In the wake
of the murder of a soldier on guard at the War memorial in Ottawa, on Friday
Prime Minister Tony Abbott told Melbourne radio station 3AW that the piper playing
the Last Post at the War Memorial in Canberra could be a terrorist target. According
to a 24 October report by national political reporter Latika Bourke, in the
online edition of The Age (see here):
Mr Abbott said while the attack abroad had not
"furthered the risk" for Australia's Parliament he warned
"there's a copycat tendency amongst these people".
He said authorities has not considered
Canberra's War Memorial a target "prior to yesterday" but now would
because it serves as a "symbol of our nation".
"I suppose to extremist fanatics it could
therefore be a target. There's the Last Post at our War Memorial every day and
I guess if someone wanted to do something gruesome that's the kind of thing
that could be looked at…”
Why
anyone would want to plant that seed in the mind of a potential terrorist or a
disturbed loner is an unfathomable mystery to me. The thought is father to the
deed, as the saying goes. What on earth was he thinking?
Writing on his aviation security blog Schneier on Security (accessible here), cryptographer and security analyst Bruce Schneier comments on what he calls
the bizarre new TSA rules "magical thinking": if we somehow protect against the specific tactic of the previous terrorist, we make ourselves safe from the next terrorist.
He goes on to soliloquise (see 26 December post here):
I wish that, just once, some terrorist would try something that you can only foil by upgrading the passengers to first class and giving them free drinks.
In Petro Georgiou on the anti-terror laws I noted the concerns of the Member for Kooyong that the Government has introduced legislation, in the form of the National Security Monitor Bill, which purports to provide for independent review of the 49 anti-terror laws which have been passed by Federal Parliament since 9 September 2001, but which fundamentally negates every principle of statutory independence.
Perhaps someone in government has been making a close study of Sir Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and drawn inspiration from his observations about Augustus:
... the system of the Imperial government as it was instituted by Augustus ... may be defined an absolute monarchy concealed as a commonwealth. The masters of the Roman world ... concealed their irresistible strength, and humbly professed themselves the accountable ministers of the senate, whose supreme decrees they dictated and obeyed.
...
... He wished to deceive the people by an image of civil liberty, and the armies by an image of civil government ...
...
Caesar had provoked his fate ... The title of king had armed the Romans against his life. Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom. A feeble senate and enervated people cheerfully acquiesced in the pleasing illusion ...
If we, the enervated people of Australia, acquiesce in the pleasing illusion that the National Security Monitor Bill provides some sort of protection for our civil liberties, we will have no-one to blame but ourselves.
Source: Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, The Folio Society, London, 1983, vol. 1, pp 85-87.
In an op-ed piece in the 24 October edition of The Age, published online here by The National Times, Liberal backbencher Petro Georgiou describes how the recently introduced National Security Monitor Bill is a travesty as far as its claimed purpose of providing for independent review of the 49 counter-terror laws that have been passed since 9 September 2001 is concerned. He says:
The bedrock of all the recommendations for a reviewer is independence from executive control and censorship, freedom to determine priorities, and examine all terrorism laws. Independence requires the ability to report publicly to Parliament, subject to not prejudicing national security, operations or trials.
The monitor bill fundamentally negates every element of statutory independence. It deploys every legislative artifice, legal and symbolic, to neuter the monitor. Other than the overweening crassness of the refusal to mention the word ''independent'' and the specification that the monitor can only be part-time, [Yes Minister character] Sir Humphrey [Appleby] would be impressed.
The bill prevents the monitor from determining his or her own priorities - that role is given to the Prime Minister, who can also change them and demand so-called ''interim'' reports. The monitor can only report to the Parliament annually.
The monitor cannot examine any law that has not been applied in the current or past financial year and any report has to be vetted by the Prime Minister and every relevant federal, state and territory minister. The monitor is prohibited from reporting to the Parliament on a range of fundamental issues including security operations, information provided by agencies, information about operational activities and methods, priorities and resources.
Georgiou concludes:
The monitor bill is a travesty, but it is not a joke. The avalanche of terrorist laws since 2001 has radically curbed the protection of the individual. To safeguard our democracy, strong, independent and ongoing scrutiny of these laws and their operation is needed. The Government's monitor is a subverted safeguard. If this legislation passes into law, the monitor will effectively be handcuffed, gagged and tied to the whim of the government.
This state of affairs has to be of concern to everyone who is concerned about the impairment of basic civil and legal rights enshrined in the spate of anti-terror legislation that was rushed through the Parliament by the Howard Government to the enthusiastic cheers of the Labor Opposition.
