Month: October 2005

Our federal government is thinking of introducing new “Anti-Terror” Laws. Now there is a couple of laws in this that I think I understand and am very concerned about.

The first is “Preventative Detention”, under these changes a person may have controlled detention or movement if the Police or other agency believes this will prevent a Terrorism act. To get a Preventative Detention order they only have to get it ratified by a retired Judge or the like. The person can then be placed in home detention for up to 12 months! All without the ability to contest the detention in a court of law (Update the PM is now saying he may modify to allow this). In the initial draft the police could “Shoot-to-Kill” if the person tried to avoid detention, however it looks like the state governments have made him back down on this. These laws (according to leading lawyers) are a breach of our own Human Rights laws.

The second set of laws are around Sedition, making it a crime to vocalize support of Terrorists or Acts of Terror. I do not believe that any democracy would want to implement laws that restrict open debate and free speech. Also it appears that media outlets that “encourage” people to express these opinions, up to 7 years for the person, the journalist and the media editor.

What are we coming to?

I am staggered by our government at this time. There is currently a investigation underway looking at the wrongfull detention by the immigration department under the governments current illegal immigrant detention policy.

It has come to light that over 220 people have been wrongfully detained at least twelve over 1 year and 2 people detained for over 5 years. Remember these are lawful permanent residents, and in some cases, full Australian Citizens. One famous case had a lady deported! another a mentally ill patient detained and denied treatement while detained.

I’m sorry what is that again! Australian citizens being detained for over 5 years by there own government because some immigration official thinks that they may be an illegal immigrant! I cannot see how this can be defended by any government anywhere, let alone a democracy.

But I want to take this to the next step, the Australian government has a policy of detaining all true refugees (the ones arriving by boats, the ones that have risked life, limb and family). They detain the ones that reach our shores in a prison in the middle of the desert, and the ones stopped before landfall within prisons on our small pacific neighbours. I cannot believe that any sane person can agree to this! They say they want to discourage the people smugglers, well then lock up the people smugglers!