How can one say other than I agree, as though that carries weight? Does one go further and wonder if rather than sloppy thinking there is a PLAN. You know, to be Australian by intelligent idiom, like Saddam and his conquest of America or the link to al quida? Is it just the outcome of a zealous individual truly worried about the security of Australia or an on going design for control?
Boy will the red necks have fun with this!

What Andrew Lynch fails to consider is that the interception legislation has to be constantly amended to keep up with fast moving changes in telecommunications technology and its uses.

The problems he vaguely waves to can also never be fully resolved because the world and terrorist threats do not wait for the satisfaction of all objections.

I can see that people outside government (like I am now) are frustrated that they can’t really put their oar into this issue. The arguments or basic information on this issue are either restricted for Cabinet-in Confidence reasons or for national security reasons.
What is not classified and not cross referenced is almost unintelligible. This article did not have links or other references and an internet search to get a “balanced view” breaks down into endless chases through pdf files.

All I know is that our democratically appointed parliament passed this latest fine tuning of the Interception legislation. It seems that the State police and federal bodies were already intercepting B party communications legally before this interception Act was passed.

The Act drew together the state and federal legal stands hence strengthening the legal force of a warrant (if Andrew or any lawyers want to correct this lay interpretation go for it).

It has strong safeguards. One defacto safeguard is that State and Federal interception resources are limited. They do not have the time, money or manpower to cover many people. Judges and elected politicians keep an oversight.

This matter has been personified in this article as “Ruddock” doing it again, but this type of law on interception/bugging is being passed by all shades of government internationally – something about concern for the greater evil of a ball of flame from a terrorist bomb roasting passengers in a tunnel.

continued...

PART 2

SEDITION

Andrew brings in sedition. Kind of easy to see why the 100 year old sedition laws were updated, not to chase us “intellectuals” but mainly to dissuade mullahs in Mosques from declaring an open season on our troops in the Middle East. Perhaps such speeches might be deemed seditious if it could be proven that members of the “congregation” carried out violent acts on the basis of those words.

The fact that a review mechanism for a sedition law was built into it is a strength for a problematic law rather than a weakness.

CONCLUSION

For the sedition, interception and national security laws generally governments cannot release most of the relevant data to the public for discussion. This is because much of the information was collected secretly (or from overseas data) and may give potential terrorists and other law breakers a leg up.

So as we’re not going to get fully informed public discussion I think review clauses and sunset clauses are a strength. They are also are one way of encouraging the laws to be updated in the face of technical changes.

What Andrew sees as a weakness is a strength that recognises practical problems in lawmaking.

Once again, this is an excellent article, keep up the good work 'The Forum'.
There needs to be a unifying concerted effort from ALL Australian journalists, academics, researchers and writers to speak out about these intrusive, anti-democratic laws.
There's something very wrong with Philip Ruddock's (Federal Attorney General) Department, under the Howard government.
Officers of his department have been harrassing and intimidating journalists, documentary makers, and writers for publishing articles and Intellectual property that critiques the government. Australian, Carmel Travers, writer/producer/director of the outstanding 'Truth, Lies, and Intelligence' documentary (available for sale at Dymocks Bookstore and broadcast on SBS in 2005) had her personal computers smashed with a sledgehammer and threaten with 7 years prison for covering the Iraq war and other issues. Clearly, this department and government is antithetic to the values of democracy and their hypocrisy must be criticised from ALL Australians of integrity, otherwise my friends, we won't be living in a democracy in Australia, and we must all unite to continue to speak out about this evil in our own nation. And if you think I'm joking, look at the SBS Dateline transcript of 22 June 2005 called, Sledgehammer Politics.
regards,
Teresa
http://teresavanlieshout.tripod.com/
http://theaustraliaparty.tripod.com/

Any attempt to incorporate anti-terrorism into the normal civil-code is inappropriate, bound to be futile and only create a mess in the rights of ordinary citizens.

Why continue beating around the bush rather than acknowledge the de-facto legal situation? one short and simple law could prevent the current messing around of all regular laws, it could state:

[
a. The government and its appointed agents may break any other law if and to the extent it honestly and reasonably deems it necessary to prevent imminent terror attacks against Australia or its citizens.
b. The government must do everything in its power to prevent the rights and well-being of those not involved in terror from being unnecessarily compromized as a result of (a), and to remedy such compromizes if they occured, even if they were necessary.
c. An attempt to use (a) with any intent other than stopping terror, is a criminal offense that is punishable, according to its severity, by up to incarceration for life.
]

If Howard's honest intention is indeed only to prevent terrorism, he should gladly embrace this law instead of all others.

suggestions/improvements welcome!

