The federal government has created another secret database where people merely "suspected" of arson will be tagged and flagged, to be hounded throughout summer if as much as a match strikes in their suburb. CLA is concerned that 'mates' will put mates' names down as a prank, neighbours in dispute will add the name of someone they don't like to the database: the traditional right of "innocent until proven guilty" is being trashed by governments in Australia.

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Phone data access being used to enforce fines

Police and crime agencies tapped people's phones and electronic equipment at the rate of about 10 a day last year – 3488 warrants were issued – while nearly 600 surveillance devices (10 a week) went into operation around Australia. Surveillance is on the rise, and privileged access to phone data is also increasingly being used for mundane activities such as collecting council fines and enforcing the dog act, via RSPCAs.

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CLA is concerned at the creeping trend throughout Australia to make more offences subject to "strict liability". That is government lawyer speak: it means that, under these new types of laws, you have to prove you are innocent rather than the government proving you are guilty, which has traditionally been the basis of Australian law. Here, in a letter responding to CLA's criticisms, is how the ACT Chief Minister tries to justify proposed new and badly-written laws over smoking in cars.

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The Speaker of the ACT Parliament, the Greens’ Shane Rattenbury, has released a discussion paper which aims to rein in police car chases.

The paper reviews the the cases in which seven people have died in the past seven years in the ACT in connection with police chases. It also looks at the 163 similar deaths over the past 19 years Australia-wide.

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Australia has more anti-terror laws than comparable western countries; such laws undermine our democratic freedoms, academics agree. At some stage anti-terror laws in Australia could become part of the problem, and not the solution, Professor George Williams writes. What stage are we at, a decade after terrorists attacked America from the air?

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The ACT Government can learn from five years of disastrous practical experience in the UK of a security vetting system brought in to check up on community volunteers working with children. The UK system, on which the proposed ACT regime is based, is now being thoroughly overhauled by the British Government because they realised it was draconian, intimidating, bureaucratic and excessive...and inconvenienced nine million more volunteers than it should have.

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Evidence is proving federal and state governments are hitting the wrong targets, the wrong way, in their attempted crackdown on major drug and other crime. Instead of confiscating the property and assets of the Mr Bigs of crime, it's the Little Woman and her Children who are suffering under the nation's most draconian and ill-considered laws. National reform and rewrite of the laws is needed now, CLA says.

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A new law gives ASIO greatly expanded powers to spy domestically, and for the first time allows Australia's spooks to spy internationally for economic reasons only. This is dangerous law, unjustified by the government, which has slipped through an acquiescent parliament asleep on the job.

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