By Caroline Petersen
A scandal has erupted over government harassment of people who participated in the Aidex protests in Canberra last November. Protesters have had their Department of Social Security benefits reviewed after their names were passed on to DSS offices by the Federal Police.
A memo sent from a DSS regional manager was leaked to the Queensland Stop Aidex Campaign on February 18. It provides a list of names taken by the police during the Aidex protest and states:
"The Secretary has requested that each of these cases be reviewed to test entitlement as a complaint has been lodged that some DSS clients are 'professional' protesters who actively participate in regular demonstrations."
The Queensland Stop Aidex Campaign has demanded that the federal government compensate the 201 named people who have had their privacy violated by DSS. Many of those named were not arrested, but were simply detained or identified by police.
In the case of Brisbane activist Brendan Greenhill, harassment came as a result of a witness deposition about police activities that he made during the Aidex protests. Greenhill had gone to Canberra (with the blessing of his DSS office) for work experience with the Australian Democrats.
Back in Brisbane three months later, Greenhill was called in for a review of his unemployment benefit. When he pointed out he had been reviewed only three months before, he was told this was normal. When he was called in for another interview a week later, it was clear he was being targeted.
Greenhill told the media that the threatened termination of benefits was "clearly a breach of privacy and punishment of dissent which harks back to the era of Cold War hysteria against those who disagree. Where does it say in the DSS Act that clients are not allowed to express their opinions?"
In an interview with an official from Social Security minister Neal Blewett's office on February 20, journalist Max Watts was able to add to the picture of the crackdown on those who disagree.
Blewett's representative, Richard Moore, admitted to Watts, who is the Australian correspondent for the left-wing German newspaper Junge Welt, that the use of police computers to cross-reference names with Social Security files to spark reviews of benefits was "something new."
"When I asked whether it meant that these people had been arrested or had been charged, Moore said the department had asked for a list of people who had been arrested", Watts told Green Left. "He said that whether or not they are charged with anything was a separate matter for the police." Moore confirmed that simply being removed, detained or temporarily held by police at a demonstration was enough to spark a review of any Social Security benefit. When Watts asked Moore how many people in Australia were on benefits — and therefore threatened with the removal of their livelihoods as a result of participating in demonstrations — Moore suggested that this involved between 500,000 and 1 million people.
"Given the present recession, this number may grow", said Watts. "We also agreed that in the age category 15-25, it is in the order of 30% of the population."
The DSS apparently sees a problem in its clients participating in "long running demonstrations" in places where they have "no business". When pressed for a definition of "long running", Moore suggested that this could include a day-long demonstration if this included distance travel.
Moore insisted that it was not DSS policy to target protesters.
But, said Watts, "If there are almost a million DSS clients then they do not review everybody's benefits all the time. Therefore, to pretend that this new policy does not single out protesters is the height of hypocrisy."
Watts said the new policy was reminiscent of the West German (and now German) Berufsverbot — employment prohibitions for those deemed subversive. The policy was introduced by the then Social Democratic government in the early '70s.
"According to this edict, which was never really voted on, Germans who are deemed disloyal to the constitution, in other words subversives, are prohibited from working for the government in any form or manner.
"The Berufsverbot can even be applied retroactively. People who have worked for the government for 10 years or 20 years may suddenly be fired, having been discovered to have been in their youth 'subversives'."
The Australian Democrats' youth spokesperson, Senator Karin Sowada, said it was "totally disgraceful that the DSS is wasting public money on a politically motivated witch-hunt".
She said that the implications for privacy were "appalling". "The swapping of government records for improper purposes has implications which go beyond the Department of Social Security and the Federal Police ... Any person who arouses the ire of one arm of government could be the subject of harassment by another department, if bureaucrats come to regard this kind of behaviour as acceptable."