Anti terror laws are one part to stop radical islamists and two parts to to subjugate mass populations for gloabal economic radicalism. They are not specific enough to realise the latter.

It seems a new 'divide and conquer' paradigm is being proposed:

A WORLD without punishment sounds like paradise and, given a choice, most people opt for this live and let live approach. But as freeloading inevitably becomes rife, they quickly flee to join a group where selfish members are made to pay, new research by European scientists shows.
Solving some of the world's most pressing issues, such as climate change, will depend on finding the right conditions to exploit this tendency, researchers say.
No explanations, however, account for why many ordinary people recycle, donate blood, or fight wars to help society, for no glory and at great effort.
People do not foresee the personal benefits of co-operating, the study found. When 84 people were offered the choice of playing a money game where punishment was allowed or banned, two-thirds chose the no-punishment group.
In the end almost everyone joined the yes-punishment group. Co-operation increased, punishment dropped off and the financial rewards were high. People were more than willing to undergo financial pain to achieve a collective gain, the team concluded.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/scientists-confirm-no-pain-no-gain/2006/04/07/1143916722780.html

Comments:

*This is Amazing-Propaganda - no scientists or institutes are mentioned

*It has a stunning and timely connection with the AWB scandal, Howard's looming AWB involvement and new media ownership laws.

*Howard is worried and is unashamed to call in media favours to propagate propaganda to tell we the masses that we should dob each other in for any petty sin or annoyance that a neighbour might convey. This is just 'divide the masses and conquer them'. I just think its time to get rid of Howard. I can't think of any one else who would want to propagate this nonsense at this particular moment in Australian history.

* If this is in fact any proper study at all, there are many flaws.

Continuing..

Continued..

1. It is based on stable communities. They don't exist anymore because of global economic investor/everyman-for-himself paradigms.

2. Communities are also destabalising due to global economic pressure to immigrate skills and new consumer markets rather than train community members. This is a punishment for merely existing and redifines the entire game anyway. The above results become inapplicable to modern societies.

3. It is well known that behaviour is not predicated on economics alone. Such things as Jungian connections to the Gestalt and feeling good about oneself (conscience) have also been studied and validated.

4. Such nonsense is reminiscent of Big Brother in '1984'. It seeks to make communities slaves by some moral or economic imperative to whatever paradigms it might propose to enhance economic advantages for minority classes. Typically just a bunch of type A personality, alpha males.

5. This propaganda can be construed as wedge-politics. The simple defeat for this new 'wedge politics' is to vote immediately for an opposition - ANY opposition, before its too late. We still have the power to vote! I don't fancy living in a society where I get stabbed by a neighbour for not tying my shoe laces properly or mowing the lawn a day late. What a joke!

I don't understand why there isn't any rational debate about the value of our freedoms.

In the 4 years before all these laws were installed no acts of terrorism took place in Australia. Many people died or were seriously injured in motorcar accidents or of poor healthcare. We could say that the risk of being killed by terrorists is much smaller than the risks we take every day.

We could lessen these risks by banning (or restricting the use of) cars or doubling the medicare levy. However we deem these everyday risks to be acceptable and don't resort to those measures.

The risk created by terrorists however is deemed to be so great by the government that it will sacrifice all our hardwon freedoms without any measure of debate.

As any insurance person will tell you life is governed by risk. Governments by rules and regulations (eg such as making drink driving illegal) can reduce the everyday risks we face. However the way our government has kneejerked to the suddenly increased risk of terrorism is absurd and defies all common sense.

Australians have been lucky that we have never been governed by a truly malevolent government but we shouldn't be complacent and think that we are immune from abuse. For instance in the last generation the police force of just about every state has had a royal commission into corruption. Not exactly reassuring and it make you wonder if you really want to trust these guys with all your rights.

What's next? Perhaps the immigration department can bring in former stasi informers from eastern Germany under the skills shortage program.

PS I realise this post may come across as coldhearted but I just don't see why we must forgo all our freedoms to save lives from terrorist acts whilst saving lives by doubling the medicare levy or (shock horror) redirecting taxcuts into healthcare is not worthwhile.