The Australian Bureau of Statistics is raising people's hackles with its intrusive, intimate and compulsory health survey, currently in the field. CLA and the Australian Privacy Foundation are asking the Australian Statistician whether the ABS has complied with all the parliamentary steps needed before such a survey is authorised to be mandatory. Other government departments - Attorney-General's, the spy agencies, Resources and Energy – are coming under increased scrutiny for their secretive ways and expanding surveillance of citizens.

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Australia's Attorney-General admitted last month that the nation operated to no clear set of counter-terrorism priorities over the past 10 years: in other words, tens of billions of dollars have apparently been wasted in scattergun spending on thousands more people, massive materiel purchases and untried new systems. How wasteful is that? On a more positive note, we report on planting of Australia's National Liberty Tree, and congratulate the Prime Minister for adopting CLA's counsel made eight months ago on ministerial appointmment.

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Australia's own National Liberty Tree, an initiative of CLA, will be planted this month. But as a new tree brings hope, there's despair as the government trundles down the path of a national e-health system putting safety and privacy at risk; health authorities are also extending their NT Intervention mentality to all Australian parents of children at vaccination age. A new arson database will flag 'suspected', unconvicted people for extra police attention, and federal ministers continue to ratchet up fear in the name of 'cybercrime' to be able to further infringe on our freedoms. Happy festivities – let's hope the bewhiskered gentleman, arriving in Australia by air on his sleigh, is not apprehended by Immigration and taken to the eponymously-named island in the Indian Ocean...and two years of detention.

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Health privacy and security issues lead this issue, with the government careless about your interests in patient health records, and ASIO asking the government for even more money, beyond the excessive amounts they already receive. The extra spook cash could help to push new propaganda against the media, which the government wants recreate as a docile secretarial service for ministerial pearly statements. DNA contamination is another health/justice issue receiving more attention.

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Cyber issues – crime, computers, the internet and security – are the government's main preoccupation now, but at least they are consulting, so you can have your say until the middle of November 2011. Elsewhere, the Law Reform people are setting up focus groups to decide how movies, videos, books and computer games should be classified (that is, censored)...but they seem to be pre-empting people's reactions before they've seen the material. Also, learn how $12.4m will be spent on human rights education (and who will spend it), plus the names of people comprising the new 'InfoGuru' advisory panel to help Information Commissioner John McMillan.

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The government is actively preventing debate on a secret data store that will hold email and internet activities of every Australian. It refuses to release information because it "could cause...premature and unnecessary debate", according to an Attorney-General's Department official. Disregard for the Australian people appears to be a general government attitude: FOI is under attack from elsewhere in government, while we appear ready to sign our data integrity away to a European cyber law agreement to which Australia has no input and over which Australia has no future control. Arrogant and dumb is a dangerous combination.

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Australia is to get a National Liberty Tree, an initiative of Civil Liberties Australia. The specimen Kurrajong will be planted on International Human Rights Day, 10 December, at the National Arboretum by former ACT Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, who introduced the nation's first Human Rights Act in 2004. We're hoping the planting will start a positive new approach to freedoms and liberties in Australia, like an end to mandatory sentencing, as well as helping to usher in an improved political discourse in nearby Parliament House, which was built on what used to be Kurrajong Hill.

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Vulnerable Australians are falling behind in terms of human rights, just as law and order severity is on the rise, Attorney-General G Robert McClelland admitted last month. Finally, though, after years of pleas by CLA and other bodies, the government is providing money urgently to start to try to reduce the excessive jailing rate of young Indigenous Australians. Meanwhile, there's new swear words in Victoria: read about what you can tell bumbling bureaucrats...and still avoid that state's new $240 fine.

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Attorney-General Robert McClelland has strongly reaffirmed the primacy of Australia law in the face of calls for Sharia law to apply for some aspects of Australian life. In further good news, prisoners voting rights have been restored, though in some states new governments are trying to bid up repression in law and order 'auctions'. Privacy and DNA look to be emerging issues for greater debate over the coming 12 months.

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