Doug Lorimer
At an October 16 media conference where Prime Minister John Howard announced the Australian government's intention to double the number of people directly employed by its ASIO secret police agency by 2010, he dismissed concerns that his planned new "anti-terrorism" laws, particularly the amendments to the existing sedition laws, would be used to criminalise peaceful political dissident.
"We've had sedition laws in this country for years", said Howard. The amendments proposed by his government in its Anti-Terrorism Bill (2005) are aimed at "essentially [codifying] the existing law in relation to sedition and [bringing] it up to date".
It is true that Australia has long had anti-sedition legislation on the books — e.g. sections 24A-24F of the federal Crimes Act 1914. This legislation made it a criminal offence to intend to cause violence or to create public disorder or a public disturbance by writing, printing, uttering or publishing "any seditious words".
A "seditious intention" was defined as "the intention" to "bring the sovereign into hatred or contempt; to excite disaffection against the government or constitution of the Commonwealth [of Australia] or against either house of the parliament of the Commonwealth; to excite her majesty's subjects to attempt to procure the alteration, otherwise than by lawful means, of any matter in the Commonwealth established by law of the Commonwealth; or to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different classes of her majesty's subjects so as to endanger the peace, order or good government of the Commonwealth".
The sedition laws, however, fell into disuse after the rise of the mass movement against Australian participation in the 1961-73 US war against Vietnam.
The last prosecution under the sedition laws was in 1960, when Australian Department of Native Affairs officer Brian Cooper was prosecuted for urging "the natives" of Papua New Guinea to demand independence from Australia. He was convicted, and committed suicide after losing his appeal.
The Howard government's Anti-Terrorism Bill (2005) proposes that the old offence of "uttering seditious words" be repealed. In its place, though, the bill proposes to add five new offences. It would also double the penalties for sedition, from three years' imprisonment to seven, and allow convictions on the basis of "recklessness" rather than requiring specific intent.
More importantly, it signifies a bid by the federal government to give itself the legal power to prosecute peaceful dissidents against Australian participation in US-led invasions and occupations of other countries such as Iraq and, possibly in the future, Iran and Syria, that Washington deems are targets of its global "war on terror".
Thus the bill proposes to amend the sedition laws to make it an offence for "any person" who "urges another person to engage in conduct to assist, by any means whatever, an organisation or country ... engaged in armed hostilities against the Australian Defence Force".
This would give the government the legal power to prosecute any anti-war campaigner who speaks to another person, or hands a leaflet to another person, urging them to participate in a peaceful rally that calls for the withdrawal of Australian troops from Iraq — since it could argue that this is providing assistance to patriotic Iraqis seeking to force the withdrawal of these troops from Iraq by engaging in armed hostilities against the ADF.
That the Howard government is prepared to use "national security" laws to criminalise peaceful anti-war activities was clearly demonstrated six weeks ago when it had US peace activist Scott Parkin arrested at lunch-time on September 11, while he was at a Melbourne cafe, and held in detention until he was deported from Australia four days later.
Parkin was arrested shortly before he was about to present a workshop about the US peace movement and how corporations, such as Halliburton, profit from the war on Iraq. The government's only explanation for its arrest and deportation of Parkin was that his presence in Australia constituted a "threat to national security".
While the corporate media has tried to give the public the impression that the Labor state premiers are opposed to the draconian police-state measures proposed in Howard's Anti-Terrorism Bill (2005), Queensland Premier Peter Beattie summed up the Labor state premiers' attitude when he told ABC TV 7.30 Report host Kerry O'Brien on October 26: "I'm concerned to make sure that whatever laws we bring in aren't knocked off in the High Court. That's basically it."
From Green Left Weekly, November 2, 2005.
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