic, but, yes, most of the increased security at airports is redundant for preventing another 9/11.
Bombings are a different issue, though there is a fair bit of discussion on various security websites as to the actual utility of the liquids ban.
But the overwhelming majority of the extra “security” at airports and on planes after 9/11 was “security theatre” designed to instil confidence in the public rather than actually making any great difference to actual safety levels.
Peter Kemp: what about mechanical pencils? They don’t even need lead to be lethal. And don’t get me started on calligraphy pens.
Has anyone else noticed the disturbing similarities between Robert McLelland and Marn Fersn?
Which we are not going to reveal to the public, presumably.
Razor, hijacking aircraft to use as missiles stopped working on the day it was first used, as flight 93 showed.
It’s time for my favourite-ever observation on terrorism and law enforcement, courtesy of Homer and Lisa Simpson:
In the interests of clarity, I should add that I neglected to put “/sarcasm off” at the end of my previous comment. I’d hoped the reference to ‘our noble leader McLelland’ was sufficient to indicate I wasn’t serious. Sigh.
It’s OK Tim, I think we’d all picked up on it
The main weapon the 911 hijackers used was the knowledge that the passengers of the plane would likely assume it was a normal hijacking. Box cutters were just a prop.
OMG! I’ve got a pair of nail cutters on my bedside table. Worse, I use them.
Worse still, I’m in Socialist Alliance and I encourage the young kids in Resistance to question our fucked society.
Doom, doom!
I read it as aimed at far right race hate groups.
“Nobody has died in a terrorist attack in Australia since 1986-…”…
Robert, interesting article. However surely the last person to die in a terrorist attack in Australia was the security guard shot dead by the Christian fundamentalist in Melbourne in 2002?
Armagny,
But .. but Socialist Alliance is going to be demonstrating/ is demonstrating outside the ALP Conference.
Yes, mercifully, the spies do seem to ignore us. Still, I remember when they used to take photos of members of the CPA and of anti-Vietnam demonstrators.
And I once got charged with not wearing a seatbelt three minutes after I got into a car, and five minutes after I’d readva poem at an anti-uranium demonstration. You never know.
I suppose my point is these laws, as they stand, and as they will be once altered, are open to egregious abuse.
Armany@21
In the US, the Smith Act was initially directed at putting the arm on Nazis and Axis sympathisers, but its main victims were of course, leftists.
In public policy as with human invention, it’s the rule rather than the exception that what one devises will be put to purposes quite different from those one had in mind when one conceived it.
“the overwhelming majority of the extra “security” at airports and on planes after 9/11 was “security theatre” designed to instil confidence in the public rather than actually making any great difference to actual safety levels”
Word, Robert.
When I was in the US last Christmas, I had the whole shoes-off, belts-off, no shampoo in bottles bigger than x rigmarole (plus, as a beardo, the obligatory explosives test). Coming in to SF from NYC, there was an unaccompanied suitcase sitting a few metres from the carousel. I looked at it with growing unease, and eventually as we left I pointed it out to a security guard – by this time it had been there for a 1/4 of an hour. She said “oh, I guess someone’s just forgotten it” and walked off in the opposite direction.
Oh really? Then can I have my fucking shampoo back you retard?
Hmmm. Here’s a Wikipedia article on the various attempts to define terrorism. By most of those definitions, Knight’s actions qualify as such. It also qualifies under this Tasmanian law. The key point is Knight’s motivation for his killings – this Age article states that Knight wanted to “stamp out” abortion.
Interestingly, the incident occurred in July 2001, not 2002.
Wonder what the reaction would have been if it had occurred post September 11 2001?
The Knight case provides pretty good evidence that most of the anti-terrorism laws, both existing and proposed, are unnecessary. The ordinary criminal laws relating to conspiracy, incitement and crimes against the person pretty much cover it. The fact that terrorism may be politically motivated doesn’t really justify treating it differently from crimes motivated by greed or malice.
In many respects, new terrorism laws are every bit as ‘theatrical’ as the airport security checks, albeit with the added side effect of conferring draconian powers on the authorities. Providing added logistical resources to the police and ASIO following September 11 was warranted, but not the new laws.
I hope Ben Eltham [Jul 30th, 2009 at 5:51 pm]is just being sardonic when he says “You probably think the Reichstag fire was an ‘accident’”. Ben, mate, as far as I recall from my reading, the Reichstag fire was set my Hitler’s Nazi Brownshirts and used as an excuse for a grab for extraordinary powers of oppression and suppression. Oops!
