How many tranches are we up to now?
You might recall, Attorney-General George Brandis used to enumerate the Abbott government’s various “tranches” of counter-terror laws as they ticked by, including the imposition of mass surveillance on Australians and a law to jail journalists who reported on intelligence operations. Brandis appears to have given it up after the “sixth tranche”, which was in 2016.
The “tranche” framing has been replaced with one of ongoing reform, a permanent legal revolution, already reduced to cliche by Malcolm Turnbull, the man who gave us mass surveillance as communications minister, with his endless invocation that national security “is no place for set and forget”. Counter-terrorism laws must be constantly updated. Anyone who disagrees is necessarily on the side of terrorists, or at least of the wilfully negligent — those who would commit the crime of Setting and Forgetting.
When John Howard and Philip Ruddock first began the process of dramatically strengthening the powers of security agencies at the expense of individual rights in the years after 9/11 — as the War on Terror rolled across the Middle East in a great wave of death that only served to create new generations of disaffected and angry people ready to embrace extremism — the draconian changes they proposed were the subject of considerable debate. Occasionally, even the timid Labor Party expressed objections to some aspects; a lunatic change by Ruddock to re-introduce the crime of “sedition” ended up being overturned.
[Something is badly wrong with the way we protect ourselves from terrorism]
And in the early stages of the “tranches”, the Abbott government, to its considerable credit, went further. It picked up a precedent established by Labor’s Nicola Roxon of tasking Parliament’s Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security with considering counter-terrorism changes. Under the leadership of Liberal Dan Tehan and Labor’s Anthony Byrne, the committee played a constructive role in assessing legislation.
More recently, now-Prime Minister Turnbull appointed Tehan to the ministry and turned the committee into a right-wing joke: Andrew Nikolic, Michael Sukkar and Andrew Hastie were, in succession, appointed to chair the committee, rendering it virtually useless as a mechanism for genuine scrutiny of bills.
And with Turnbull’s “permanent reform” mantra, there can be no genuine debate about even major changes to national security laws. Indeed, that’s the point; it becomes more difficult for what pass as civil society bodies in Australia to keep up with constant changes, and to offer informed, thoughtful analysis of them. It’s legal whack-a-mole for bodies with limited resources as each new reform emerges. Meanwhile, the media, and voters, struggle to maintain their interest — ironic, since part of the “permanent reform” justification is the political imperative to be endlessly seen to be Doing Something about terrorism. Not, as in the case of both Abbott and Turnbull, that it helped politically.
So the latest iteration of the permanent reform are to make the mere possession of terrorist instructional material a crime, to extend detention periods and to make terror hoaxes a serious crime. None of the proposals are unproblematic. While those without a particular attachment to basic freedoms might accept the right of governments to dictate the mere possession of information (not images, as with child abuse) to be something that can constitute a crime, what precautions will there be to ensure that people with legitimate reason to possess such material — such as academics trying to study the process of radicalisation, which remains poorly understood — aren’t jailed. Any extension of arbitrary detention periods, no matter what lurid scenarios are invoked, should be regarded sceptically. And ask UK man Paul Chambers about laws about terrorist hoaxes and see what sort of answer you get.
Meanwhile, one of the most common characteristics of terrorists and mass murderers continues to be on display. We know from the examples of the Nice truck driver, the Westminster attacker, the Florida nightclub gunman, one of the Boston Marathon bombers and our own Man Haron Monis that domestic violence and other forms of violence against women recur repeatedly in the backgrounds of terrorists. Now there are reports Stephen Paddock was abusive and controlling toward his partner.
Focusing on domestic violence and violence toward women cannot be dismissed, as many cultural warriors on both the left and the right want to do, as an indulgence of middle-class feminists and some sort of thought crime against working-class men. It’s a well-demonstrated pointer to radicalisation and propensity to other forms of more catastrophic violence.
[The Rosie Batty effect: a recent timeline of Australia’s response to domestic violence]
Contrary to the claims of many of his critics, Tony Abbott significantly lifted funding for the National Plan To Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children and left a further substantial increase on top of that ready to go when he was removed as Prime Minister — it became Malcolm Turnbull’s first major announcement.
Politicians on all sides are now putting more resources into addressing both the causes and consequences of domestic violence. But, as a society, we still normalise and filter out the steady drip-drip-drip of murdered women: three women alone were murdered by former partners in New South Wales in the last week. The deaths elicit no prime ministerial press conferences or meetings of the national security committee of cabinet, no promises of further rounds of ever-more draconian laws. And certainly no tranches.
