Sarah Stephen
Preventative detention orders will allow state police to detain those whom they suspect of intending to commit a terrorist attack. However, they are also designed for those against whom there is no evidence, or not enough, to bring a charge. A person can be detained for 14 days if authorities suspect that it will prevent a terrorist act within the next 14 days, or to preserve evidence.
In a scathing critique, Amnesty International Australia released its "Draconian new laws undermine the values they are supposed to protect" report on October 28, which states: "One of the fundamental safeguards against innocent people being wrongly detained is the requirement that the state can only remove a person's liberty if they are suspected of committing, or have been found by a court to have committed, a crime. That is why our Constitution only allows courts to impose criminal detention on a person after hearing both reasons for and against that detention in a trial."
If interned under a preventative detention order, you can only ring your family or employer to indicate you are safe. Telling them anything about your detention would be a criminal offence.
The preventative detention orders are what most people have in mind when they think of a police state. The initial order (for 24 hours) is not made by a judge, but by a police superintendent or someone of higher rank. After that, the police obtain another order from a judge acting in a personal capacity. Some judges may be more willing to grant these orders than others. As the judge is acting in a personal capacity, there is no right of appeal.
Labor state leaders have agreed to change state laws to allow for 14 days' detention. The NSW parliament passed the Terrorism (Police Powers) Amendment (Preventive Detention) Bill on December 2 after the Iemma government sought advice from the federal government on November 30 over the latest changes to its own legislation.
The November 30 Sydney Morning Herald reported that Michael Slattery, QC, president of the NSW Bar Association, told NSW parliamentarians that section 26K of the NSW terror bill could result in "open-ended rolling preventative detention orders", which would provide "immense power" to police. This makes the state Labor government's legislation a greater attack on human rights than the federal government's.
The NSW Bar Association also fears that lawyers will not see material relevant to a detention order and believes that police should provide clear reasons why a hearing should be held in closed court.
From Green Left Weekly, December 7, 2005.
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