The Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, recently set a deadline for asylum seekers living in Australia to make their applications for protection.  There about 7,500 people affected.  Each adult has to fill in a complex 41 page form, and to fill in a 25 page form for each of their children, babies and all.

Asylum seekers have only one chance to apply for protection, and mistakes on their forms will lead to some being sent back to the dangers from which they have fled.  Any inconsistencies, for example with what they said when they arrived in Australia, can be fatal. 

Mr. Dutton is not providing the legal assistance essential to ensure that the forms are completed appropriately, nor does the government provide the interpreter services that are required.  Volunteer organisations and lawyers acting pro bono do not have a hope of completing the work in time. 

We are asking you to write to your member of parliament, to a senator, and to the minister, asking them to remove this deadline, and request that legal and interpreter help is funded by the government.

Could you please let us know if you are in communication with any members of parliament on this issue.

Martin Bibby, Convenor, CCL Asylum Seekers Action Group

We have been working with Amnesty International on a campaign to generate support for a NSW Bill of Rights. Victoria has one. The ACT has one. Queensland is getting one. It is time we had a human rights act in New South Wales. There have been two previous attempts to introduce a human rights act in New South Wales. The last attempt was over 10 years ago.

It is time to try again. Go to humanrightsfornsw to find out more.

In a surprising -and disappointing- intervention Minister Dutton has written to the Muslim Legal Network (MLN) querying the intention behind a section of their recently launched guide to anti-terrorism laws: ASIO, the Police and You.

The clear implication from the Minister was that the MLN were intentionally providing guidance to assist persons with terrorist or related criminal intentions to avoid detection by the Australian Border Force or AFP. 

The extraordinary thing about this totally unwarranted distortion of the clear intentions of the guide (and its three earlier editions since 2004) was that the specific section cited as disturbing by the Minister was closely modelled on advice provided by a NSW Regional Coordinator of the Australian Border Force and their own official fact sheet "Border Advice for Hajj Traveller" issued in 2015.  

As anyone reading this document would know the intentions behind the publication are totally constructive and positive. 

This guide was produced for the same reason the three earlier editions were: to provide the community with a clear and understandable description of these laws and the rights and responsibilities of citizens in relation to them. Surely that is a positive! 

The MLN has replied to the Minister and circulated a media statement repudiating his sinister interpretation of the guide.  Nonetheless, they will slightly amend the wording to more strongly emphasise their positive intention. 

NSWCCL considers the Minister's distorted interpretation to be deeply disturbing. We hope it does not signal an unwarranted and biased focus on this community guide to  C-T laws because it was produced by a Muslim legal network.  

We commend this 4th edition of ASIO, the Police and You. It provides a much needed service to the community - and we are very pleased that NSWCCL has contributed to all of the editions since 2004. 

Dr Lesley Lynch 

V-P NSWCCL 

MLN media release 

Anti-terrorism laws- ASIO, the police and you 

A much needed, plain English guide to Australia's complex array of counter-terrorism laws was launched tonight by the Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy Network (AMCRAN) and the NSW Muslim Legal Network (MLN).  NSWCCL was very pleased to assist in this enterprise by reviewing and advising on aspects of the publication - as we also did in its earlier versions of 2004 and 2007. 

AMCRAN and the MLN have delivered again on very important and difficult project. It is a time-consuming and complex forensic task to analyse the 80 plus counter-terrorism laws in Australia to extract accurate and reliable information for citizens who might be impacted by these laws and their legal representatives.  

The initial edition of this guide was in response to a community need to understand new laws that were not only very complex but markedly different in their implications for rights and responsibilities of citizens- and the powers of ASIO and the AFP.   This 2017 edition incorporates the virtual tsunami of new counter-terrorism laws passed in recent years- significant parts of which the NSWCCL, the Law Council of Australia and many community groups strongly opposed.  

Significant changes covered in this version include:

"new offences of advocating terrorism and genocide; the new offence of travelling to declared areas; laws affecting citizenship and passports; the introduction of named person warrants; the introduction of mandatory metadata retention laws; laws allowing control orders to apply to children as young as 14 years; and the increase of the powers of both the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the Australian Federal Police (AFP)".  (Preface to the 4th edition) 

This guide will help the the community to understand the reach of current counter-terrorism laws and the powers of ASIO and the Australian Federal Police. It may also be helpful for ASIO and AFP officers. It is a terrifically important publication - and we congratulate the MLN and AMCRAN and the other individuals who assisted with the writing and review process. 

We are fairly confident - along with the publishers - that this will not be the final version. 

In the near future NSWCCL will be collaborating with other interested groups to run forums to familiarise interested people with the contents and significance of this updated guide. 

