Page 1344 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 9 May 2006
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these laws, support your police, support your community, remove these risks and get consistent with the rest of the country.
MR MULCAHY (Molonglo) (11.18): I make a few comments in support of my colleague Mr Stefaniak’s preventative detention bill, which has been presented to the Assembly, and to echo some of the concerns that have been raised by Mr Pratt. Briefly, I reinforce the major differences between the two bills at issue and why Mr Stefaniak’s recommendations really should be adopted.
Terrorism as a form of crime is now at the forefront of everyone’s thinking. This means that the legislation used to deal with it must be as up-to-date and consistent across the board as possible so as to ensure that the perpetrators are caught and the potential disasters are prevented and averted.
The ACT government is responsible for Australia’s capital city. Arguably, it is the most important city in the country from a political perspective. It is the home of our federal government, some 90 official diplomatic missions and 1,000 or so diplomatic representatives. And it does not take a genius to figure out that these could easily be considered potential terrorist targets, all concentrated in a relatively small area.
We have in fact seen over a number of years that disputes within those countries have overflowed into Australia and into Canberra. Indeed, there have been attacks on representatives of various missions. The Indian embassy, I know, was the subject of a violent attack on one of their officials. I think it was a knifing. There was occupation of the Iranian embassy, I believe. There have been others that have been threatened.
Despite the Attorney-General and Chief Minister’s pre-occupation with the plight of people who may get caught up in these things, it was interesting to observe the way he reacted when he was before my committee, the public accounts committee, giving evidence one day last year and, suddenly, the threat of a terrorist attack on the Indonesian embassy in Canberra erupted. The look of composure changed very dramatically as all the forces of this city and the federal and territory agencies had to be called into action against what appeared to be potentially a very serious threat that could have not only impacted the lives of the officials in the embassy but others, particularly those resident in Yarralumla.
It is well to have this theoretical advocacy of the human rights of people who may get caught up under this legislation but, regrettably, the level of passion that one would like to see about potential victims is not as evident. The ACT faces the real challenge of having a range of potential terrorist targets all concentrated in a relatively small area.
There are many similarities in terms of Washington DC in that it has major institutions in a close area, and I do not think we ever hear from that part of the world people saying, “Let us not worry too much about the plight of the ordinary citizens. We have to be very careful about the human rights of suspects and potential terrorists.” The attempt to water down what was agreed at COAG is an extraordinary measure and not one that the people of Canberra will ultimately thank the Chief Minister for.
Mr Stefaniak has quoted the opinions of Mr Mick Keelty, the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, an obvious authority on issues of crime prevention and
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