By Chris Berg Tuesday 30 September 2014

Photo: The new counter-terrorism bill is a mix of sensible change mixed in with redundancy and extraordinary overreach. (AAP: Lukas Coch)

We've always had robust laws against inciting violence, so why is the Abbott Government now introducing the new offence of "advocating terrorism", asks Chris Berg.

Incitement to violence is against the law. It's always been against the law.

Every Australian state penalises incitement. The Commonwealth makes it unlawful to incite the commissioning of any criminal offence, not just violence.

This legal framework has developed over centuries. The prohibition on incitement has ancient common law roots. It is robust. It is coherent. It is a long-established and very well-founded limit on free speech.

So here's a question: with the rich and robust law against incitement, why is the Abbott Government introducing the new offence of "advocating terrorism"?

Last week the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Bill 2014 was introduced into Parliament. Like the first national security bill that preceded it, it is dense and complex - a mix of sensible change mixed in with redundancy and extraordinary overreach.

I argued in The Drum a few weeks ago that the foreign fighter threat is both genuine and pressing. We've seen over the last fortnight how events in distant Iraq have materially changed the security environment in Australia. Many proposed legislative changes - particularly to foreign evidence laws and passport confiscation powers - make sense.

But the new bill goes much further than that.

The bill makes it illegal to visit some parts of the world without proving to a court that you visited for family or humanitarian reasons. It extends the control order regime and expands detention powers held by customs.

And it makes it illegal to advocate - counsel, promote, encourage, or urge - the doing of a terrorist act or the commission of a terrorist offense. (The section in the new bill is 80.2C.)

On its face this is extraordinary. The word terrorism is a term of art. A lot of people call Israel a terrorist state. Others respond that Palestine is terroristic.

More concretely, the Commonwealth Criminal Code defines a terrorist act as any action that a) causes or threatens harm to life, property, risk to health, or disruption of electronic infrastructure; b) is motivated by a political, religious or ideological cause; and c) is intended to intimidate the government or the public in general. (See section 100.1 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code here.)

The definition is broad because it has to be. What we describe as "terrorism" is really a collection of offenses. Every part of a terror plot is potentially prosecutable under laws that have been around for centuries. These include the most obvious - murder and attempted murder - down to things like conspiracy and weapons possession.

Indeed, as Bret Walker, the former Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, told the Australian Human Rights Commission's free speech conference in August: "One of the best arguments against the counter-terrorist laws is that we didn't need any of them, because we've long criminalised murder, conspiracy to murder, and incitement to murder."

There are, certainly, some conceptual distinctions between traditional crime and terrorism. The latter is primarily intended to create fear. And governments hope to prevent terrorist acts rather than just punish them after the fact. Those differences perhaps justify some distinct anti-terror legislation.

But since September 11 governments have seemed intent on severing the concept of terrorism from its constituent parts - cleaving it off into a distinct body of law. This has created, as Bret Walker pointed out, massive redundancy, complication and confusion. The real winners from this decade of security hyper-legislation are lawyers.

Just how much redundancy has been piled into our anti-terror laws?

Well, in 2005 the Howard government passed sedition law reform that, in the words of the then-attorney general, Philip Ruddock, was intended to prohibit "any conduct or advocacy that is likely to encourage somebody to carry out a terrorist act". Sound familiar?

It's striking how little justification the Government has offered for the new advocating terrorism offense - let alone an account of why existing incitement or the 2005 sedition laws are inadequate.

But it appears the advocating terrorism offence isn't just one of the dozens of new crimes and security powers in the Government's voluminous anti-terror bills.

No, it seems to be the key to whole thing. It has deep political significance.

Think back to August, when the Government announced its turn towards national security. That announcement was made at a press conference where Tony Abbott also said he was abandoning the promise to repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. We were told this was a matter of clearing the decks so everybody could get behind Team Australia.

Yet last week Fairfax reported Abbott shelved free speech reform so section 18C could be used against Islamic hate preachers.

This makes the August press conference even more disingenuous than it appeared at the time.

It seems the Government believes advocating terrorism and offending, insulting, humiliating or intimidating on the basis of race or ethnic origin are two sides of the same coin.

The promised reforms to section 18C weren't a "complication". They were directly contrary to the Government's desire to suppress speech that would otherwise be free.

Chris Berg is Policy Director at the Institute of Public Affairs. View his full profile here.

The redundancy of new anti-terrorism laws - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By Mungo MacCallum Monday 29 September 2014

Photo: Prime Minister Tony Abbott speaks during a UN Security Council meeting. (AFP: Saul Loeb)

The spirit of Chifley, the humble visionary whose optimistic belief in peace was a beacon of hope, is to be cynically stolen by the present reality of a man who thrives on conflict and aggression, writes Mungo MacCallum.

The minor earth tremor you detected around Bathurst cemetery last week was Ben Chifley turning in his grave as Tony Abbott invoked his memory (though not his name).

Abbott appropriated Labor's most memorable image, the light on the hill, in Labor's most respected venue, the United Nations General Assembly, to celebrate his pawing at the ground to Washington to give the OK for Australian war planes to bomb Iraq. The man has no shame.

It was only last week in the same city that our Prime Minister publicly gave his finger to most of the world by very publicly rejecting the invitation to participate in the UN secretary-general's Climate Summit. His office, he said, was too busy attending to affairs in Canberra, presumably to do with preparations for the Great Humanitarian War.

Well, hang on it a minute. The previous week he was happy, indeed insouciant, to go to Arnhem Land while dealing with the same matters of state, apparently managing to both walk and chew gum without overdue exhaustion. And of course such dilettantes as Barack Obama and David Cameron, among numerous other leaders, considered the meeting of sufficient importance to interrupt their schedules.

In any case, Abbott had been asked to attend long before Islamic State had even appeared on Australia's radar, and then decided to come to New York at very short notice anyway. It was hardly a matter of dropping out at the last minute.

And it was not a trivial issue; UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said flatly that it was the defining issue of the age, and Obama said that from all the immediate threats such as IS and the Ebola epidemic, climate change was the one that would shape the contours of the century. And he implored the world, and particularly both the emerging giants and the developed nations, to act. Abbott was presumably included in his absence.

But Australia did not leave an empty chair; the indefatigable Julie Bishop filled in, if only as a cheerio call. She did reiterate that of course Australia was concerned and was doing something. She did not mention Abbott's triumph in helping Australia become the first country in the world to abolish putting a price on carbon but she was adamant that Australia was definitely doing something. Especially, it was talking about economic growth and competitiveness, presumably meaning coal.

As if on cue, Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane appeared in Canberra with a fantastic (literally) report that apparently foreshadowed a Utopian dream of supplies of cheap coal - he almost added, as did Abbott quoting Chifley, for the general betterment of mankind.

The message of Australia's dismissal of climate change as a problem could hardly have been more blatant. But Abbott's deliberate snubbing of Ban Ki-moon and Obama, not to mention the other 120-odd leaders of the New York meeting, egregious as it was, should not be excused as an aberration. Both his critics and his supporters have been demanding that he produce a narrative for his muddled Government, and the signs are that he is finally preparing one and here it is: stop the world, I want to get off. Or, in more active mode: up you, Jack.

In spite of his fervent devotion to what he called "like minded countries" (by which he really means the United States) his Government is turning determinedly isolationist - or as he might see it, sturdily independent. Not only do we no longer need to observe accepted international standards of behaviour, we now glory in rejecting them.

And who better to exemplify the new paradigm than the man most ambitious to succeed Abbott, at least according to his growing coterie of boosters, Generalissimo Scott Morrison.

Morrison does not go into nuance, he has spelt his credo out in stentorian terms: the Australian Parliament will be the one and only arbiter and other authorities need not apply. "We area sovereign country. We get to decide what our rules are and what our obligations are."

