That journalists could be jailed for investigating malfeasance by Australian forces in conflict zones and the overly broad terms used to described proscribed organisations that might capture human rights campaigners are just two of a range of issues identified to the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security in its hearings today on the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Bill 2014.
At hearings conducted in Canberra, the committee heard from a range of government agencies and NGOs, as well as former independent national security legislation monitor Bret Walker SC. Much of the bill implements recommendations made by Walker in his final report earlier this year, but he is also on record as calling for preventive detention powers — which would be extended by the bill, rather than lapsing in 2015 — to be completely abolished and for provisions relating to control orders to be removed and applied in other contexts.
In his opening remarks, Walker expressed concerns about the bill defining the proscribed organisations to which it would apply as bodies planning or carrying out acts “prejudicial to the security, defence or international relations of Australia”, arguing that security and defence were sufficient and that “international relations” opened the potential use of the bill to activity that might be worthwhile but potentially injurious to Australia’s international relations — like activism or boycotts aimed at the human rights record of another country. Walker also raised concerns about the nature of the controversial mechanism for automatically making it an offence to go to a designated zone with defences available for certain activities, arguing that the current wording that a person had entered a designated zone “solely” for the purposes covered by the exemptions lowered the threshold for the prosecution to secure a conviction.
Walker also criticised the entire concept of sunset clauses, arguing that they had no effect other than to cause a piece of legislation to “muscle its way onto the government business agenda” when the sunset point neared. “They have no entrenching effect,” he noted, pointing out that parliaments could decide to repeal sunsetted provisions earlier than intended, and that the concept of “emergency laws” of temporary duration should have little or no role in counter-terrorism.
Earlier in the day, committee deputy chair Anthony Byrne raised the issue of whether journalists could be jailed under the bill for undertaking reportage from a designated area if they had gone undercover or wished to keep their identities or sources secret, preventing them from claiming the defence of undertaking public interest journalism, with witnesses confirming that journalists could potentially be jailed if unwilling to reveal their role.
So depressing, sane rational argument to be ignored and abused by our fearless leaders.
For a detailed and documented summary of Australia’s existing and adumbrated draconian anti-terrorism laws that targets journalists, Muslims and potentially human rights activists see Gideon Polya, “Terror Hysteria – Draconian New Australian Anti-Terrorism Laws Target Journalists, Muslims And Human Rights”, Countercurrents, 8 October, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya0810114.htm .
Supported by US-inspired “terror hysteria” the extreme right wing Australian Coalition Government with the support of the right wing Labor Opposition has war criminally re-invaded Iraq and passed draconian anti-terrorism legislation that makes Australia a secret police state with detention without charge or trial and Australian Intelligence officers (e.g. of the Australian Security and Intelligence Organization, ASIO) having criminal and civil immunity from prosecution, and reportage on any special intelligence operations criminalized with maximum punishments ranging from 5 years’ to 10 years’ imprisonment.
Australia and the West are in the grip of “ terror hysteria” due to responses by US Alliance state terrorism ( US state terrorism, UK state terrorism, French state terrorism, Israeli state terrorism, and Australian state terrorism) to the advances of the Sunni rebel group Islamic State (IS) in the Iraqi and Syrian civil wars. This “terror hysteria” has been exacerbated by reported barbarous IS acts (beheading of several Western journalists or aid workers, arbitrary killings of others, mass execution of prisoners and the terrorizing of non-Sunni Muslims and of ethnic and religious minorities). The Australian “terror hysteria” response has been utterly disproportionate because the “annual empirical probability of an Australian dying from a preventable cause” (1 in 294) is about 370,000 times greater than the “annual empirical probability of an Australian dying in Australia from a terrorist attack (1 in 109 million).
Australian Intelligence has a very poor record of violating laws and human rights that ranges from helping the US spy on everyone in the world to complicity in US subversion, invasion and genocidal devastation of other countries. However the most fundamental offence is deadly and dangerous malreportage to the Australia Government and people such as that which enabled the illegal and war criminal Australian invasion of Iraq in 2003 with post-invasion Iraqi deaths in the Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide from violence or war-imposed deprivation totalling 2.7 million (see ”Iraqi Holocaust Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ ).
That deadly malreportage and malfeasance by Australian Intelligence (see Gideon Polya, “50 Ways Australian Intelligence Spies On Australia And The World For UK , Israeli And US State Terrorism”, Countercurrents, 11 December, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya111213.htm ) is now compounded by new draconian censorship of Australian journalists in relation to intelligence matters. Australian spooks have been given carte blanche to do anything they like. Indeed while they are supposedly prohibited from torturing or raping those secretly detained without trial, Australians actually REPORTING such horrific abuses face up to 10 years in prison. It is now up to the rest of the world to surmise and assume the worst of Australian Governments and their out-of-control secret police, and to investigate and report all abuses in the neo-Nazi Orwellian Australian secret police state.
Decent people world-wide and in Australia will urge and apply where possible Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all those people, politicians, parties, presstitutes, companies and corporations linked to these gross human rights abuses. Decent Australian voters will reject the mendacious, extreme right wing, pro-war, pro-Zionist, US lackey, war criminal and human rights –abusing Australian Coalition and Labor Right (aka the Lib-Labs or Liberal-Laborals), vote 1 Green and put the Coalition last.