Jeff Sparrow theguardian.com, Monday 7 April 2014
If there’s anything uniting recent attacks on civil liberties in Australia, it’s that they’re levelled at the disempowered. Your rights depend, in short, on who you are
Welcome to Abbott's 'freedom wars'. Photograph: Rex features
There is no case, none, to limit debate about the performance of national leaders. The more powerful people are, the more important the presumption must be that less powerful people should be able to say exactly what they think of them.
That’s the Tony Abbott of 2012, addressing his friends at the Institute for Public Affairs. What a difference a couple of years makes.
New guidelines from the department of prime minister and cabinet threaten employees with discipline if they are "critical or highly critical of the department, the minister or the prime minister" on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Flickr, blogs, or anywhere much else.
Note that the policy applies to posts in a personal capacity – even those made anonymously – and that public servants are urged to dob in any colleagues they might recognise.
"If an employee becomes aware of another employee who is engaging in conduct that may breach this policy," the edict explains, "there is an expectation that the employee will report the conduct to the department."
Tim Wilson, then head of the IPA, was in the audience for Abbott’s "freedom wars" speech. Surely our self-proclaimed freedom commissioner will denounce measures muzzling public servants?
Not so much, no.
"There is nothing inconsistent with free speech and having codes of conduct or policies as a condition of employment that require professional, respectful behaviour in their role and the public domain," Wilson told the Daily Telegraph.
Elsewhere, Wilson explicitly rejects the charge that he cares only about the rights of the most powerful. "Free speech is for everyone," he says. But his support for the restrictions on employees illustrates that, by "everyone", he means something more like "everyone I know."
"Ultimately," he explained, "public servants voluntarily and knowingly choose to accept these limits on their conduct when they accept employment." Got that? You’re at liberty to work or not work for the department of prime minister and cabinet – and the department chiefs are at liberty to censor you while you are there.
Of course, if your average public servant earned the $325,000 of taxpayers’ money that Wilson accrues each year, he or she might be more able to tell the department where to stick its petty censorship. But, in the real world, employees are constrained by a little something called "the need to earn a living", and so cannot exercise rights so easily asserted in a Hayekian wonderland of Wilson’s imagination.
Indeed, if there’s anything uniting all the most egregious recent attacks on civil liberties, it’s that they’re levelled at the poor and the disempowered, rather than at Wilson’s rich mates.
Take the Victorian new anti-protest laws. Even attorney general Robert Clark admits that the law may "pose a limitation on an individual’s right to move freely within Victoria … and may, in certain circumstances, limit the rights to freedom of expression … and peaceful assembly and freedom of association …". Yes, even Wilson agrees that the laws are "excessive" – but compare the fuss he’s made about 18C to his comments on the far more draconian Victorian legislation.
The new laws will not affect the rich, for you don’t get too many plutocrats protesting on the street. And let’s not forget that, when the Occupy Melbourne demonstrators did exercise their right to march, our liberty-loving human rights commissioner tweeted that he wanted to water cannon them.
A few weeks back, professor George Williams drew attention to the Abbott government’s decision to abolish the independent monitor of Australia’s anti-terrorism laws. As Williams points out, the laws contain elements that "undermine democratic values such as freedom of speech, the right to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence."
They mean, for instance, that the government can force you to wear a tracking device and ban you from overseas travelling. The authorities can limit how you use the internet and other communication systems – and they can do all that when you have not been found guilty of anything. Significantly, one of these so-called control orders was imposed on Jack Thomas after his convictions were quashed by a court; another was levelled on David Hicks on his return from confinement without trial in Guantanamo Bay.
You are likewise not entitled to be present at the proceedings at which police argue for a control order – and you may well be forbidden to know the evidence against you, evidence that can involve second-hand, unverified claims.
The terrorism laws also allow police to obtain a preventive detention order to put you in gaol without trial. Again, all this takes place entirely outside the traditional court system, with the authorities could be able to use hearsay to imprison you not for anything you have done, but for what they think you might possibly do in the future.
You can be detained for up to two weeks under those conditions and, if you tell your friends or family about your imprisonment, you can be sentenced to years in gaol.
Yet, when the Abbott government decided that, "to reduce bureaucracy and streamline government", it would get rid of the independent monitor supervising the anti-terror regime, there was nary a peep from commissioner Tim Freedom, though the proposal mean removing one of the few safeguards on the most undemocratic laws in Australia’s history.
By contrast, Wilson and his pals have spilled entire oceans of printers’ ink and its digital equivalent bemoaning the judgement against Andrew Bolt – even though, despite losing in court, Bolt faced almost no sanction whatsoever.
As Ben Eltham points out, had the plaintiffs brought a standard defamation case, Bolt, whose article included numerous errors of fact, would almost certainly have lost – and then been forced to pay damages. But they didn’t. They proceeded under 18c of the human rights act – and, as a result, Bolt did not even receive a fine.
In other words, treating the columnist as a free speech martyr one step away from the Inquisition’s stake, the judgment did not threaten Bolt with gaol. Justice Bromberg did not demand an apology, nor did the court force the Herald Sun to take down Bolt’s stories. All that happened was that the newspaper was instructed to append a notice to some factually incorrect articles.
Now, I do not think laws like 18C help to fight racism. By and large, the legal system has not been an ally of those seeking social change; racism’s traditionally been combatted by social movements rather than top-down legislative interventions.
But which is the bigger menace to freedom: the law that allows secret detention without trial or the law that makes a newspaper correct a mistaken article? And what would be the reaction if, say, Wilson was imprisoned for 14 days or placed under a control order because of a suspicion that he might do something wrong in the future? Do you think we’d hear anything about the anti-terror laws then?
Oh, it’s a ridiculous counterfactual, of course, since everyone know that such legislation never get used against people like him, and that the really authoritarian laws are reserved exclusively for marginal types. It’s the same with refugee policy, the other area where basic democratic rights are abused to almost deafening silence from the conservative freedom brigade.
Consider what Ben Saul, in a New York Times article, dubbed "Australia’s Guatanamo problem" – the 52 people kept in detention for up to five years on the basis of secret evidence that they are unable to see or challenge.
Saul writes:
In making a case for detention, Australia’s immigration department relies on a security assessment of each prisoner, covering everything from espionage to terrorism and people-smuggling. The burden of proof is not high; detention can be upheld even if the ASIO deems it relatively unlikely that the person under assessment may commit harm. As the organisation is not legally required to disclose evidence, little is known about why specific risk designations are upheld. Many detainees do not know the grounds on which they are being held. Because no court or tribunal can independently test the organisation’s claims, it is impossible to know whether the detainees are truly dangerous.
These 52 people are not being forced to correct an error-ridden article. They are facing indefinite detention without charge or trial. Where’s the campaign for them? Ah, but no rich white man will ever end in the refugee gulag – and, besides, Wilson’s got more important fish to fry!
Your rights depend, in short, on who you are.
As opposition leader, Abbott stressed that powerful people should be held to account. But, of course, he meant Julia Gillard should be held to account by him, not that public servants should be allowed to criticise their masters.
Likewise, when Joe Hockey denounced the "age of entitlement", he meant that ordinary people, not the wealthy, should accustom themselves to austerity. That’s why there’s no contradiction with Hockey’s assistant Arthur Sinodinos sitting on the board of a company that spends $164,275 on corporate boxes. Nearly $30,000 on limousine hire? Tthat’s not an entitlement, but a right!
Welcome to Abbott’s "freedom wars". Freedom for some – and war on the rest of us.