Echoes, as the long suffering noted, of John Howard's defiant: "We will decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come."

In the past, successive governments have at least pretended to follow the International Convention on Refugees; however much they worked through it and around it, they insisted that they were not actually breaching it - they bowed to international law. Morrison is happy to tear it up, although he still claims, absurdly, to follow the letter while there ignoring the spirit, let alone the various recommendations. He has, effectively, placed (or displaced) asylum seekers outside the pale.

Christmas Island will be wound up: many of the hapless inhabitants will simply be repatriated, or if they can't be repatriated, stuck in some undefined limbo. The so-called winners will be given the endless uncertainty of Temporary Protection Visas, or, if they are really lucky, given what are to be called Safe Haven Enterprise Visas and sent to the remote regions to work, courtesy of Clive Palmer Mining Enterprises.

From Nauru, some will be sold to the corrupt and poverty-stricken shambles of Cambodia, the destination favoured over the far more salubrious Malaysia - which, of course, was the solution proposed by both Julia Gillard and an independent panel of experts, but rejected in horror by Abbott as being outside the now irrelevant convention.

These victims will, of course, be volunteers - take it or leave it, since the rest will presumably be left to Nauru and Manus Island or whatever other hellhole Morrison can conjure up to rot, and who cares what they, and the rest of the world, thinks. Up you, Jack.

Not a lot of light on the hill here.

And so the pattern is starting to develop: we'll take part in the wars, at least when they're America's, but that's it - the rest is jingoism. The spirit of Chifley, the humble visionary whose optimistic belief in both domestic and international peace and goodwill was a beacon of hope, is to be cynically stolen by the present reality of a man who thrives on conflict and aggression in defiance of the United Nations and their ideals.

But if he is serious about channelling his much-loved predecessor, it would behove him to study the history: Chifley's "light on the hill speech" was made, not on a moment of bravado, but on the eve of the 1949 election, and would inflict upon Labor a disastrous defeat and consigned it to 23 years of opposition.

Perhaps, after all, there is hope.

Mungo Wentworth MacCallum is a political journalist and commentator. View his full profile here.

The cheek of Abbott channelling Chifley - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By Tim Mayfield Friday 26 September 2014

Photo: Cambodians protest against the refugee resettlement deal outside the Australian embassy. (ABC: Samantha Hawley)

The refugee resettlement deal with Cambodia goes against our reputation as a responsible international citizen and respecter of international norms, writes Tim Mayfield.

The Abbott Government's prioritisation of asylum seeker policy over Australia's role as a regional leader and human rights advocate is once again on display via the soon-to-be consummated arrangement with Cambodia to resettle refugees from Australia's offshore processing centre in Nauru.

Indeed, this is just the most recent chapter in the history of foreign policy misadventure that has occurred as a result of Australia's narrow approach to border security since Kevin Rudd announced his "regional resettlement arrangement" with Papua New Guinea prior to the 2013 Federal Election.

The long line of missteps since the election includes timidity in Sri Lanka, overzealousness in India, and benign contempt for Indonesian sovereignty.

The latest deal, in which asylum seekers who are found to be genuine refugees will be voluntarily resettled in Cambodia no doubt in exchange for bucket-loads of cash, is indicative of a repositioning of Australia's foreign policy that is grounded in notions of realpolitik and a more narrowly defined understanding of the national interest.

This is because such an agreement will inevitably compromise Australia's ability to exert pressure on the authoritarian rule of prime minister Hun Sen and undermine Australia's aspirations to regional leadership.   

To anyone who doubts this claim, consider this: on January 28 this year, Australia publically castigated Cambodia at the United Nations for human rights abuses, "particularly the disproportionate violence against protestors, including detention without trial". Less than a month later, Julie Bishop was in Phnom Penh proposing the plan that is about to come to fruition.

I seriously doubt the world will be hearing from Australia on Cambodia's deteriorating human rights record again anytime soon.

The Cambodian announcement follows on in the same spirit as the last major immigration controversy, in which 157 Tamil asylum seekers were moved to offshore detention in Nauru after being held at sea for almost two months.

That move followed Scott Morrison's dubious request to the Indian government that it accept the repatriation of all those aboard the ship on the basis that their boat embarked from India. Unsurprisingly, the appeal was rebuffed by New Delhi in all cases except where the individuals were proven to be Indian citizens.

One can only imagine what the Indian government (and the rest of the region for that matter) made of Australia's overtures given their own substantial refugee flows.

The above episodes demonstrate the incongruity between the external manifestations of Australia's 'stop the boats' policy and our reputation as a responsible international citizen and respecter of international norms.

Not only are Government delegations such as the one that made its way to India increasingly futile and counter-productive, they also represent an increasing preference by the Abbott Government for unilateral action and narrowly-focused bilateral negotiations over multilateral engagement in the region.

Nowhere has this shift been more evident than in Australia's burgeoning relationship with Sri Lanka. Right from the beginning of his tenure as PM, Tony Abbott's approach to this bilateral relationship has been problematic.

For example, his failure to even raise the question of human rights at the 2013 edition of CHOGM held in Colombo (while his Canadian counterpart Stephen Harper boycotted the meeting and UK PM David Cameron toured the war-torn north of the country), undermined Australia's reputation as a nation committed to speaking out on abuses wherever they occur.

This was followed by Immigration Minister Scott Morrison's trip to Sri Lanka for the commissioning of two patrol vessels donated by Australia to assist with local anti-people smuggling efforts. In making this gift, Australia has provided material support to a regime tainted by its brutal response to the Tamil separatist movement while countries such as the US and UK are working with the UN Human Rights Council to establish an international inquiry into the conflict.

While treating Sri Lanka as a pariah state is no way to bring it back into the international fold after its bloody civil war with the Tamil Tigers, neither is the opposite action of uncritically pandering to the government of president Mahinda Rajapaksa on the basis that any criticism might reduce Sri Lanka's cooperation in reducing refugee flows.

While our actions in Cambodia, India and Sri Lanka may be justifiable in the pursuit of short-term tactical victories over people smugglers, they represent a potentially damaging shift away from Australia's traditional emphasis on multilateral organisations such as APEC and the ASEAN Regional Forum.

Australia will no doubt continue to participate enthusiastically in these gatherings and advocate the merits of regional consensus on matters such as trade and security. However, our partners in the Asia-Pacific will be taking note of the disparity between our words and actions.

The message here is that Australia's domestic interests, including the maintenance of secure borders, can be achieved without unnecessarily championing cynical bilateral relationships over multilateral engagement. Cutting a deal with Cambodia, one of the poorest nations in our neighbourhood, only serves to damage our reputation abroad.

Tim Mayfield is the executive officer to the Chancellor of the ANU. He previously worked for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Department of Defence. View his full profile here.

Cambodia deal: another stain on our reputation - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By ABC's Barrie Cassidy Friday 26 September 2014

Photo: The Ray Martin interview with Julia Gillard was watched by 1.4 million people. What they saw was tabloid trash. (Supplied)

After the latest burst of prominence, Coalition strategists must know that the fallout from the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd merry-go-round will go around again at one more election campaign, writes Barrie Cassidy.

No matter that Australia is on the cusp of a "humanitarian" war, that a suspected terrorist has been shot dead by police in Melbourne; still, Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd break through for media attention.

Like a ghost ship emerging from the fog, they came into view four years after the initial leadership battle, ready to go again.

Gillard in a prime time interview to promote her book My Story said, "I still, even with the benefit of hindsight, don't see an alternative to what I did that day ... I don't think I had a choice."

She then conceded, "If anything, the reputation I have from that night is one of political brutality."

Then two days later Rudd, in a leaked report on page one of The Australian, describes himself as the victim of "an orgy of unprecedented political violence".

The latest burst of prominence says much about Gillard's lack of judgment and Rudd's now well known modus operandi.

First Gillard, the book and the interview.

The first journalist to review it, The Guardian's Katherine Murphy (who confessed she was just ¾ of the way through it) wrote that the memoir "provides real, detailed, forensic and clinical insight into the government from her central, completely unique vantage point".

The book, she wrote, plunges the reader "into government at a deeper level than most other protagonists of this historical period".

That does seem to be a fair analysis of the majority of the book. Most of it is devoted to policy battles and intriguing personal observations. That's all good.

However, if the sales are very good, perhaps 50,000 people or more will read it.

The Ray Martin interview on the other hand was watched by 1.2 million people. What they saw was tabloid trash. Most of the conversation was devoted to hair and makeup, the daily routine of a prime minister, misogyny, Kevin Rudd, Alan Jones, Germaine Greer - and Tim; time and again about Tim; how the public was supposed to react to the first bloke being a hairdresser, and why she never married.

Not only did Gillard sign up to that arrangement, but not once during the interview did she object, or even seem annoyed, that three years of running the country was reduced to those periphery topics.

The interview, given its reach, was always going to do more in terms of framing her time in office than the book will ever do. It was a lost opportunity, and a reflection on her judgment.

And now to Rudd and that oh so familiar style.

Gillard might eventually move on but Rudd, as the most aggrieved party, will always look for ways to back his version of history.

In the wake of the Gillard interview, two things happened in much the same way as they always do.  Rudd gave a considered and brief public response. At the same time, ever so mysteriously, a far more detailed and poisonous critique is leaked; not a direct response to the interview mind you, but part of a secret submission that he gave to Labor's 2010 election review; a submission that had remained secret for three years or more, only to surface just as Gillard's book is released.

Even the public statement released to news.com.au was resplendent with political cant. He rejected the memoir as fiction, and "consistent with the past, Mr Rudd has no substantive comment to make". And then, consistent with his past, he went on to make substantive comments: "The Australian people have long reached their own conclusions about Ms Gillard's relationship with the truth - from the coup to the carbon tax (and) ... trying to dress up personal political ambitions as some higher purpose for the party and the government."

The leaked submission went even further, talking of her leadership being crippled by "a stench of illegitimacy" and describing her 2010 election campaign as "absurdity loaded upon absurdity".

And of course the submission included the persecution theory: that he had been the victim of an "orgy of unprecedented political violence".

There was nothing unprecedented about it. Prime ministers have been cut down in office before and they will be again. Bob Hawke was voted down by his party room after having won four elections. And his removal was no more an act of "political violence" than most other leadership challenges over the years.

The coup against Rudd was different only to the extent that it was driven largely by backbenchers. The ministers - most of them - were kept in the dark. That's because, according to the backbenchers, they were actually part of the problem; too subservient to the leader; choosing humiliation to confrontation.

The public might not always like it, but the leadership of the major parties is in the hands of the elected MPs in the party room. When Gillard finally confronted Rudd, the support for her came in a torrent. Never before had the numbers tumbled so quickly in a leadership challenge.

The best judges on the night figured that if it had gone to a party room vote, Gillard would have picked up 80 of the 112 eligible votes. That's why Rudd did not allow it to go to a ballot.

Gillard is entitled to write a book. You could even argue she had an obligation to do so. Rudd will no doubt in time, closer to the next election, write his own. They are both entitled to promote those books.

Labor for its part will be hoping they are the acceptable boundaries and the long running feud won't go beyond that. That, however, is doubtful. Gillard might eventually move on but Rudd, as the most aggrieved party, will always look for ways to back his version of history.

After this week Coalition strategists must know that the fallout from the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd merry-go-round will go around again at one more election campaign.

Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of the ABC program Insiders. View his full profile here.

There's still life in the Rudd-Gillard stoush - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By Mike Steketee Friday 26 September 2014

Photo: It's not so long ago that Tony Abbott wouldn't have made those comments to the UN about unity in diversity. (AFP: Don Emmert)

While many conservatives continue to hold to the Howard line against multiculturalism, Tony Abbott is adjusting to the reality that Australia is a multicultural country, writes Mike Steketee.

"The Australian Government will be utterly unflinching towards anything that threatens our future as a free, fair and multicultural society; a beacon of hope and exemplar of unity-in-diversity."

This is how Tony Abbott expressed his defence of Australian values before the United Nations Security Council this week.

Many, probably most, Australians will find his words commendable, if perhaps unremarkable. Yet not so long ago, he would never have put it that way.

His views on multiculturalism used to align with those of his conservative predecessor, John Howard, who hated the "m" word and avoided it at all costs. As he wrote in his autobiography, Lazarus Rising: "My view was that Australia should emphasise the common characteristics of the Australian identity. We should emphasise our unifying points rather than our areas of difference."

His views translated into action, with his government's abolition of the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Bureau of Immigration, Multiculturalism and Population Research and with the substitution of "citizenship" for the "m" word in the Immigration Minister's title.

Many conservatives continue to hold to the Howard line. According to Senator Cory Bernardi, "the naïve ... proclaim multiculturalism as a triumph of tolerance when in fact it undermines the cultural values and cohesiveness that brings a nation together".

When police conducted anti-terrorism raids in Brisbane and Sydney last week, he tweeted:

Bernardi may be a Liberal maverick but on this issue his views are widely held amongst conservatives.

Queensland National MP George Christensen this week supported a ban on burqas. In 2013, Scott Morrison, then shadow immigration minister, argued that multiculturalism "simply means too many things to too many different people and increasingly runs the risk of fuelling division and polarising the debate, which is the antitheses of what it is supposed to achieve".

But Abbott no longer counts himself amongst the critics. Two weeks ago, he said: "I've shifted from being a critic to a supporter of multiculturalism, because it eventually dawned on me that migrants were coming to Australia not to change us but to join us."

His conversion goes back some years. In Battlelines, the book published in 2009, not long before he became opposition leader, he wrote that he previously had underestimated "the gravitational pull of the Australian way of life". The influx of people from a long list of countries who applied to become Australian citizens, "far from diluting 'Australian-ness' .... shows people's enthusiasm to join our team".

That would be Team Australia of recent invocation.

In 2012, as opposition leader, he explained an experience that helped changed his mind:

With (historian) Geoffrey Blainey, I used to worry that multiculturalism could leave us a nation of tribes. But I was wrong and I've changed my mind. The scales fell from my eyes when I discovered - while running Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, would you believe - that the strongest supporters of the Crown in our constitution included indigenous people and newcomers who had embraced it as part of embracing Australia.

The irony is that this conversion has come at a time when multiculturalism is under greater stress than at any time since its introduction by the Whitlam government. Each successive wave of immigrants to Australia has caused friction, stretching all the way from the Irish in the 19th century to the post-World War II surge of Italians, Greeks and other Europeans and the large numbers of Vietnamese who arrived in the wake of the Vietnam war.

Yet the cycle became a familiar and reassuring one, from initial resentment and discrimination towards new immigrants to acceptance and later celebration.

"Wogs" used to be a term of derision; now it is a badge of honour for many of Italian and Greek origin. Despite some initial tensions and problems with crime, the successful integration of Vietnamese into a nation that only recently had abandoned the White Australia policy was eloquent testament to a tolerant society.

Immigrants typically worked hard and soon spread out from the then poor inner suburbs as they became more affluent. Their sons and daughters started marrying outside their ethnic group and often became indistinguishable from other Australians.

In short, as Abbott came to realise, Australia changed migrant families more than they changed Australia.

The 2005 Cronulla riots, sparked by an attack on lifesavers by young men of Lebanese origin and fuelled by inflammatory comments by broadcaster Alan Jones, shattered the image of Australia as a model of racial harmony. Still, it could be rationalised as an isolated incident. Harder to dismiss is the emergence of home-grown jihadists who regard themselves as enemies of Australia - hardly a stellar example of unity in diversity.

