Page 1352 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 9 May 2006
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embassy in Canberra. With significant national institutions here in Canberra, such as Parliament House, the Australian War Memorial, the Lodge and numerous others, as well as foreign embassies, Canberra would have to be amongst the higher profile terrorist targets in this country.
In a former life I worked on legislation which tightened security restrictions at airports, including background checking of individuals who have access to security restricted areas of airports. This was one part of the domestic response to terrorism. But, as we have seen with Bali, terrorism is not restricted to aircraft. A robust, intelligence-led response is now necessary to protect our citizens from terrorist attacks. It was with this background in mind that in September last year the Council of Australian Governments unanimously agreed to a series of counter-terrorism measures.
The Chief Minister, when faced with the overwhelming evidence presented to him by police and intelligence agencies, agreed to the necessity of the government’s legislation. On 27 September the Chief Minister agreed to the outcomes as discussed with the Prime Minister, the premiers and the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory. The Chief Minister agreed to empowering Australia to better deter terrorists through the provision of control orders and preventative detention structures, and this has now been altered. The Chief Minister went to these meetings, took a hard line and said, “They have to convince me that this is necessary.” The AFP and the intelligence agencies did just that, and the Chief Minister agreed. But then he went away and changed his mind. I think that is what has brought us to the debate we are having today. In fact, the arguments that the Chief Minister put were that the proposed terrorism legislation was not compliant with the Human Rights Act and, of course, that brings me to the Human Rights Act.
The Chief Minister used the Human Rights Act as his reasoning for not honouring his commitment at COAG. This demonstrates the truth of one of the major criticisms of the Human Rights Act and of bills of rights in general. Mr Stefaniak might be able to clarify something for me: did 90 per cent of Canberrans who have made submissions oppose the act?
Mr Stefaniak: Something like that.
MR SESELJA: So this Human Rights Act, which most Canberrans opposed, is being used by the Chief Minister as an excuse to derogate from his fundamental duty to protect the residents of the ACT. At the time the Human Rights Act was proposed, the point was made that by putting absolute protections on the rights of some, the rights of many would be compromised. And this is precisely what we are seeing here.
Mr Berry, who has just participated in the debate, cited precedents from the European Court of Human Rights, and I think it is a real concern when we start using the decisions of foreign courts to inform our own legislation in this country. A lot of people in this nation have significant concerns that through things like the Human Rights Act we seem to be taking matters out of the hands of law-makers and more and more are likely to put them in the hands of judges, and the attitude that we heard expressed by Mr Berry gives some weight to that.
The police commissioner, Mick Keelty, has been quite critical of the ACT’s approach and it is worth reflecting a little on what he had to say. He was reported in January as
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