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| NEWS > 20 July 2007 |
Other related articles:
Detective escapes disciplinary
A DETECTIVE involved in the reinvestigation of Wales’ most notorious miscarriage of justice will not be disciplined after all despite being severely criticised in an independent report.
Acting Detective Inspector Gavin Lewis was one of two police officers criticised in a report by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) for his involvement in a matter that could have resulted in a further injustice.
Mr Lewis and his colleague Acting Detective Superintendent John Penhale, who was also criticised in the IPCC report, were part of the team reinvestigating the murder o... Read more
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 Article sourced from
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The Australian - Sydney,Austra
20 July 2007
This article appeared in the above title/site.
To view it in its entirity click this link.
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Balance rights with security
THE detection and detention of Mohamed Haneef, his Australian Federal Police interview, the magistrate's oversight and granting of bail for him, the furore over the revocation of his immigration visa, his lawyers' public outbursts, accusations of political exploitation, complaints from the police and political executive, and the robust media attention of his case all point to one inescapable conclusion: Australian democracy and all its vital parts are operating perfectly at a time of national threat.
Haneef should be afforded the presumption of innocence and he is being given that benefit as well as consular and legal access.
The AFP, the intelligence services and the politicians - both Coalition and Labor - also should be afforded a similar presumption of acting in good faith in the public interest.
If the politicians are indeed behaving reprehensibly on trumped-up information or exaggerated grounds, they will be found out and punished accordingly.
There is a terrible, inevitable political price paid by those who dissemble about security issues.
The previous Spanish government was defeated at the polls not because of the poor innocents killed in the Madrid train bombings by al-Qa'ida but because it tried to blame domestic terrorists pushing agendas that they said were not linked to al-Qa'ida or the invasion of Iraq.
The Spanish people turned on the government not purely for a failure of security but also for lying about a security issue.
John Howard and, because of his bipartisan support, Kevin Rudd are being accused of scare tactics, distorting the truth, killing civil liberties, overriding the courts and cynical exploitation of fear for political ends.
The Prime Minister is accused of trying to lift poor polling numbers and Rudd is accused of not standing up to Howard. Yet much of the criticism neglects the real security situation in Australia and fails to grasp the fundamental changes and challenges our democratic system is facing because of the global threat of terrorism on an unprecedented scale.
In rushing to defend, properly, the rights of the individual, outmoded thinking and knee-jerk appraisals need to be avoided so we do not undermine the integrity of our system and, specifically, our law enforcement bodies. Neither should we go too far in the name of national security and undermine our precious rights.
While the Haneef case is the present cause celebre, it is worth looking at other cases and what scant precedent we have in domestic terrorism and allegations of terrorism and the interaction of politicians, the police, courts and public to examine the politics of terror.
This debate should not be about whether Haneef is guilty or innocent: it should be about how the case is handled from beginning to end and where there may be need for further changes to the existing laws and systems.
High Court Chief Justice Murray Gleeson warned in October last year that Australia would face one of its biggest legal dilemmas and debates when it started to grapple with the issue of individual rights at a time of terrorist threat.
It is not uniquely Australian and our new anti-terror legislation is far less draconian than those of other countries, such as Britain, the US, France, Germany and New Zealand, which have all tightened detention and interrogation laws.
The basis for all these changes in democracies across the world is that there is a real terrorist threat.
To argue Australians are not a target is demonstrably false and to argue that the threat is not as great as death by car accident is a vacuous non sequitur.
If motorists were deliberately driving up the footpath to kill pedestrians, any government of the day that didn't take drastic action out of proportion to the steps already taken to stop road fatalities would be a short-lived one.
The point is not that we don't face a threat but that the countervailing action is commensurate with the threat and in keeping with our notion of civil rights.
Everytime there is a threat - whether it is a travel warning about Indonesia, new anti-terror legislation, suggestions of home-grown terrorism or the imposition of secrecy - there is a cry that the Government is trying to frighten people for electoral gain.
There are two problems with this approach: the political effect of terrorism is probably overrated and the legislature acts on the advice of security bodies.
During the previous federal election the advent of a terrorist attack was deemed to be enough to kill off any hope then Opposition leader Mark Latham had of victory because of the Coalition's superior standing on national security. Yet when there was a fatal terrorist attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta soon into the election campaign the effect was negligible.
The polls hardly shifted in the Government's favour and, after their own defeat, few if any Labor people blamed the Jakarta bombing. The ALP's loss was about interest rates and Latham's personality.
Two weeks ago the Haneef case being linked to the Glasgow and London attacks did nothing for the Coalition's standing in Newspoll.
In November 2005 Howard recalled parliament to make a seemingly minor change to anti-terrorism laws: changing the word "the" to "a" before "terrorist act".
At the time, Kim Beazley as Opposition leader, after briefings, backed Howard and was unfairly attacked for being weak on civil rights and for giving in to the Prime Minister.
Similar remarks are being made about Rudd for his support of the Government's position on Haneef.
It was said it was a scare tactic and when no guarantee could be given of arrests the criticism intensified.
Yet, as a result of the legislative changes, there were arrests made and charges laid in relation to an alleged unspecified terror plot.
AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty, in a recent address to the St Thomas More's Forum in Canberra on "Keeping faith in the force", warned that allegations of political manipulation or advantage undermined the ability of the AFP to get necessary law changes. Similar to the Chief Justice, Keelty recognises the wider issues and fundamental challenges to our society and how it works.
Simply declaring the terrorist threat doesn't exist or that it is a political scare campaign used to stifle civil rights doesn't invite enough thoughtful consideration.
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