Unlike previous immigrants, some from the Middle East, predominantly Lebanese with often low education levels admitted by the Fraser government in the wake of the Lebanese civil war, did not follow the traditional path of working, inter-marrying and generally spreading out into society. For some, unemployment, crime and racism contributed to alienation, particularly amongst the young.

In some senses, Abbott's conversion may be more rhetorical than real. On coming to government, he shifted responsibility for multiculturalism from the immigration portfolio - something for which Morrison may be grateful - to Social Security, suggesting a narrowed focus.

That brings it under Kevin Andrews, a big "c" conservative who, as immigration minister in 2007, cut the intake of African refugees because he said they had more trouble integrating into Australian society.

Deriding their religion, criticising how they dress, let along branding them as terrorists, is seriously counter-productive.

The Australian Multicultural Council, an advisory body to the previous government, is in limbo, with all its nine positions listed as vacant, although a spokesperson for Andrews told me the Government is in the process of appointing new members.

The ministry of multicultural affairs under Labor has been downgraded to a parliamentary secretary's position, filled by Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, who, although a member of the hard right of the NSW Liberal Party, is preaching the success of multiculturalism.

As prime ministers need to do, Abbott is adjusting to the reality that Australia is a multicultural country. The Government frontbench includes members with strong ethnic connections - Treasurer Joe Hockey (Armenian-Palestinian), Finance Minister Mathias Cormann (Belgian), Government Senate leader Eric Abetz (German), suspended assistant treasurer Arthur Sinodinos (Greek) and Fierravanti-Wells (Italian).

Abbott is conscious that the ethnic vote can swing the result in federal seats, particularly in Sydney. He disappointed some of his strongest supporters with his decision to drop the so-called Bolt amendments to the Racial Discrimination Act after widespread opposition from ethnic groups.

In this area and particularly in the current context, rhetoric matters - all the more so when it comes from the nation's leader. Abbott is setting the right tone, balancing his uncompromising language against would-be Australian terrorists with words of reassurance for the Muslim community and an appeal to other Australians not to overreact.

Given the rise of Islamic State and threats of beheadings in Australia, it is easy to lose perspective. The number of Muslims in Australia has risen rapidly - by 69 per cent between the 2001 and 2011 censuses. But they still number fewer than 500,000 and represent just 2.2 per cent of the population, fewer than the 2.5 per cent who are Buddhists.

The vast majority are as law abiding as any other Australians. They have alerted Australian authorities to planned terrorist attacks. Deriding their religion, criticising how they dress, let along branding them as terrorists, is seriously counter-productive.

Mike Steketee is a freelance journalist. He was formerly a columnist and national affairs editor for The Australian. View his full profile here.

Abbott faces the reality of multicultural Australia - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By Joyce Chia Thursday 25 September 2014

Photo: Cambodia has returned asylum seekers to countries where they are at risk of persecution. (7.30 Report)

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison is travelling to Phnom Penh on Friday, where he is expected to formally announce a deal for Cambodia to resettle refugees from Nauru.

In this article, originally published in May, Joyce Chia argues that the problems with this policy go beyond Cambodia's grim human rights record.

Cambodia, a poor, politically fragile country with a horrific past, was until recently a nation that produced refugees, not took them. In 1992, it was the arrival of desperate Cambodians in boats that resulted in the Australian government introducing mandatory detention.

Cambodia's recovery took a long time to come and is far from complete - as strikes and violence following last year's disputed election indicate. Now, it appears, Cambodia will resettle refugees from Australia's offshore detention centre in Nauru.

It is true that Cambodia, unlike most other Asian countries, is a party to the Refugee Convention and most other human rights treaties, and its constitution also recognises and respects international human rights. For this it should be commended.

That does not mean, however, that the rights set out in those instruments are fulfilled in practice. If there is evidence that rights cannot be respected in Cambodia, then there are real questions about whether Australia's transfer of refugees to that country accords with our own international legal obligations.

For a start, Cambodia's refugee legislation is not consistent with its or Australia's obligations under international human rights treaties. For example, Cambodian law doesn't protect asylum seekers from being returned to countries where they may be arbitrarily killed, tortured or otherwise suffer cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

The law also gives the immigration minister absolute discretion in granting and cancelling refugee status.

There is also a gap between what Cambodian legislation says and what actually happens in practice. Despite a very small number of applications for refugee status - only 48 applications at the beginning of 2012 - decisions can take up to two years, and appeals a further 11 months. Recognised refugees struggle to get residence and travel cards, obtain employment, and gain citizenship, which makes day-to-day life very difficult.

There have also been times when Cambodia has returned asylum seekers to countries where they are at risk of persecution.

In 2009, for example, Cambodia deported 20 Uighur asylum seekers to China, a day before the Chinese vice-president arrived to sign contracts worth more than $US1 billion.

Afterwards, there were reports that four of those deported had been condemned to death and others sentenced to life imprisonment.

The country is also far from achieving the rule of law. In 2013, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Cambodia reported that the courts were corrupt and used the criminal law to punish human rights defenders and political dissidents. There are also extremely few lawyers, particularly legal aid lawyers.

This January, NGOs documented a host of human rights challenges to the UN. These included: a pattern of politically motivated killings; instances of torture in "rehabilitation centres"; harassment of human rights defenders and journalists; the disappearance of free media; forced evictions from land without compensation; violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons; high rates of domestic violence; and discrimination against minorities.

It is unfair to blame a developing country with a genocide past for its failures when Australia - a rich, stable democracy - is refusing to honour its responsibilities.

In general, the picture of human rights in Cambodia is grim. The real problem, though, is not Cambodia.

It is unfair to blame a developing country with a genocide past for its failures when it is Australia - a rich, stable democracy - that is refusing to honour its responsibilities to refugees.

Cambodia is much poorer than Nauru (in 2011, its GDP per capita was about a seventh of Nauru's). Like Nauru and PNG, it relies heavily on Australian foreign aid, receiving more than $85 million in 2013-2014.

Attempts by rich countries to deflect refugees to poor countries is especially unjust given that developing countries already take on much more than their fair share of the responsibility for protecting the world's refugees - hosting more than 80 per cent of the global total.

Resettling refugees in Cambodia is not only unjust, it is also bad policy.

Australia, as a country of immigration, already has developed networks and services for assisting and integrating refugees. It would be easier, cheaper and more humane to resettle refugees in Australia than in Cambodia.

It is not known yet how much a deal with Cambodia will cost, but an extra $420 million in aid was allocated to PNG for Manus Island (aside from the more than $1 billion given for the detention centre itself). That centre hosted 1296 refugees at the end of March.

In contrast, in 2012-2013 Australia resettled 7600 refugees at an overall cost of $12 million.

Resettling refugees in Cambodia is also bad foreign policy.

Australia pours in three-quarters of its total aid budget in the Asia-Pacific region, and more than $880 million in 2012-13 on improving governance, including justice and human rights. As the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs rightly states, "fostering the promotion and protection of human rights underpins good governance and leads to sustainable and equitable growth."

We give this money because, in the end, it is in our long-term interest for our neighbours to respect the rule of law and human rights. We cannot expect them to do so if we do not do so ourselves.

This article was originally published on May 5, 2014. Read the original article.

Dr Joyce Chia is the senior research associate at the Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law. View her full profile here.

You can't just export human rights responsibilities - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By ABC's Jonathan Green Thursday 25 September 2014

Photo: Our politicians speak with tremendous certainty and assurance, but the rest of us ought to wonder. (AAP: Lukas Coch)

We ought to wonder how a Government that weeks ago seemed incapable of attracting and holding our trust is now cast as the solid paternal guardian against nameless dread, writes Jonathan Green.

Is there anything more disconcerting than unflinching certainty?

