Page 3585 - Week 11 - Thursday, 22 September 2005
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proposed by the federal government will breach the territory’s human rights law, the bill of rights, which, of course, no other state or territory has been foolhardy enough to adopt to this point in time. The Chief Minister says he has been advised by the Human Rights Commissioner, Dr Watchirs, that the proposals of the federal government would appear to breach the legal rights of territory citizens to liberty, privacy and a fair trial. What rights are they protecting—the liberty of would-be criminals to go and kill and maim others; the privacy of would-be criminals to make it harder to bring these evil people to justice? What about ordinary citizens’ rights to liberty, to go about their daily business without fear of being victims of crime?
The Chief Minister has been quoted as saying:
As Dr Watchirs points out in her advice, a number of commentators have voiced their concerns that the sorts of measures being proposed by the Prime Minister, John Howard, are draconian.
Apparently Dr Watchirs has found that the plan to allow police to detain suspects for 14 days without charge contravenes the right to liberty in the Human Rights Act, and I am sure it probably does. But this is a question of balance: is this necessary in the circumstances? It may well be, and I am sure that is something that the ministers will, in fact, sort out. I hope the Chief Minister goes to this conference prepared to deal with this with an open mind, although I somehow doubt it.
But at the end of the day, if the situation is so dire that we have to enact laws like this, which certainly would go against our Human Rights Act, then we should do so. I, for one, would much rather be detained illegally for 14 days and then be told, “Sorry Bill, we have got the wrong bloke. Off you go.” All right, my liberty may have been taken away from me for 14 days but I think that may be a reasonable trade-off. I would rather this happen than being blown up, or seeing my wife and kids blown up, or seeing people I know in my community blown up. Other issues, such as the electronic shackling of terror suspects, tighter checks on citizen applications and a new crime of inciting violence, are on the table for discussion at the Council of Australian Governments meeting.
We are concerned that this Chief Minister is so hogtied by his ideological mindset and by his obsession with what is really a very skewed and selective variant of human rights, that he would put at risk the human rights of citizens of the ACT. Governments have to balance the rights of individuals with the need to prevent acts of terror causing death and injury to hundreds of innocent people going about their daily activities. I think people know that there has to be a balance. However, I fear that the government has neither the judgement nor the political will to put in place proper antiterror measures that would best protect the population of the ACT.
Again, I would stress to the Chief Minister that he needs to put aside some of his ideological ideas and go to the conference with an open mind. I am sure there will be changes made to some of the initial proposals but I think it is crucially important that we take a united stand. If the states and territories need to enact laws it is important that this be done properly right across the states and territories. I certainly would hate to see the ACT be the odd state or territory out.
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