The real agenda behind Ruddock's attack on our terror laws

Remembering of course that conspiracy is a crime…

As much as i prefer uniform laws, i dont think that the provisions of the crimes act in force since 1914 or thereabouts have impacted upon preventing actual terrorist plots.

a concern i have is that with new laws lessening certain rights of the accused – sorry – the ‘suspected’ this coudl encourage a less than ethical application.

for example. one c.chester may well be breaking actual laws, but the evidence may not be there. inspector l.gal could say ‘ms c.chester im using the anti-terror laws to lock you up as i SUSPECT you of POSSIBLY being ABLE to commit a crime of terror’.

how long can a person with no evidence against them, and no access to a lawyer be held ?

in my world i prefer actual crimes being the basis of locking citizens up. proof is always a useful thing in these circumstances. suspicions are not proof.

Agree MrS. Not only unnecessary, but the laws are incapable of combating terrorism – and therein lies the danger.

These laws take a very narrow view of ‘terrorism’ as merely being ‘terrorist acts’ AND conveniently ignores the more complex causes of fundamentalism and terror and the role that major national and corporate powers around the world have played in supporting such fundamentalism (at best turning a blind eye to it) in the name of their own ‘agenda/national interests’ (defined by whoever is pushing that particular line).

The danger is that these laws seems to reassure a sheeplike population lacking any critical insights that merely tougher laws are enough to combat terrorism, despite very recent and vivid international examples to the contrary. A false sense of safety is also dangerous in the longer run, by ignoring the causes of fundamentalism and terror and thereby compounding the problem for future generations, our kids!

Locking up a handful of terror suspects (even without natural justice) may make great news headlines and political point scoring but it does little for addressing the root causes of such human depravity.

And the local arguments which are made against ignoring our human rights within laws that govern our society is a separate argument to the above problem of getting rid of terror. A fool won’t see this difference though.

i really want to go off topic with this one.

But… i suspect that you are right JB… they are using stan the man to catapult the issues into national headlines. Its a disgrace that the alp feds won’t stick up for him. I think his ideaology is good.

the people may well show some respect for ALP again federally if the show some backbone.

Ms Watchirs doesn’t need to be an expert on counter-terrorism to know that Ruddock’s anti-terrorism laws are not necessary to combat terrorism.

Interesting piece. I’m not sure if its necessarily true, but is an interesting view to consider. Old Kim isn’t doing himself many favours these days, the NSW, WA and Victorian (Labor) premiers have spoken out against his mining policy.

Back on the ACT laws topic, ACT Human Right Commissioner Helen Watchirs has come out saying that the ACT’s anti-terrorism laws are adequate. I wasn’t aware that Ms Watchirs was an expert in couter-terroism?