This may seem an absurd question after all we are a parliamentary democracy with its balance of the separation of powers. The climate of fear based on keeping the country secure from would be terrorists has been ramped by our government anaesthetizing the population in accepting any law or imposition in the name of security.
It worries me when people don’t understand the underpinning of the rule of law. The law is not arbitrary but there for everyone be they people we like as well as people we hate, it is what is written in the law that counts and judgments are made on this, not an arbitrary decision from a politician. Thus, centralizing power in a minister’s hands with no chance for review leads us down this path.
If judgements are arbitrary it makes us no different from a totalitarian state where no-one can be sure what the decision is based on.
A number of years ago I listened to a talk on this subject by Professor Philip Alston, international law scholar and human rights practitioner. He outlined the characteristics of a police state and the list really concerned me considering the state of our government today.
The denigration of law when Tony Abbot worried about if a suspect terrorist was tried and was freed. What happened to being presumed innocent until proven guilty a basic tenet of the rule of law? Removal of legal restraints from government and exemptions granted to agencies from the coverage of normal execution of the law. A person can be taken into custody on suspicion without the normal recourse to access to a lawyer.
Limits on press freedom and curtailing public access to information this has been seen when questions have been asked about the detention of asylum seekers and turning back the boats. The press and public have been fobbed off the high-handed response about the need for secrecy for security reasons. It is easy to stamp ‘Top Secret’ on a document but it doesn’t necessarily make the information in it an actual security risk, but rather that politicians do not want to be embarrassed.
Authorizing the surveillance of the citizenry, nobody objects to surveillance of those possibly perpetrating crimes but it must be authorized in the strictest way through the courts. Limiting the freedom of movement of citizens, there is no limits on how this can be used. The demonization of certain groups also lends itself to abuse.
Truncated Parliamentary proceedings of which I would add the blatant way in which to push through questionable security laws by denigrating anyone questioning them as being soft on terrorism. This builds a further sense of fear in the population.
Once there are exceptions to the rule of law it becomes open to the possibility of abuse. With the aggregation and reductions of these freedoms they can easily be expanded. The government can point to the many joint committees in this area, the Human Rights Commission and the media but they are fig leaves when the government denigrates and abuses anyone who criticizes their decisions and behavior.
Much of the population is inured to these accumulated changes. The usual refrain of, ‘if you haven’t done anything wrong, what have you got nothing to worry about?’ But it worries me, what they can do to one person or group today it can do to anyone, history tells us this.
Benjamin Franklin’s statement about freedom still holds true. ‘Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve either one’
Australia has no Bill of Rights, like Britain, Canada and the United States to measure any new law against and we are now walking away from International law. Where does this lead Australia? On the road to a police state, I hope not.
I think we all should be fearful considering the raids we’ve seen on NewsCorp and ABC journalists as well as the accumulation of power in Peter Dutton’s hands in his now expanded ministry.
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