One Nation MP in row over CJC

One Nation MP in row over CJC

By Bill Mason

BRISBANE — Queensland One Nation MP Jack Paff has pledged to introduce bills to abolish the Criminal Justice Commission and its parliamentary watchdog, the Parliamentary Criminal Justice Committee.

Paff's move follows a row over a story concocted by Paff alleging use of violence by a senior police officer in order to extract confessions.

The Labor state government and the Coalition opposition have called on Paff to resign or be expelled from the PCJC.

Queensland Council for Civil Liberties president Terry O'Gorman said on January 22 that One Nation's proposal to abolish the CJC was a bid to return to the police corruption of the Bjelke-Petersen era.

O'Gorman blamed the concentration of ex-police officers among One Nation parliamentarians for the party's "way-out" approach to criminal justice issues.

"These ex-police officers want to return us to the era of the 1977 street march ban, where decent law-abiding citizens were arrested by their hundreds for peaceful, legitimate, non-violent anti-government protests", he said.

The One Nation bandwagon has clearly lost a wheel since its spectacular success in gaining a quarter of the votes in the Queensland state election last June.

Its erratic, right-wing conspiracy theories have increasingly discredited the party in the eyes of many previous supporters.

Nevertheless, it would be dangerously premature to pronounce the party's demise, as many mainstream media commentators have done.

From GLW issue 346