Page 1347 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 9 May 2006
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jurisdictions. We need to ensure that the ACT has the same protections as the rest of Australia against the threat of terrorism. Mr Stefaniak’s preventative detention bill proposes a reasonable and effective solution that achieves consistency with other Australian jurisdictions. For that reason, I have been very pleased to support what he is doing.
I know the fashion in this place is often to be critical of and negative about the federal government. In many areas I am critical of the federal government. I am not happy with some of the changes to the Snowy Mountains scheme and the potential sale there. I back Mr Stanhope on such matters.
But when we come down to preserving our lifestyle, when we come down to protecting ourselves against potential terrorism attack, for heaven’s sake, the naivety that came out of his mouth during that debate at COAG is extraordinary. I honestly believe that it is simply a position that is based on a skewed view of human rights; it is a position that is based on a lack of appreciation of what goes on in the world. It is regrettable for the territory that our elected leader in this city in fact has such a poor command of what goes on in the real world.
The fact is that in Australia we are very fortunate that we have been spared much of the terrorist activity that has occurred in other societies. But if he had lived elsewhere in the world and seen what goes on and talked to people who have to live with these threats on a daily basis or talked to people who have lived in these environments, he might realise that these are matters on which his human rights arguments become pretty thin, when people fear that their kids might be killed when going on a bus to school in Jerusalem or when people catching the tube in London, innocent tourists, fear they might get killed, as happened last year. These are the concerns that he needs to come to terms with. The strident opposition to the federal government was somewhat a fit of pique but also very much a position based on a naive understanding of the real threats that lie there for this country.
Much of these things are intercepted. You can sense that from the reports we see in the media. I do not expect that we are going to hear chapter and verse every disclosure and interception that goes on but it is certainly clear, if you talk to officials involved in this area, that there has been a lot of activity in intercepting potential attacks. But we need to ensure that they have the legislative framework to be able to do those tasks without impediment, without clever lawyers attempting to slow down the law enforcement agencies who are trying to ensure that we have a safe society in which we live.
I do not think that Mr Stanhope’s bill goes far enough. As Mr Pratt has indicated, we will support that bill if Mr Stefaniak’s bill is not supported, because something is better than nothing. We, as an opposition, believe that this is going to be an ongoing process. Those such as Mr Stanhope may take longer to come to appreciate how serious these issues are, but I hope it is not at the expense of people in our community.
So many in this community are involved in these issues. We have large numbers of commonwealth officials; we have diplomatic people. You would think that, if time was taken to talk to those people in our community who deal with security, who deal with counter-terrorism and who deal with the intelligence world, he might bring himself up to speed and appreciate that this is not some frivolous political stunt that has been brought
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