'Anti-terrorism' laws 'creating climate of fear'

CANBERRA — On October 27, 100 people attended a public forum at the Australian National Library on the federal government's planned new anti-terrorism laws.

Organised by Civil Liberties Australia ACT, the forum was told by the group's secretary Bill Rowlings that, while he supported "tough" anti-terrorism laws, those proposed by the Howard government on September 8, and agreed to by all the Labor state premiers on September 27, were flawed and amounted to a "strategic decision to scare people".

Rowlings, a media adviser to John Howard during the 1996 election campaign, described how the government's "wedge politics had been used to create a climate of fear among voters.

Christopher Michaelson, a researcher at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, noted that the parliamentary review of the 2003 ASIO laws had received only two submissions supporting the retention of the laws — from ASIO and the attorney-general's department — while 98 submissions opposed the laws in their present form.

ANU lecturer in international law Azmi Wood pointed out how only Muslim organisations had been proscribed under the existing laws and that it would be Australia's Muslims who would be most harshly affected by the new laws.

Nick Everett

From Green Left Weekly, November 2, 2005.

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From GLW issue 647