Page 384 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 4 March 2008
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publishing the draft terror laws. Under these laws, the AFP could tell only one parent what had happened to their child. Never let it be forgotten that John Howard, Philip Ruddock and the AFP wanted to make it a criminal offence for any parent who had been informed that their child was being detained without charge for up to 14 days to tell their partner—their child’s mother or father—what had happened to their child. I think even Kafka would have had trouble dreaming up this scenario. It is so monstrous that it defies belief, yet it was in the draft legislation presented to the premiers and chief ministers.
I remember Mr Stefaniak standing up and very strongly castigating Mr Stanhope. But what if it was one of Mr Stefaniak’s children, or the child of anybody in this house, who had been seen talking to their treating doctor—say, a certain Dr Haneef—and ASIO and the AFP wanted to know what he or she knew about a terrorist attack in England? Do not say that the AFP and the intelligence services do not make mistakes or selectively leak documents and then deny any wrongdoing—we have seen what they do through that Dr Haneef shambolic affair.
It was only because the Chief Minister had the moral backbone to expose this and a number of other nightmare provisions that they were removed from the proposed legislation. It is possible that the rights we are going to enact today will be invoked to ameliorate the treatment experienced by someone detained under the ACT’s preventative detention laws, which the Greens and many eminent legal commentators have never accepted are fully human rights compliant.
Our rights and freedom came about because people of goodwill fought for them. Although it has a very long history, that fight has been conducted very globally and very actively and very productively since the Second World War. People have suffered to bring these rights and freedoms into existence.
What Thomas Jefferson said some 200 years ago is still pertinent—the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Of course, that is interpreted differently by many people. What has changed in the intervening period is that the coercive powers and technologies at the disposal of the state have increased exponentially. However, the callousness of many public officials does not seem to have changed significantly.
The case of Al-Kateb highlights the dangers of leaving human rights in the hands of people for whom administrative expedience and political, religious or personal advantage take precedence over basic human decency or the rights of the individual. In Al-Kateb the commonwealth argued, and the High Court had to accept, that Australian law allows the commonwealth to lock an innocent person away to rot in conditions worse than a jail for the term of his natural life. That is despite that fact that Mr Al-Kateb was stateless because he was born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents.
What the bill before us today does is create more mandatory relevant considerations which decision makers must take into account. It adds to a long list of such considerations which exist both at common law and in legislation such as the AD(JR) Act. I would have preferred that the right to compensation was included in this bill. But even in this watered-down form, this is a welcome step in the right direction.
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