It's not supposed to have that effect, especially not in politics, where doubt is commonly taken for weakness and where confidence signals strength.

Right now, that confidence just doesn't ring true.

Common sense tells us that confronting the influence of the Islamic State on its ardent local followers, on impressionable hotheads, on the lost and disaffected, is not going to be a simple matter.

Common sense would also suggest that many of the possible responses could have the opposite to intended effect, that despite the instinct to flinch back from Muslim Australia with fists clenched, a closer embrace might do more to boost everyone's sense of security and trust.

A young man was killed on Tuesday after a savage assault on police, an act that by this morning has come to be a living Rorschach blot, a shadow to be shaped by our various certainties.

Was Abdul Numan Haider the "quiet, very gentle, very softly spoken" young man who "seemed to be looking for answers, and asking questions ... trying to work out his place in the world, and in Australia, as a young Muslim man".

Or was this "a tale of an impressionable young Australian Muslim who became so entranced by the murderous ideology of Islamic State that he saw himself as an Islamic State soldier in a foreign land."

Quite possibly he was both.

For some commentators, it was a killing as inevitable as the soft-headed denialism that attempts to soften its fundamental horror with reason: "We took in boat people from Afghanistan to give them refuge. Now it's Australians who need refuge ... Once again the dangerous and frankly offensive denialism and blame-shifting ... The police are the problem? The failure is ours? The 'root cause' is alienation, not Islam and some of its reckless representatives?"

"This blame-shifting happens too regularly from Muslim leaders that it now seems not a misjudgement but a tenet of their ideology."

What we all might agree on is that it was an act of contradictions and some mystery, either the crazed violence of an isolated individual or the single face that gives shape to the previously invisible zombie horde; the seething unknown mass of the suburban "death cult".

According to the Attorney General, George Brandis, it's a group that "represents or seeks to be an existential threat to us", never mind that it may only constitute confused and angry individuals, not some coherent warrior mass.

Which is of course the problem with the "lone wolf" phase of this war on terror: that we are confronted by the menace of individuals, unknowable and elusive. That's the problem, but also the inherent contradiction: they are still only individuals.

Their acts of violence, if and when they come, will be criminal acts. No more or less.

We make a constant calculation with criminality, a balance between prevention and civil liberty that errs toward liberty.

This is the civilised balance we keep, a calculation that sets worrisome probabilities against essential and defining freedoms.

The result is a trade-off in our relationship with criminality: we enjoy a society so free that even crime may exist.

We could attempt to cauterise it, to clamp down on human liberty so sternly that wrong doing would have no wriggle room, but we calculate risk against return.

Or we used to. These sands are shifting. As the Prime Minister told the Parliament on Monday:

Regrettably, for some time to come, Australians will have to endure more security than we're used to, and more inconvenience than we'd like.

Regrettably, for some time to come, the delicate balance between freedom and security may have to shift.

There may be more restrictions on some so that there can be more protections for others.

In our Senate this morning debate resumes on legislation that seeks to reset those scales in the firm concrete of law, law that may see journalists imprisoned for reporting state secrets in the public interest, may see your devices tracked, your data horded. The debate will be coloured by events, will be driven by the tensions of a moment and the frustrations of a state security apparatus that confronts that most elusive of threats: the acts of maddened individuals.

As Senator Brandis told his colleagues yesterday: "Freedom is not a given. Freedom must be secured particularly at a time when those who seek to destroy those freedoms are active, are blatant and are among us."

As the joke goes: if they hate us for our freedoms, perhaps removing that freedom will make us safer.

Our politicians will continue to speak with tremendous certainty and assurance, but the rest of us ought to wonder.

We ought to wonder how a Government that weeks ago seemed incapable of attracting and holding our trust is now cast as the solid paternal guardian against nameless dread, how our fears have ennobled it.

We ought to wonder how an Opposition can be so desperate to share those spoils of our anxiety that while it talks down every Coalition gesture in economics, education, health and all the rest, it can find only unbounded praise for everything the Government does in national security. Somehow it manages to get that so defiantly right.

We ought to wonder, with whatever calm we can muster, just how much we are prepared to give to secure ourselves against the unknown.

And perhaps we ought not be so certain.

Jonathan Green hosts Sunday Extra on Radio National and is the former editor of The Drum. View his full profile here.

Our disconcerting certainty in battling terrorism - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By Francis Tapim and Alyse Edwards

Thursday 25 September 2014

Photo: Abusive words spray painted across the entrance to an Indonesian community mosque in Rocklea. (ABC News: Alyse Edwards)

Related Story: Vandals spray-paint abuse on Brisbane mosque

Map: Brisbane 4000

Police have described those responsible for an anti-Islam graffiti attack on a southern Brisbane mosque as "brainless" criminals who left behind plenty of evidence.

A Rocklea home being used as a place of worship by Indonesian Muslims was targeted sometime between Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon.

The words "die" and "Muslims are evil and have no respect for our ways" were spray-painted on the building.

It was the second Muslim prayer site in Queensland to be defaced in less than a week after a mosque at Mareeba in far north Queensland was vandalised last Friday.

Inspector Rob Graham said the offenders left plenty of evidence at the scene, which was also surrounded by security cameras.

"We are optimistic of determining who actually committed this brainless crime," he said.

"We are certainly not talking about criminal masterminds here. There was a number of pieces of evidence that were located in the near vicinity fingerprints and touch DNA are certainly going to shed some light.

"Also this is a place where there is a high volume of CCTV activity and we are very optimistic we will be able to determine who committed this offence in the near future."

Photo: Police said the vandals left 'plenty of evidence' at the scene. (ABC News: Alyse Edwards)

Inspector Graham said they were still seeking assistance from anyone who may know who was responsible.

"We also seek assistance from anyone who might know who these people are or whether they were a member of a particular group who may have done this to come forward," he said.

"This is not the type of thing the police service or the wider Queensland community would condone."

Islamic Indonesian Community of Queensland president Hamid Mawardi praised police for their quick response to the spray-paint attack.

He said he had no idea who had vandalised the building but that it was "probably just kids".

"I think this is a misperception about Islam – we are here, Australian," he said.

Photo: Worshippers pray at the Rocklea mosque. (ABC News: Alyse Edwards)

"I've been here for years and we live nice and peacefully and whoever did this – respect us as Australians."

Mr Mawardi believed youths could be behind the attack.

"I don't have any idea who did it. But I think this is probably a kid who doesn't know anything about what Islam is," he said.

"Probably just watching the TV and what's happening overseas and thinks Islam is all like this."

Muslim leader Ali Kadri said these types of attacks created a sense of fear in their community.

"Women especially will be very afraid to come and pray alone because women in particular have been targeted in the past so they'll be very afraid to come and pray here," he said.

On Wednesday afternoon, Queensland Police Commissioner Ian Stewart called for calm and tolerance in response to growing concerns over the threat posed by the terrorist group Islamic State (IS).

He was speaking after an incident in Melbourne on Tuesday night in which a man who was under investigation was shot dead by police, and after a number of counter-terrorism raids occurred in Sydney and south of Brisbane in recent weeks.

More on this story

• Abuse sprayed-painted on Muslim community site in Brisbane
• Police Commissioner Ian Stewart has 'no knowledge' of state specific threats from Islamic State
• Sunshine Coast mosque protest condemned by Premier Campbell Newman
• Hundreds rally at proposed Sunshine Coast mosque
• Logan mosque targeted with anti-Muslim pamphlets, sparking fears of violence

Mosque vandalised: 'Brainless' Brisbane anti-Islam criminals left behind evidence, police say - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Patrick Keneally and agencies

theguardian.com, Wednesday 24 September 2014

Former prime minister launches retaliatory offensive while announcing that he has landed a new job

Kevin Rudd was reacting to the publication of Julia Gillard’s memoir. Photograph: William West/AFP/Getty Images

On the day that former prime minister Julia Gillard launched her memoir, My Story, the man she ousted, Kevin Rudd, has launched an retaliatory offensive, releasing a statement claiming that the book was a work of “fiction” and announcing that he had landed a new job chairing a global peace and security review.

