Page 389 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 16 February 2016
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
recap on the laws we are discussing here, preventative detention orders allow police to take a person into custody and to detain them for up to 14 days without the person being charged, convicted or even suspected of having committed a crime.
I point out that the preventative detention laws have been used very minimally. They have not been used in the ACT. They had not been used at all in Australia until September 2014 when three men in New South Wales were detained, then released the next day. A second preventative detention order was issued in Victoria in 2015 in relation to alleged plots to disrupt Anzac Day ceremonies. A man was released from the order and then immediately arrested and charged with planning a terrorist attack.
Preventative detention orders were introduced in the ACT in 2006. This followed a push from the commonwealth in 2005, following the terrorist attacks in London, to have all states and territories enact a range of counter-terrorism laws. It is fair to say that these new anti-terrorism laws were extreme. They challenged important concepts that were usually protected in Australia, such as the right to a fair trial and freedom from arbitrary detention.
Preventative detention is not a power found in other liberal democracies like Australia. In fact, other countries that have a much greater threat of terrorism do not allow preventative detention like we do here. The laws allowing preventative detention in the ACT were originally subject to a sunset clause so that they would automatically expire in 2011. However, in 2011 the government introduced legislation to extend the laws for a further five years.
In 2011 the Greens opposed extending the preventative detention laws and we argued that those laws were an unjustified intrusion into long-held freedoms and were unnecessary. I proposed amendments at the time to exclude the preventative detention powers from the ACT. Those were opposed by the Liberal and Labor parties. I will not introduce amendments today as I am aware already that this bill will pass and other parties do not support my position.
But now here we are again, five years later in 2016, and the government is proposing to extend the extraordinary powers again for another five years. Something members may note is that the bill’s title still refers to these terrorism powers as “Extraordinary Temporary Powers”. If this bill passes today their operation will be extended until 2021. That will mean they have been in place for 14 years.
The insertion of a sunset clause, and the explicit labelling of the laws as extraordinary and temporary, was supposed to reflect the fact that these laws are an unusual intrusion upon human rights and a detour from the usual legal principles that underpin our society. This concept appears to be lost as governments continue to re-enact the laws. Are these really temporary laws?
As an example of the extreme nature of preventative detention laws, members may remember when the concept was first introduced by the Howard government in 2005. One aspect of the regime that received a lot of attention was the fact that a person subject to preventative detention was allowed to contact one family member only and
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video