I think, Max, that you have just paraphrased Ben without the irony.
In another thread I’ve recently quoted Sully J’s retirement speech. It has some relevance here too. The American case referred to was about warrantless phone tapping , by the way:
The question is when we are going to stop being complacent about the rapid dismantling of our liberty.
The Reichstag jibe didn’t make any sense for me. I thought Ben was trying to be ironic: playing the Nazi, he mocks McLelland for ‘probably’ thinking that the Reichstag fire was an accident. But no one – least of all Communists and their sympathisers, or indeed any of the Nazis’ opponents – ever thought it was an accident. One way or another, everyone thought it arson, which it certainly was (by whom remains a open question, although the weight of evidence is against a Nero-like Nazi plot).
Anyway, it’s pretty clear that we need to abolish a whole range of ill-thought-out and frankly dangerous ‘anti-terrorism’ laws. They are simply at odds with the maintenance of a free society. But you’ll forgive me if I take all this sarcastic criticism with a great deal of salt: Teh Left is always and everywhere complacent about the dismantling of liberty, most clearly and obviously where such dismantling is aligned with the economic purposes of its third-rate ideology.
BBB
Bingo,
doesn’t a Reichstag jibe qualify the poster for a Godwin’s rebuke too? Or in your dangerous oppositional, splitting attitude are you also a Godwin’s sceptic too, you wretch and running dog??
“Teh Left is always and everywhere complacent about the dismantling of liberty, most clearly and obviously where such dismantling is aligned with the economic purposes of its third-rate ideology.”
By George!
Always?!
Everywhere!?
With all due respect BBB (and I have a great deal for you) this statement is so sweeping as to be worthless. Its wrongness may therefore be left for another time.
FDB,
I’ve yet to meet a self-identified member of Teh Left who isn’t complacent about the abolition of liberty in a whole range of spheres. The eagerness with which Teh Left rightly pursues the protection of certain civil liberties doesn’t change that. But you a right; I am guily of hyperbole. Mea culpa. I do like the phrase ‘always and everywhere’ though. One day I will get to use it accurately.
BBB
There is an argument in favour of increasing ‘terrorism’ related security powers: Australia is more of a traget now than it ever has been before.
Because we’re da Bad Guyz(tm) sometimes.
Admittedly the bulk of asymetric threats resulting from those ventures wont be due for 10-20 years but hey, be prepared as they say ahahaha. So yeah, bring on the draconian anti-terror policies, let’s add to the cycle and make some more of the JI.
Actually addressing the shortcomings of our approach is too much hard work.
TonyD @ 34: “There is an argument in favour of increasing ‘terrorism’ related security powers: Australia is more of a traget now than it ever has been before…Because we’re da Bad Guyz(tm) sometimes.”
Not convincing.
1. We should stop being ‘da Bad Guyz’ whenever possible. But in any case, terrorist-type activity can inflict itself on even the most Good-Guyzish countries. Sweden has a bit of a record for random assassination of politicians in the middle of Stockholm, for instance. There is always a slight risk of such things happening, and Oz gets off much lighter than almost anywhere.
2. The things that we object to terrorists doing, i.e. killing people, kidnapping, blowing things up, enabling the above and conspiring to do them, are ALREADY SERIOUS CRIMES, and were before the Great 2001 Panic. No new laws were ever required to prosecute people for planning to do evil things, so long as there was convincing evidence of their guilt.
3. The powers that have been enabled by new laws here, in the UK, and the USA since 2001 have a tendency to allow any random spook, cop, parking inspector or whatever to prevent any normal person doing normal things, and to harrass, arrest, torture or disappear them without notice for indefinite periods of time. Pretty much on the grounds that they don’t like your face, are in a bad mood, or that you were taking a dangerous photograph. This is a very dangerous development that should never have been allowed to happen. So long as most people aren’t directly affected, it will be difficult to get this crap rescinded, but while it is there, we are frogs in a pot and the heat has been turned on.
4. In sacrificing our liberty to the power-mad creeps who offer us ‘draconian anti-terror laws’, we have allowed our free and democratic society to be stuffed, and hence have cooperated with the terrorists in achieving what they wanted, all along.
TonyD again: but your comment on ‘making more of the JI’ through such laws is, of course, spot-on.