In the statement released to news.com.au by Rudd’s media adviser, the former prime minister claims: “The Australian people have long reached their own conclusions about Ms Gillard’s relationship with the truth – from the coup to the carbon tax.

“They have also reached their own conclusions on Ms Gillard’s continuing efforts to reconstruct a justification after the event for her actions in June 2010, by trying to dress up personal political ambition as some higher purpose for the party and the government.”

The new job will see Rudd appointed as co-chair of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism (ICM), along with Norwegian foreign minister Borge Brende and Canadian foreign minister John Baird – a role that would add to his credentials for his long-held ambition to become UN secretary-general.

The ICM is a two-year program run by the International Peace Institute, which will examine the work of the United Nations and other multilateral bodies.

Rudd’s previously secret submission to the ALP’s election review panel, which described Gillard a “backstabber” lacking legitimacy, was also published today in the Australian.

The publication of the submission to the 2010 review, chaired by Steve Bracks, Bob Carr and John Faulkner, adds to the already substantial commentary about the period of Labor leadership rivalry sparked by Gillard’s memoirs.

In the submission, Rudd says claims by Gillard supporters that the coup was motivated by “national interest” and the government’s poor performance was an “entirely fabric­ated post-facto rationale for a leadership change that was driven in large part by political ambition”.

His submission also reportedly takes aim at the so-called “faceless men”, including Bill Shorten, who he claimed were “ripping the party apart”.

Kevin Rudd dismisses Julia Gillard’s book as a work of ‘fiction’ | World news | theguardian.com

Daniel Hurst, political correspondent

theguardian.com, Wednesday 24 September 2014

As government ministers call for calm after police shooting of terrorism suspect, attorney general says extremists pose greatest risk in decades

Attorney general George Brandis during debate on National Security Legislation in the senate chamber on Wednesday. Photograph: Mike Bowers/Mike Bowers

Australia’s attorney general has warned the nation faces a more immediate domestic security threat than it did during the cold war, even as other ministers pleaded for calm after the fatal shooting of a person of interest to counter-terrorism police.

George Brandis underlined the dangers posed by Australians attracted to extremist groups including Islamic State (Isis) as parliament debated the most significant changes to counter-terrorism laws in a decade.

But other cabinet members – including the justice minister, Michael Keenan, and the acting prime minister, Warren Truss – and senior police and Islamic figures called for calm following the dramatic events outside a Melbourne police station on Tuesday night.

In a separate development, several senators including the government backbencher Cory Bernardi took the first procedural step towards a fresh attempt to amend the Racial Discrimination Act, prompting claims the timing was “insensitive”.

Brandis made his comparison to the cold war as the Senate debated the government’s first national security bill, increasing the powers of intelligence agencies and criminalising disclosure of information about special intelligence agencies.

He also introduced to the Senate on Wednesday a second bill to make it easier to detain and prosecute Australians suspected of joining extremist fighters in overseas conflicts.

Both bills are likely to pass with support from Labor and the Coalition, in what Brandis described as an “impressive example of the parties putting patriotism above partisanship”.

“It is very timely that this bill should be before the Senate for consideration at this time,” Brandis said.

“It is a lamentable fact but an unavoidable truth that Australia at the moment needs the protection of its intelligence services, perhaps as never before. Certainly there has been no time since the cold war, or perhaps even no time including the cold war, when the domestic threat posed by those who would do us harm has been so immediate, so acute, so present in the minds of our people. Tragically we saw that illustrated as recently as overnight in Melbourne.”

Two counter-terrorism police officers were stabbed on Tuesday night during an arranged meeting with 18-year-old Abdul Numan Haider outside Endeavour Hills police station in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs.

Haider was shot dead. He had been seen in a shopping centre with an Isis flag about a week ago, authorities said, and his passport had been suspended.

In the past fortnight Australia has increased the terrorism alert level from medium to high, conducted the nation’s largest ever counter terrorism raids in Sydney, pre-deployed 600 Australian Defence Force members to the Middle East for potential action against Isis in Iraq, and stepped up security at government and military buildings.

Tony Abbott has flown to New York to participate in a UN security council meeting chaired by the US president, Barack Obama, to discuss how the risks posed by disaffected citizens who travelled to Iraq and Syria to join groups such as Isis.

Security agencies believe about 60 Australians have travelled to those countries to fight.

Truss said the prime minister had spoken to the wives of both injured police officers and wished them “a full and speedy recovery and commend them on the bravery of their actions”.

He said Australians “should remain calm, carry on with their normal lives, confident that our law enforcement and security agencies will do everything humanly they can to keep all members of the Australian community safe”.

“We are an inclusive and tolerant society,” Truss told parliament.

“The actions of violent criminals do not represent the views or the attitudes of the overwhelming majority of Australians regardless of their faith or ethnicity. I urge the Australian public to remember that violence against anyone based on their religion or their beliefs or race is never acceptable. To turn on each other on the basis of religion or race would just give in to the terrorism groups and what they want.”

The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said the nation must “meet this moment with understanding and tolerance, not division and violence”.

He said people would ask why “a very small number of people raised in Australia” could be attracted to the cause of Isis and similar groups.

“Perhaps part of the answer is this. In a complicated and uncertain and complicated, fundamentalist extremism gives the illusion of certainty and simplicity,” Shorten said.

“This is the poison of sectarianism and extremism. It offers a sense of power to people who may feel powerless, an outlet for the bottled-up rage and hatred of the isolated and unwell.

“But this is only ever a harmful mirage. There is no glory in murder, no honour in crime, no power in death.

“We have a responsibility to send a clear message to those drawn to this conflict. Whatever problems you may perceive that you have, violence is not the solution.

“Whatever you think is wrong with the world – extremism and fanaticism will never make it right.

“We cannot, we must not, we will not, allow a tiny minority to divide our generous, inclusive society. On behalf of our wounded police officers, we cannot allow this country to become polarised.”

Abbott has previously walked away from an election promise to amend the Racial Discrimination Act, arguing he did not want to do anything to jeopardise national unity at a time when all communities must be partners in the fight against terrorism.

But Bernardi and crossbench senators Bob Day and David Leyonhjelm are co-sponsoring a new bill to amend section 18C. On Wednesday they gave notice to the Senate of their intention to present the bill on the next sitting day.

The existing section makes it unlawful to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate someone on the basis of race. The private bill would remove offend and insult from this section.

Bernardi said the timing was out of his hands, but told Guardian Australia: “One of the most important principles and freedoms that we have in this country is freedom of speech. I want to strengthen that. It’s always a good time to strengthen freedom of speech.”

The Greens senator Penny Wright said the timing was “insensitive”.

“A groundswell of public opinion has defeated this legislation once and we are confident any proposal to bring it back will also fail,” Wright said.

George Brandis claims Australia faces security threat greater than cold war | World news | theguardian.com

Paul Farrell theguardian.com, Thursday 25 September 2014

A series of law enforcement and intelligence gathering bills to be considered by parliament will affect the rights of all Australians

Proposed national security legislation changes include sweeping new powers to seize digital data. Photograph: Martin Barraud/Ocean/Corbis

The Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, has argued that some freedoms may need to be sacrificed in order to protect Australians. Citizens are now being asked to support a shift in “the delicate balance between freedom and security”.

But what is that shift and how far should it go? The federal government is embarking on a series of major changes to our law enforcement and intelligence gathering power. Many of these changes are confusing, highly technical, and are being brought forward in a series of different bills that are at very different stages.

