It has long been a crime to murder anyone, conspire to do so, or fail to tell the police about foreknowledge of such a crime. Yet the Government has introduced 42 new pieces of legislation to deal with murder committed by people called terrorists. According to the Attorney General, Phillip Ruddock, this is not enough. Ruddock says he intends introducing more legislation before the 2007 federal election.
Oddly, Ruddock does not intend to close the legislative hole exposed by the David Hicks case. He will not make it an offence under Australian law to fight on the side of a despicable government like that of the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan—so long as it’s not designated a terrorist organisation. But it will remain an offence to fight on the side of an insurgent group trying to overthrow such a regime.
Apart from dealing with this anomaly, there is a strong case for pruning the existing legislation. In particular, amendments are needed to prevent innocent Australians being forced to provide information which can lead to people being tortured or executed without trial. There should also be a much greater willingness to prosecute Australian officials who are complicit in the torture of the fellow Australian citizens.
Innocent people are by no means exempt from torture, as a Canadian engineer, Maher Arar, discovered in a case relevant to one of the Howard Government’s key anti-terrorist laws. Arar was kidnapped by the FBI at New York’s JFK airport in 2002 and "rendered" (as the official euphemism puts it) to Syria where he was tortured for a year on behalf of the US government. (Yes, that’s the same Syria the Bush Administration publicly lacerates for allegedly helping terrorists.) Last September, a Canadian judge released an 822 page report exonerating Arar of any wrongdoing. In January, the Canadian Government formally apologised to Arar for the supporting role played by the Mounties in his mistreatment and awarded him almost $12 million in compensation.
A similar scandal could easily result from the anti-terror law which allows the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation to detain and question people who are not suspected of terrorist sympathies. All that’s required is a suspicion that they may have information of interest to ASIO or its overseas partners. Despite some safeguards, a little noticed feature of this law is that it smudges the line between ASIO’s previously constrained role as an intelligence service in