It’s a funny outcome at a time when anything even tangentially connected to terrorism is the object of obsessive attention by politicians keen to be seen as pro-active.
It’s “portion”, you Brie-chomping twats – a “tranche” is a financing installment (you don’t want the whole exposure in one sketchy sector, so you dole it out).
Perhaps if there were considerably more female MPs in the Coalition the problem of domestic violence would receive more prominence. But the LNP is still, predominantly, a boys’ club.
Terrorism is regarded as something alien to our sunburnt country, we blame it on ethnic & religious groups. Whereas domestic violence is far uglier as we are forced to look at ourselves.
They give Julie Bishop a chaperone when she travels – the word is actually used. Make of that, what you will.
I doubt it Zut, unless there are some in the background with a good deal more talent than the clowns on the front bench. Even Bishop has made herself look a twit recently.
I am wondering if one reason that taking domestic violence seriously is so difficult because the great majority of victims and survivors are women. This may seem shocking to some, but consider the action on one punch attacks in NSW. One punch attacks are generally perpetrated by men just as most domestic violence is, but (and here’s the difference) the victims are also men. Perhaps it is worth considering what it is about current accounts of masculinity that mean that some men find it so hard to be peaceful, given that most men are indeed able to live long lives without a violent act except for the odd childhood fight with a sibling or play mate. This is a long term project of course, not very good for press releases, not full of get tough chest thumping initiatives, but isn’t an end of domestic violence and to local terrorism the result we want?
Good point!
My thoughts absolutely.
I have to pick up crikey on the story heading. Domestic violence should get way more coverage and policy than terrorism.
Of recent times the statistic was 1 dead, usually a woman, per week in Australia. Terrorism is yet to claim a victim here. It is that stark.
Although I recognise that there may be a link between the two, in that they invariably involve deranged and deluded men desperate to inflict their brand of justice on whichever innocent victim is around at the time.
Thank you Bernard for naming what European anti terror groups, academics and security experts are acknowledging. The link between misogyny and terrorist acts urgently needs to be unpicked in order to find preventative ways to stop the destruction of families and the societies in which they are the smallest unit.
That many men struggle with the changed role of women is clear. Where they directed and ruled women and families on the basis of gender alone, they are now required to acknowledge equality and compromise. For men whose identity is tied to the need for superiority and control, this challenges every aspect of their lives. They feel the world is alien and are only too ready to explore ideas of physical violence as a means of taking control. The internet provides an avenue to make contact with like minds and sadly often the physical means to enact the violence of the mind.
As noted a study of the terrorists who have enacted the violence shows patterns of misogyny which should not be ignored.
Security people know that communication with affected groups and strong trusting inclusive communities is the best preventative tool around. Politicians think that media alerts and punitive laws will stop terror. We can only hope that they listen to the experts but that the experts also look past the indicators of religion and politics at the deeper malaise which attracts these men and is a predictor of tragedy.
Making violent men take responsibility for their actions, intervening early at first signs may start the societal change which stops the violence in the home and in the state. No easy solutions but really acknowledging the problem has to be a start.
While in complete agreement with you, Pamela, that domestic violence needs to be stopped in every possible way at its outset, I’m somewhat unsettled by your allegation that “the changed role of women” in society requiring “equality and compromise” is the reason for that violence. Seriously, domestic violence grew out of the women’s liberation movement? But then, you go further, and essentially say homegrown Islamist radicalisation can be put down to the backlash against the liberating achievements of 1970s feminism. Say what the . . . ! Seriously? And then, furthermore, you top it all off by effectively demanding that the state step in with early intervention to make “violent men” societally harmless. By which you are talking mandatory mass castration, right? Because there simply can be no ‘non-violent’ men in a worldview such as yours. “Bad things happen because men are bad” really is the greatest possible betrayal of the vast intellectual efforts of feminism conceivably imaginable. Sorry.
No not talking mass castration or any such craziness.
Not blaming women’s lib for misogyny either. Male violence towards women goes back a long way. Misogyny like slavery and other social ills has a long history.
However as we have advanced socially and morally, change has occurred and what was once acceptable is no longer so. Most men have long accepted this- many always inherently respected women however the problem is some men find this difficult. Some are so aggrieved that they refuse to accept women’s right to safety as we know only too tragically.
Hmm. That’s quite a step back from what you said above.