What they will all affect are the rights and freedoms of Australians. The debate that occurs over the coming months in federal parliament and in the public domain will shape how digital rights, personal liberties and freedoms are protected in years to come.

Here are eight of the key changes being proposed across three separate bills and how they could affect your rights and freedoms.

National security reform bill one

This bill was introduced into the Senate in July by the attorney general. It was then sent to the joint committee on intelligence and security, which proposed some small changes to the legislation. It is now being debated in the Senate. The three points below are found in this bill.

1) Journalists and whistle-blowers face jail for intelligence reporting

Australian journalists could face prosecution and jail for reporting about certain spy operations, even if there is a public interest in the release of the information. This bill creates a new offence punishable by five years in jail for “any person” who discloses information relating to “special intelligence operations” and raises serious concerns about press freedom in Australia. While Brandis has said that the new offence is not aimed at journalists, the joint committee review did not recommend changes to the law – meaning journalists could still face penalties down the line if they knowingly report on these types of operations.

Separate offences have also been created that only apply to current and former intelligence operatives and contractors in a move which appeared to directly address the risk of documentary disclosures being made following revelations by the US National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden – who Brandis has previously labelled a “traitor”.

2) Computer hacking powers for intelligence agencies

New powers could allow ASIO to obtain massive warrants for effectively the whole of the internet as part of changes to computer access laws. Under these changes, ASIO will be given new powers to obtains warrants to disrupt and target “third party computers”. But as constitutional law expert and University of New South Wales professor George Williams told Fairfax Media, the new laws could effectively allow agencies to gain access to one “network” that effectively covered all of Australia. Depending on the scope of these warrants and how they are interpreted, this could involve quite serious invasions of privacy.

3) Immunity from prosecution for uses of force by ASIO officers involved in “special intelligence operations”

One of the most controversial aspects of this legislation allows ASIO officers to use force during certain types of operations. Traditionally, the intelligence agency was about just that – intelligence gathering. But changes in this bill seem to indicate a shift permitting them to engage in a much broader range of activities that were traditionally left to other law enforcement agencies.

They won’t be able to kill or seriously injure or commit a sexual assault – but the fact remains that this does permit a level of force to be used by ASIO officers in these types of special intelligence operations. An amendment to the bill was subsequently moved by the government to helpfully clarify that it does not permit torture.

National security reform bill two

This bill was introduced into the Senate on 24 September. It has not yet been debated, and will likely go to the joint committee for intelligence and security for their consideration first. If that is the case it will not be debated in the Senate for at least another month. The four points below are found in this bill.

4) Expanding detention without charge powers

Controversial orders to hold people with charge that were introduced by the Howard government are set to be not only retained but expanded under this bill.

Preventative detention orders allow a person to be detained without charge for up to 14 days and their use is shrouded in secrecy. They were set to expire last year, but the case is now being made for their renewal for another 10 years.

The only types of these orders ever made were issued last week in the major counter-terrorism operation in Sydney under NSW legislation. The AFP even refused to confirm how many people were being detained under these orders, and there is currently an indefinite order prevention publication of any details about them.

The new act also seeks to lower the threshold for when police officers can apply for these orders from having a “belief” to a “suspicion” While it may seem semantic this is an important distinction that lowers the bar for applying to a court for the orders.

Legal experts have questioned the need for this entire regime to exist – given there are already substantial powers to hold and detain people under the existing criminal code, and particularly seeing as there doesn’t seem to have been much use for these laws over the past decade.

5) Restricting freedom of movement and association with control orders and prohibited contact orders

Control orders and prohibited contact orders will similarly be retained under the new bill if it succeeds in passing. Control orders allow a judge to impose restrictions on the movement of a person without finding them guilty of an offence, while prohibited contact orders limit their associations.

Both of these orders will be expanded to increase the range of reasons they can be sought, including restricting the movement or associations people who have been involved in foreign incursions and return to Australia.

6) Life imprisonment for people who fight, or even prepare to fight, overseas in a foreign country

An aggressive deterrent is being put forward where people who fight or intend to fight in a foreign country could face life imprisonment. The government is radically reshaping the foreign incursion laws to create life sentences for people who engage in foreign incursions, prepare for foreign incursions, give or receive goods or allow the use of buildings or vessels for foreign incursions.

7) Prohibiting travel to a region, or even an entire country, unless a person can demonstrate a legitimate reason for being there

In a separate offence that requires a lower threshold of evidence than the previous incursion law, an entire country can be declared a “no-go zone” that could see entrants to the country jailed for 10 years if they cannot point to a legitimate reason for their trip.

The new offence would criminalise a person entering or remaining in a “declared area” by the foreign affairs minister if they enter or remain in an area that has been proscribed.

The defendant would need to demonstrate they had a legitimate reason for being there – which could include journalism, aid work or government duties – to avoid being subject to the offence. Australian Lawyers Alliance spokesman Greg Barns has raised serious concerns about whether this law is necessary or proportionate – and what value it would serve given the existing laws surrounding incursions.

National security reform bill three

This is the last package of national security legislation and is likely to be mainly about electronic surveillance. It is much more difficult to consider what impact it will have, as the government still appears to be considering what changes they will make. But they have given some indications of what they would like to see, and the one point below outlines this. The attorney general has flagged the bill for introduction later this year.

8) Mandatory data retention of Australians web and mobile data for two years

Mandatory data retention would largely be for the purposes of allowing web and mobile data to be seized by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. This sort of retention potentially exposes Australians to significant intrusions into their private lives, allowing broad access to who, when and where a person emailed or call somebody.

The proposal has created additional concerns because of the weak safeguards around access to this sort of personal information already in place. Under the current laws, thousands of local, state and federal agencies can request access to Australians’ personal data – or metadata – without a warrant. Access to this data is so easy there were over 300,000 requests for Australians’ personal data in 2013. It raises serious concerns for all citizens, but also poses major difficulties for journalists and their sources, who can easily be exposed through these laws.

Eight ways Tony Abbott is trying to trade freedom for security | World news | theguardian.com

By Fergal Davis Tuesday 23 September 2014

Photo: The raids last week were conducted under the existing laws. (AAP: Dave Hunt)

It's not enough for our elected leaders to say that anti-terrorism legislation is "above politics" - we must insist on there being proper scrutiny of any new laws, writes Fergal Davis.

The threat level has been heightened. Terror raids have resulted in arrests, detentions and charges. The Prime Minister has announced that Australians must sacrifice liberty for security. The Leader of the Opposition backs the Government - "keeping our people safe is above politics". New national security laws are to be laid before the Federal Parliament.

To a cynic it must feel like 2005 redux.

But the threat of terrorism is real. Irrespective of raids and official threat levels, we can see that the world around us is a dangerous place. The brutal murder of Drummer Lee Rigby on the streets of Woolwich, London, makes a similar plot in Sydney seem plausible. The activities of ISIS are shocking. Intuitively we fear the radicalisation of Australians travelling to Syria to fight in that conflict. We demand that our government keep us safe.

Our first question must be: do we actually need new laws? Prior to September 11, 2001, there were no federal counter-terrorism powers. Since then the Commonwealth has enacted over 60 anti-terrorism laws.

Professor Kent Roach of the University of Toronto calls this "hyper-legislation". Hyper-legislating creates the impression of action. But new laws do not make us safer.

Under the Crimes (Foreign Incursions and Recruitment) Act 1978 (Cth), it is already an offence (punishable by 20 years' imprisonment) for an Australian citizen to engage in a "hostile activity" in a foreign country. Control Orders and Preventative Detention Orders are already part of our Criminal Code. ASIO has the power to remove passports to prevent travel. The raids last week were conducted under the existing laws.

The second question: if new powers are necessary, should we be sceptical of government claims? Is it responsible to say that this issue is "above politics"?

