Labor joins attacks on civil liberties
In a stunning display of just how far to the right a Labor leader can
go, NSW Premier Bob Carr has called for even more attacks on civil liberties,
paving the way for a crackdown on dissent, and persecution of immigrants
and Muslims.
On October 30, Carr announced that his government was setting up a Police
Counter Terrorism Co-ordination Command, with 77 staff. The centre began
its operations, from a secret location, on November 1.
While Carr has been fuzzy on exactly who is involved in the unit, it
is a NSW body. It does not include agents from Australia's main intelligence
agencies and members of the Australian Federal Police, although Carr has
stated that the unit will “work closely” with federal agencies.
Along with counter-terrorist activity, the centre will be responsible
for “public order management” and “tactical response”. Out of its total
$17 million funding, $1.8 million will be spent on bugging equipment.
Carr has also called for a national “department of homeland security”,
using his opening speech to the homeland security conference, held October
31-November 1, to launch the proposal. The call has been supported by former
Labor leader Kim Beazley.
What Carr is proposing is to set up one department that would call on
the services of all the federal and state security agencies and police
forces to share information with each other and start coordinating their
work. These agencies combined could much more easily build up profiles
of Australian residents and monitor their political activities.
Integration is also likely to significantly lessen accountability. At
the moment, for one agency to obtain information from another involves
getting approval from a set of governing bodies and individuals. Abolishing
this could lead to higher abuse of monitoring to repress dissent.
Carr has also announced that NSW will examine local legislation to expand
powers of detention and, almost certainly, crack down on protest activities.
In drafting these laws, Carr mentioned looking at the USAPATRIOT Act, which
has resulted in the mass deportation of thousands of US residents and the
detention without trial of thousands of Arab Americans.
These laws would be on top of the legislation passed in August by the
federal parliament, with ALP support, which created new offences of terrorism
so broad they could criminalise mass protests and some industrial action.
Carr's legislation would also be in addition to the Howard government's
proposed legislation to give the ASIO secret police agency powers of detention
without trial.
NSW already has some of the most repressive laws in Australia, rammed
through before the Sydney 2000 Olympics: it has the highest fines for illegal
bill-postering and strict rules about public assembly.
Carr's proposals are just the latest attempts by the NSW Labor government
to use racist attitudes and nationalist xenophobia to both push back civil
liberties and to whip up voter support prior to the March 2003 state election.
@BOX TEXT SPAC = They follow on from Carr's enthusiastic endorsement
of racial profiling police tactics in mid 2001, and the comments made by
NSW police minister Michael Costa that those planning to protest against
the November 14-15 World Trade Organization mini- ministerial meeting are
“terrorists”.
If Carr succeeds in ramming through more repressive legislation, and
setting up a federal agency that will provide more secret police surveillance
and raids upon NSW residents, anti-racist activists will face an even harder
fight.
From Green Left Weekly, November 6, 2002.
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