Page 4579 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 18 October 2011
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potential terrorist targets. So our counter-terrorism law is a crucial tool in being ready for action. The safeguards it carries in the way of review and reconsideration are important in keeping that tool sharp and ready. This bill seeks to achieve those outcomes and consequently we will be supporting it.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (5.09): The Greens have serious concerns about this bill in principle, and I will be moving amendments in the detail stage which we believe make the laws better. Debate on this bill is an important occasion because the bill proposes to extend the sunset clause for another five years. It is rare for a parliament to debate such a proposal and it is important to remember the history of how the ACT got to this point today.
Five years ago, in response to the July 2005 London terrorist bombings, Australian premiers, chief ministers and the Prime Minister agreed to ramp up counter-terrorism laws. Just as the September 11 attacks in the United States have led to wide-ranging new counter-terror laws, so too did the London bombings. The response in 2005 was for state and territory leaders to meet with the then Prime Minister, John Howard, to agree that Australian laws needed to empower police to preventatively detain terror suspects.
The Prime Minister was barred from implementing the legislation through federal parliament because the Australian constitution prevents the federal executive imposing punitive sanctions without a person firstly being tried or convicted by a court. So, as a way of getting around the constitution, on 27 September 2005 Australian state premiers and territory chief ministers agreed to legislate instead of the commonwealth.
The proposal to implement preventative detention was met with sharp criticism from groups such as the Law Council of Australia, human rights academics, civil libertarians, religious organisations and unions, not to mention regular members of the community who were not experts but who saw that there was something wrong with allowing police to take someone off the street without an explanation of what they had done wrong and what they would be charged with. A key concern raised was that preventative detention strikes against fundamental freedoms. The concept does not sit easily within the Australian legal system because it allows the state to detain people without explaining what specific charge they are suspected of committing. The then ACT Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, attracted national media attention when he posted a confidential draft of the national bill on his website and cited human rights concerns.
Eventually, the ACT government settled on a version of the bill and it passed into law in 2006. Some of the comments made at the time warrant repeating. In the lead-up to debate the then Chief Justice of the ACT Supreme Court said:
… what is brought in with a dramatic bang, often stays with an insidious whisper; these laws are like the dubious party guest who refuses to leave.
The then Chief Minister and Attorney-General, Jon Stanhope, said during the Assembly debate:
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