Parliament's role is to scrutinise law and ensure that the executive branch is held to account. Other countries have courts capable of reviewing laws to ensure human rights compliance. Here the Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011 (Cth) enshrines political rights review. Ensuring compatibility with human rights is a matter for the pollies in Canberra. That approach is somewhat unique and it does place an additional burden on our political representatives.

Bill Shorten is, of course, right that no party should "play" politics with our safety; but we should still expect our political representatives to challenge the assumptions underlying the government position and test the proposals.

Our politicians should be asking whether these laws add anything to the existing measures - particularly since many of the existing measures are so under-utilised (for example, there have been only two Control Orders issued in Australia).

The Attorney General has made two apparently significant concessions on the current proposals. That might lead you to conclude that scrutiny is working. He confirmed that the new laws will not permit the intelligence services to use torture. Secondly, the AG is offering to include a sunset clause.

The torture issue looks like a furphy. It appears to be a response to an article by Paul Sheehan in the Sydney Morning Herald. Sheehan argued that Section 35K of the draft National Security Legislation Amendment Bill (No.1) 2014 bill would allow the security services to engage in torture. Sheehan was right to draw attention to the risk but section 35K needed to be read alongside other provisions - the Government's intention was not to permit torture. This creates the impression of a concession but in reality it is a clarification.

The use of sunset clauses is also interesting. A sunset clause is a provision which states that the Act or certain powers within an Act will expire if they are not renewed by Parliament. It is a way of formally providing for future review of controversial measures.

The AG is proposing a 10-year sunset clause - as was done in 2005. That is a very long period. If these are extraordinary measures requiring periodic review a decade seems generous. More importantly the evidence shows that sunset clauses are an ineffective way of ensuring scrutiny.

The insertion of such a clause shuts down debate and puts it off for some future date when we hope the threat of terror will have receded. That might seem reasonable. But experience shows that when the time for scrutiny comes around review is often merely tokenistic - the UK parliament renewed anti-terror laws for Northern Ireland on an annual basis for over 30 years.

In contrast to the UK, in 2012 the COAG Review of the 2005 counter-terrorism laws produced a detailed report. But the current proposals do not reflect those recommendations or those of the Independent National Security Law Monitor. The review was thorough but it is being ignored.

All of which goes to show that we must insist on a proper examination of any new laws. We should not accept the idea that scrutiny can be deferred. And instead of new laws, we should focus on the need to get the laws right.

Fergal Davis is a senior lecturer and member of the ARC Laureate Fellowship: Anti-Terror Laws and the Democratic Challenge project in the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law. View his full profile here.

Tell us why we need these new anti-terror laws - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Daniel Hurst, political correspondent

theguardian.com, Tuesday 23 September 2014

Human rights commissioner says changes to Australia’s counter-terrorism laws should be temporary and supported by evidence

The justice minister, Michael Keenan, has rejected any suggestion of a conspiracy surrounding the timing of last week’s terrorism raids in Sydney and Brisbane. Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP Image

Australia’s human rights commissioner has warned that governments must be wary of trading away liberties for security and any such measures should be temporary.

Tim Wilson, who was appointed by the Abbott government to the Human Rights Commission to champion freedom, said changes to the nation’s counter-terrorism laws must be supported by evidence “that they are necessary to protect people and not just to be an ambit claim by government or police or security agencies for more powers”.

Tony Abbott told parliament on Monday that Australians should prepare for a shift in “the delicate balance between freedom and security” for “some time to come” as part of the fight against domestic terrorism threats.

Separately, the prime minister’s office said Australian agencies believed an inflammatory new statement attributed to Islamic State (Isis) was genuine.

The Isis statement called on followers to resist “a new campaign by the crusaders” and to kill disbelievers, whether civilian or military, from Australia and other countries that had “entered into a coalition against the Islamic State”.

In a written response provided to some media outlets, Abbott’s office dismissed the claim that Australia was targeted for its willingness to participate in military action in Iraq, saying “these people do not attack us for what we do but for who we are and how we live”.

Making the case for the biggest overhaul of the Australia’s counter-terrorism laws in a decade, Abbott said: “There may be more restrictions on some so that there can be more protections for others. After all, the most basic freedom of all is the freedom to walk the streets unharmed and to sleep safe in our beds at night.”

Parliament will soon debate the government’s first national security legislation bill to expand the powers of intelligence agencies and criminalise disclosure by any person of covert “special intelligence agencies”.

A second bill, targeting Australians suspected of fighting in Syria and northern Iraq, will be presented to parliament on Wednesday and will include a new offence of travelling to a government-declared region without a legitimate purpose.

The attorney general, George Brandis, confirmed a prosecutor would have to prove that a person had travelled to, or remained in, designated “no-go zones”, and it would be up to the defence to mount a successful argument that the person was there for a legitimate purpose.

Wilson said he was “calm” about the mooted no-go zone provision so long as it was done in a way that did not victimise one section of the community.

But he issued a broader call for caution as the parliament prepared to consider a raft of changes.

“Obviously security of the person is absolutely essential in making sure that we can preserve our rights and freedoms but laws should not become too restrictive so we don’t end up trading off security for freedom,” Wilson told Guardian Australia.

He said security powers should “be put under public and parliamentary scrutiny to make sure we get the balance right”. The resulting legislation “should have sunset clauses and review clauses to make sure that if there is any surrender of freedoms for security that it is only ever temporary”.

On Monday Brandis announced several concessions in response to concerns raised by the Islamic community, the Labor opposition and the Liberal Democratic senator David Leyonhjelm.

These include amending legal immunities for Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) officers conducting covert “special intelligence operations” to specifically exclude torture. Other contentious measures, such as the new no-go zone provision, would expire in 10 years unless a future parliament granted an extension.

A prominent member of the Islamic community, Keysar Trad, said the changes were welcome but did not allay his concerns about the extent of changes.

The Islamic Friendship Association of Australia spokesman said the nation must ask whether it was prepared to give away its liberties “because we’re in a state of fear”.

Trad raised practical concerns about how people might prove that they had travelled for a legitimate purpose and the need for people to be given a fair hearing.

“You might be able to say, I was looking after my grandmother for most of this time. The question that will come back to you is: were you looking after her 24 hours a day? You’ve accounted for eight or three hours of every day; how do you account for the rest of your time? That is onerous and whether we want to admit it or not that is already a presumption of guilt.”

Trad argued that the terrorism raids in Sydney and Brisbane last week were evidence the existing powers of police and security agencies were “more than adequate”.

“We do care about our safety as a nation,” he said. “But what does safety and security mean if you have no freedom, if you lose your basic freedoms? I understand that they have a duty and a role to protect the nation. I genuinely respect that role and we want to be partners in protecting the nation but we don’t want to be rubber-stamping an exercise that takes away freedoms.”

The president of the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties, Michael Cope, said once governments changed fundamental legal principles in an area such as terrorism, they cleared the way for similar changes in other areas.

Cope said the federal government must demonstrate the extra powers were necessary and would make a difference.

“The problem is that if you want to have liberty it results in a certain level of insecurity,” he said. “At the end of the day everyone in the country has to make a judgment call about where that line is.

“Once you move the goalposts in area A, they rapidly move to areas B, C and D. It’s all very well for the prime minister to say these are temporary measures but they were meant to be temporary measures a decade ago.”

The Greens senator Scott Ludlam told the ABC’s Q&A program he had a “fundamental problem with the idea that to protect our freedoms we need to abolish them” and it was unsurprising that intelligence agencies wanted more power.

The justice minister, Michael Keenan, a fellow panellist on the program, said the government was acting on the advice of police and security agencies, which he described as “diligent public servants” seeking to ensure community safety.

Keenan rejected any suggestion of a conspiracy surrounding the timing of last week’s raids, saying the police chose when to act and briefed him only a short time beforehand.

Tim Wilson warns against trading liberties for security over terrorism | World news | theguardian.com