Page 1335 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 9 May 2006
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New South Wales bill is a much simpler bill. If you read the committee’s report, which you have before you, in respect of scrutiny of that bill, in some aspects the rights of would-be terrorists are less than they are under the Stanhope bill. I think that is what the community would expect.
Even in looking at your own Human Rights Act, section 28 refers to laws that need to be done to protect society, that can be ticked off on the basis that the overall community need overrides the human rights of individuals. The individuals we are talking about here are pretty horrible individuals who have no compunction about killing and maiming tens, hundreds or thousands of people. Human rights is a balancing act and here I think you have failed in that act. You have been blinkered by your ideology; you have been blinkered by the ideology of protecting, overly, the rights of criminals and ignoring the rights of law-abiding, ordinary Canberra citizens who go about their everyday business without wanting to kill, maim or harm anyone.
When it comes to protecting those rights, that should be the paramount right. If that means making it a little bit easier for our courts and, along the lines of the rest of the country, locking up would-be terrorists for an absolute maximum of 14 days, then so be it. That is not a very difficult equation. You are not being a responsible government by putting an overemphasis on the rights of the terrorists and criminals to the detriment of ordinary, law-abiding people in the ACT whom you have a fundamental duty to protect. So the bill is flawed; it is out of kilter with the rest of Australia; and we feel that it cannot adequately protect the people of the ACT as it stands. It differs from all other legislation in Australia, as well as from commonwealth law in those crucial aspects.
I have mentioned a couple of areas where the bill is out of kilter. It also differs from all other jurisdictions—this is perhaps not quite so important a point but nevertheless one that is of importance—in that it does not provide for the detention of 16 to 18-year-olds. Given what we know about the preparedness of terrorists to influence and enlist vulnerable young people, this is totally unrealistic. One only has to look back through recent history. There have been problems in the Middle East with the intifada in Palestine and Israel, where naive young people are being used by much older people to push their brand of fanaticism—in that case, blowing themselves and other people up; killing themselves and a lot of other people.
Sadly, it is a fact of life, certainly in terrorism, that age is no barrier and that 16 and 17-year-olds can be used. In fact, by making it possible for the authorities to detain a 16 or 17-year-old, you are probably doing them a great service. One, you will possibly be stopping them from being killed; and, two, perhaps some sensible person or persons can get to them and persuade them how stupid their course of action would be. But you do not have that; again, you are out of kilter with the rest of the country. You are not only doing a disservice to the people of the ACT; you are also doing a disservice to any 16 or 17-year-old who might be enlisted by these evil people who go about committing their nefarious schemes.
Another area of difference is the five-year sunset clause, as distinct from the 10-year sunset clause in other jurisdictions. I do not see that as being as big a difference as perhaps the different test but it is also a significant difference. It perhaps shows a reluctance or lack of willingness to grapple with this very important issue—and makes our legislation different from that of the rest of Australia. In practical terms, it is
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