Terrorism: down a slippery slope
The first steps down the slope are likely to involve weakening of the safeguards.[1]
We may reasonably fear:
- that police will learn which judges are most compliant, or least
likely to question the evidence and will go to them for orders;
- that police or politicians will profess frustration with judges who
refuse to grant detention orders, creating public acceptance of the idea
that detention
is proper;
- that adverse reports by the ombudsman will be attacked and then
ignored;
- a more compliant ombudsman will be appointed;
- and the law will be changed to create more of a presumption that
orders will be granted; or to take away options for the judges.
Extensions of the definition of ‘terrorist act’ will be further
stages down the slope. Already the term has been extended to include attacks
on property, or disrupting an electrical system, a transport system, or even
disrupting a financial system.[2]
Each new extension will add to the grounds on which a person may be imprisoned
without trial. (The existing extensions already mean for example that a person
may be put in jail, repeatedly, without trial, on mere suspicion of a plot
to seriously disrupt a financial system. Judges will not find it easy to argue
that this is beyond the point of the new law.)
Then, when we are used to people being put away for these offences, we will
be ready to accept new cases. At that point, we are in grave danger of becoming
a managed democracy (in which only one party is permitted to win) or a police
state.
footnotes
[1]The process is well illustrated
by changes to the law on detaining asylum seekers. The law there has been made
more and more despicable and more and more in breach of individual rights and
more and more in breach of Australia’s international obligations.
[2] Though only where these are intended
to intimidate the public or coerce a government in the interests of an ideological,
religious or political cause. However, wrong as these acts may be, they are
not properly called terrorism. There may be urgency in preventing them. But
that urgency has nothing to do with imminent threat to life.
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