Dr Lesley Lynch

Convenor National Security and Counter Terrorism Group. 

Anti-terrorism laws- ASIO the police and you 

NSWCCL has formally argued its strong support for a national anti-corruption agency in Australia.

We put our views in a submission to the current Senate Select Committee Inquiry on a National Integrity Commission (NIC) which continues the work of the 2016 Inquiry on the same topic: i.e. should  Australia have a national anti-corruption body like the NSW ICAC and similar bodies in other states?

As a civil liberties organisation NSWCCL has previously opposed anti-corruption agencies sitting outside the established justice system and wielding extraordinary coercive and covert powers. We have cautiously shifted our position in response to the growing threat that increasingly complex forms of corruption pose to the public good in Australia:  undermining the integrity of our political system, distorting the policy making process, diverting resources from public good objectives and generally undermining public trust in our political class, governing institutions and public administration. 

Not content with the Migration Act in its current form, the Government continues to put forward changes designed to increase the power of the Minister and further constrain avenues available to asylum seekers and refugees. Our Asylum Seeker and Refugee Action Group has considered these bills and asks you to contact your local members of Parliament to oppose the proposed changes to the Migration Act.  If you have a Coalition member of the Federal Parliament, you could urge them to rethink these Bills. If you have a local or nearby ALP member of the Federal Parliament, you could contact them, or one of the NSW ALP or Green Senators—to urge them to maintain their opposition to the following bills. Two of these Bills have been passed by the House of Representatives but, so far, been rejected or delayed by the Senate (the third of the Bills listed below has not yet passed the House of Representatives): 

 The Migration Amendment (Visa Revalidation and Other Measures) Bill 2016,

The Migration Legislation Amendment (Regional Processing Cohort) Bill 2016,

The Migration Legislation Amendment (Code of Procedure Harmonisation) Bill 2016 Provisions. 

 These bills contain shameful features which would undermine the rights, not only of asylum seekers and of recognised refugees, but of permanent residents and temporary visa holders across the board.  They give unprecedented, non-compellable, non-reviewable powers to the Minister for Immigration and Border Security. 

 Full details of objections to these bills are made in submissions made by the Law Council of Australia or by the CCL and minority reports by ALP senators and by Green senators on the Legal and Constitutional Committee of the Senate (LEGCON).

The push for abortion law reform in NSW takes another step tomorrow (Thursday 11/05/17).  The Legislative Council will debate and vote on the Abortion Law Reform Bill introduced by Greens MLC Mehreen Faruqi. ALP members will have a conscience vote- and there is just a chance that it might get passed in the Council.

This would be a significant step in NSW –even though it is unlikely that it will get majority support in the current lower house.

NSWCCL has publicly supported the Bill. Yesterday we wrote to all members of the NSW Parliament urging them to give this Bill proper and positive consideration and to support its passage through Parliament so that matters relating to abortion in NSW are treated primarily as a health rather than a criminal matter. 

On Wednesday last week (22/3/170) the AG George Brandis introduced the Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2017 into the Senate with the intention of its being considered very quickly. It immediately generated a wave of community opposition – especially from ethnic/multicultural community groups.  

On Thursday, the Bill was referred to the Legislative and Constitutional Affairs Committee for a ridiculously rushed ‘review’ with the Committee having to report by the following Tuesday (28/3/17).

This was a provocative time frame, effectively barring the community from any meaningful input into assessing the implications of the proposed changes on the ambit and operation of the Act. 

NSWCCL strongly opposes the proposed amendments in this Bill which will seriously and unnecessarily weaken protections against race hate speech  currently provided by s18(C ) of the Act.

The right to protection against race hate speech 

The Freedom of Speech in Australia Report (28^th January 2017) will bring no joy to those urging wholesale repeal  or major  weakening  of Part IIA of the Racial Discrimination Act  which prohibits racially motivated hate speech. 

At the end of another (unnecessary and rushed) review process, which attracted 11460 responses, the Parliamentary Human Rights Committee was unable to make a recommendation to the Government on this core provision.  Instead it restricted itself to listing 6 options that had the support of at least one Committee member. (R3).  Neither abolition nor major weakening of the provision appears in this list of options. Not one Committee member supported an extreme option.

NSWCCL recently lodged a submission with the Attorney General’s Department and the Department of Communications and Arts in January 2017. We reiterated our view that the current metadata scheme is an affront to civil liberties and oppose its extension into civil proceedings. Extension of the uses to which metadata may be put is one of the reasons that we opposed the introduction of laws requiring collection and retention of metadata in the first place.

In our submission we noted the international experience, which suggests that metadata rarely makes a difference in criminal investigations.