NEWCASTLE — Sixty people attended a forum at the Panthers Club on November 29 to discuss the federal government's new "anti-terror" laws. The speakers — Pauline Wright, vice-president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, and associate professor Ray Watterson — both condemned the undemocratic nature of the laws and urged people to resist them.
Wright told participants, "Nobody should be detained without charge, without the possibility of going to trial", and criticised the sedition offences in particular. "I urge you to resist this law", she said, explaining that the Senate inquiry into the laws was a farce.
Wright also described the culture of fear being encouraged in government departments, like the immigration department where "people are afraid to speak because they are going to come down on you like a tonne of bricks".
Watterson, a founder of the Newcastle Law School and for many years a leader of the Public Interest Advocacy section at the University of Newcastle Legal Centre, said that the terror laws exemplified a culture of oppression and warned participants of a dangerous pattern emerging in the Howard government's approach.
Watterson called on Newcastle Trades Hall Council and the National Tertiary Education Union to investigate the downgrading of the Newcastle Legal Centre's work.
Kerry Vernon
From Green Left Weekly, December 7, 2005.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.