Page 1354 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 9 May 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
restrictive means of preventing a terrorist act and the only effective way to preserve evidence. That lies at the heart of the problem with this legislation.
Preventative detention orders, as discussed at COAG, are key to this legislation. They are key to protecting the community from potential terrorist acts. We are not necessarily talking about terrorist acts that have already been committed. We are talking about potential terrorist acts and trying to stop them occurring, and preventative detention orders are the key. If we make that test too difficult, if we make it too restrictive—and you know that as soon as you make the wording ambiguous, as we have here, judges and lawyers will drive a hole through the legislation—we will see police and intelligence agencies unable to do the job that we expect them to do in relation to protecting the community, and that is significant.
The biggest problem with this legislation is that police and intelligence agencies—and they have told us this—will be restricted from doing their job in preventing terrorist attacks. If the legislation cannot provide that then it is not good legislation; it does not go far enough and it does not do what the community would expect it to do. The arguments that we have had are based on the Human Rights Act. We have put in place the Human Rights Act and now we are not going to protect the human rights of the vast majority of this community, we are not going to protect their right to life, because there may well be severe restrictions on our police and intelligence agencies in being able to act to prevent these kinds of activities.
As I said, I will be supporting Mr Stefaniak’s bill, which fixes some of the problems in the government’s bill. As has been mentioned by previous speakers, we will eventually reluctantly support the government’s bill simply because it is better than nothing. Although it is much better than nothing, it has significant problems which the government should take a good hard look at. They should review and fix their bill.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (12.00): Before I launch into my substantive speech, I will address some of Mr Seselja’s comments. Mr Seselja said that the Chief Minister agreed on the need for legislation of some kind and then went away and changed his mind after the September COAG meeting. I do not see how he can say that the Chief Minister changed his mind when here today we are debating a body of legislation that substantially answers the federal government’s requirements.
Secondly, Mr Seselja said that the ACT community did not want a human rights act, that 90 per cent of Canberrans who made submissions on the Human Rights Act opposed it. I will make two points about that. One is that everyone knows that when anything comes up in regard to human rights—for instance, reproductive rights or the right to euthanasia in ending one’s own life due to serious illness and so on—every politician receives many letters and submissions. We also know that the results of surveys do not necessarily represent the views of the major part of the community. However, a part of the community seems to be actively opposed to human rights and other safeguards of our civil liberties.
Mr Seselja also is concerned about using the decisions of foreign courts to inform our own legislation. I believe that Mr Seselja has a law degree and knows that our whole body of law comes from courts in foreign countries. I suppose we could change and go back to some sort of customary law. However, a lot of the issues that we are being forced
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .