Page 1343 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 9 May 2006
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Why do I recommend this very short list at least? Space precludes my listing many others. Clearly Mr Stanhope and his ministers do not trust Mr Keelty’s advice or the advice of other federal experts. If the government think that Mr Keelty and his police’s advice is too unfashionable to comprehend—and, given the disrespect we have seen both from Mr Stanhope and Mr Corbell in recent days, this would seem to be the case—then I strongly urge this government’s ministers to quickly read these references. Have a reality check, Chief Minister. If they do, I guarantee that there will be conversions on the road to Damascus. The government will be back here in a flash to upgrade this pithy legislation faster than the flash of a suicide bomber.
Our police must be equipped to deal quickly and safely with the very different types of criminals they may encounter in their counter-terrorist operations. There is little room in which to muck around. You are not simply letting go a burglar caught by our police for the sixth time—too often a feature of local criminal justice. We are asking police to monitor, track and arrest people highly likely to kill and to suicide if necessary in the act of killing or in the act of final defiance to avoid arrest.
Do I need to remind the Chief Minister of the young Spanish Islamists, a number of them Spanish born, who recently blew themselves and police up when police closed in on them? Spain did not comprehend that these things might happen. You are not on your own, Mr Stanhope, at least in that sense.
You must arm your police, Mr Stanhope, with the tools and the confidence to be able to quickly and cleanly carry out operations with some certainty that, like in all other states, people arrested will be safely and securely held with sufficient time to allow police to interrogate with comfort and thoroughness and that police will have the knowledge that people arrested will not be able to communicate with their associates, particularly where that communication perverts or obstructs the course of justice or when that communication allows the continuation of terrorist crimes on track to be continued. You must support our police, Mr Stanhope. You must give them confidence to put their bodies on the line, because that is the mindsets they have. They are willing to do that.
But you must also give the community confidence that their police force can protect them and that their police will remain safe. You are not doing this, Chief Minister, both because of your watering down of human rights in this first model that you are peddling here today and because of the inordinate amount of time it has taken to even get this to this place today.
I am also reminded that we have yet to see, by the way, any concrete evacuation management plans, either tabled here or publicised to the broader Canberra community, or terrorist threat management plans across the ACT. It really underlies again the attitude of this government that they shy away from these frightening realities. They are just not equipped to approach these very, very serious matters in terms of the risk to our community.
I call upon this government to come back to this place as soon as you can, after we support this legislation here today—for the sake of time, we will support this legislation; for the sake of time, to get something expedited—and, for God’s sake, put some teeth in
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