Doug Lorimer
A meeting of Coalition MPs on November 30 agreed to support the Howard government's Anti-Terrorism Bill (2005) with some minor alterations. Only two days earlier, government and Labor senators on the Senate committee examining the Howard government's bill had joined forces to demand greater protections of individuals' legal rights and the scrapping of the proposed new sedition laws. The bill is expected to become law on December 5.
Queensland Coalition Senator George Brandis, a critic of the sedition laws, told ABC Radio National's AM program on December 1 that government senators would vote for new sedition laws proposed in the bill after Attorney General Philip Ruddock had agreed that "all categories of political speech would be protected and that includes media commentary and criticism".
On November 29, the Senate's legal and constitution committee tabled a 300-page report on the bill. The bill, debate on which began in the Senate the same day, would allow police to detain terrorist suspects for up to 14 days without charge and impose control orders on suspects, including electronic shackles, for up to 12 months.
The bill also proposes to add to the federal Criminal Code (1995) five new sedition offences, punishable by up to seven years' imprisonment, including making it illegal for anyone to "promote ill will or hostility" between different "groups" and to urge another person to engage in conduct "to assist, by any means whatever, any organisation or country that is engaged in armed hostilities with the Australian Defence Force".
It also called for the removal of all the sedition provisions in the bill, "pending a full and independent review" to be carried out by the Australian Law Reform Commission. If the government does not accept this recommendation, the committee proposed that the new sedition laws "be amended to require a link to force or violence and to remove the phrase 'by any means whatever'", and allow a legal defence against conviction for "statements for journalistic, educational, artistic, scientific, religious or public interest purposes".
The committee reported that it had "received an overwhelming amount of evidence" indicating that there is "strong opposition to the sedition offences from all sectors of the community".
Among others, the committee cited the joint submission made by Fairfax press, News Limited, Western Australian Newspapers and the Australian Press Council, which described the sedition provisions as "the gravest threat to publication imposed by the government" since federation in 1901.
The committee also reported that John North, president of the Law Council of Australia, had told it that the sedition offences had been broadened "to such an extent that we think they will accidentally catch members of the media and ... legitimate protesters and even peace activists".
The committee observed that many of the public submissions it had received had "pointed out that the law of sedition has an equally troubled history in Australia, having been used against Eureka stockade rebels in the 1850s, anti-conscriptionists during World War I, and members of the Australian Communist Party in the 1940s", and that the sedition laws "have only ever been deployed to suppress dissident speech".
The federal ALP and state Labor premiers, while supporting the Anti-Terrorism Bill, have backed claims by legal and human rights groups that the sedition measures are an attack on freedom of political speech. The federal Labor caucus had wanted its senators to have the bill amended to remove its sedition provisions.
Democrat Senator Natasha Stott Despoja and Greens Senator Bob Brown believe the entire bill should be dumped. "We do not need new laws to protect us from terrorism. But the government wants new laws to continue its popularity which it has gained through using fear", Brown told a protest rally on November 28 outside federal parliament in Canberra.
The Senate committee's report on the bill had also proposed alterations to ostensibly anti-terrorism provisions in the bill, including that these have a five-year sunset clause instead of 10, greater access to lawyers by detained suspects, better protection for young people aged 16 to 18, and oversight by the federal ombudsman. The Coalition MPs' caucus meeting, however, agreed to retain the 10-year sunset clause. Brandis told AM that Ruddock had agreed to "most" of the Senate committee's other recommendations.
Meanwhile after just a day's debate, on December 2, the NSW Labor government passed the Terrorism (Police Powers) Amendment (Preventive Detention) Bill which allows police to lock people up for 14 days without charge. The final amendments were apparently approved at the state parliamentary press gallery Christmas party! Unlike the federal bill, the state laws received no scrutiny from a parliamentary committee.
From Green Left Weekly, December 7, 2005.
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