“Watch out! Don’t get on that bus, look out for bombs. Do they look suspicious? Report them! ”
Wow must be nice to live in a world where such advice is used as sarcasm. Of course, in Jakarta its part of our daily routine but then eveyone knows that Australia doesn’t have any race or religion nutters.
Oigal, it’s sad that living in Jakarta requires such precautions. But the fact is that in Australia, the risk of there being a bomb on the local bus is very, very low, and pale into insignificance compared to, say, the risk of being knocked off my bike, or catching a particularly nasty case of
swine fluinfluenza H1N1.And I resent people like McLelland continuing to pander to exaggerated fears.
Robert“38: “And I resent people like McLelland continuing to pander to exaggerated fears.”
Absolutely.
1. Responsible politicians work to reduce exaggerated fears back to commonsense levels, rather than exploiting them in the quest for more power and less accountability.
2. Given the tiny real threat from terrorists, the true aim is presumably social control, i.e. a move towards totalitarianism. Same applies re. Conroy and his WWW censorship whackjobbery.
3. The current government was voted in as an alternative to the previous load of fearmongering totalitarians, not to complete their bloody program. They should take a hint from the current popularity of Labour in the UK, and give up on the control freakery.
4. I’d LOVE to see Conroy and McClelland gone from cabinet. They’re not up to it.
Nobody has died in a terrorist attack in Australia since 1986
How many have died from Global Warming since 1986?
Michael Sutcliffe@40
Attribution is difficult because, climate change is one predisposing factor amongst many but …
Also:
It’s also a mistake simply to focus on deaths. One needs to account for immiseration, non-fatal ill-health and so forth.
One should also consider the other side of the ledger. Whereas the best “stopping terrorism” can theoretically do is to stop deaths and injuries at a very high cost in personal freedom, the measures to staunch climate change have positive benefits — cleaner air, water, more global equity etc ..
Hope that helps …
Fran
Where we should not be complacent about is with the way the AFP performs. It has “form” in applying the anti-terrorist laws. Fortunately Keelty is gone, but the Haneef matter was the classic case of politics meddling in a criminal prosecution which had no legs. There were disgraceful threats by Ruddock towards the barrister who leaked the transcript of interview, while doubtless Ruddock’s minions were leaking like a sieve to prejudice Haneef with a view to win an election on the security issue. It was the “political” prosecution of the decade, and it fell over because firstly lawyers and then the media did their stuff.
The ALP distinguished itself with Haneef by following the disgraceful anti-wedge policy, so destructively and nauseatingly seen in earlier ‘Tampa Times’. The ALP as I recall supported in effect Andrew’s withdrawal of Haneef’s visa: Gutlessness to the nth degree.
But just to remind us of how some pollies view the AFP:
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2008/s2402675.htm
To my mind, as a general principle, judicial process exposes itself to ridicule when cases fall over because of a weak prosecution that should never have been instigated. Even with relatively simple cases, unlike the complexity of a terrorist trial which can go for a year, a weak case that falls over after a trial begins make the jury think “What a crock of s*** that was, why did they waste our time?” (When DPP is “no billed” by the defence and the case goes to trial and falls over either by DPP withdrawal after a voir dire, or acquittal, it’s not uncommon for defence legal costs to be awarded against the prosecution.)
Simply because these new laws merge into the arena of “thought crimes” prosecutions are necessarily complex and expensive. Circumstantial evidence and inferences that may be drawn from evidence of “thought crimes” is necessarily complex, abstract, nebulous: and would attract so many legislated or precedent based judicial directionsto the jury(and if slightly off track become numerous appeal points) that even a jury of lawyers would be fed up with the volume of evidence and complexity after a year of trial with numerous co-accused (as the current cases are).
It is to be regretted that McClelland appears to have joined Howard’s favorite bandwagon on fearmongering, albeit with somewhat less malevolence and rat cunning.
(I have my doubts as to whether I will ever vote for either of the major parties ever again–it would seem that on the human rights front only the Greens seem to be consistent in support of HR.)
Does this mean that John Laws would be able to be imprisoned for inciting the Cronulla riots?
Unlikely Rockstar Philosopher, even under the law at the time (and Jones btw was the focus of allegations of incitement, not Laws)
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2007/04/143732.php
Remember, this proposed law would, like all the others, have a hidden bit, that likely the AFP people would understand if they wanted to avoid risking their jobs:
Incitement & Vilification
by wogs(Terrorism) Suppression Act 2009Couldn’t have male white shock jocks prosecuted now could we? It might be a vote loser, the ultimate political “crime.”