For possibly the first time in the decade of uncertainty following the 9/11 aircraft attacks on America in late 2001, the terrorist threat to Australia and the nation’s response is being analysed cross-discipline by an international scholar. Christopher Michaelsen’s PhD thesis questions whether there was (and is) a terrorist threat to Australia, weighs the facts and exaggerations, and tries to balance an initial massive over-reaction with the reality eight years later.
Australia’s terror-threat response under spotlight
For possibly the first time in the decade of uncertainty following the 9/11 aircraft attacks on America in late 2001, the terrorist threat to Australia and the nation’s response to it is being analysed cross-discipline by an international scholar in a calm and dispassionate manner.
Christopher Michaelsen’s PhD thesis, recently submitted to the ANU in October 09, pulls together the threads of threat, risk, proportionality, legal response and outcomes. The thesis questions whether there was (and is) a terrorist threat to Australia, weighs the facts and exaggerations, and tries to balance an initial massive over-reaction with the reality eight years later.
The result – a probing commentary of policy under the Howard Liberal Government and now the Rudd Labor equivalent – will inform debate and deliberations into the next decade.
“We need a dispassionate analysis of where we’ve gone right, and wrong,” CLA’s President, Dr Kristine Klugman said, welcoming the Michaelsen publication. “There is no one better placed in terms of experience and the ability to see the issues in an international context than Michaelsen,” she said.
Michaelsen is a member of Civil Liberties Australia. Born in Germany, his first law degree is from there, while his Masters is from Queensland. He is a citizen of the world who has spent extensive time studying and working in Australia, the UK, Europe and the USA. Fluent in several languages, he spent two years recently working for the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, which is part of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and is based in Warsaw and Vienna. He now works with the Law Faculty of the University of NSW.
CLA looks forward to publishing key extracts from the Michaelsen thesis, when it becomes available. In the meantime, here is the précis to whet appetites:
This thesis examines the nature and scope of the contemporary threat of terrorism to Australia with a view to establishing whether the Australian government’s domestic response has been proportional. It provides a comprehensive analysis of Australia’s domestic response to the threat of terrorism and examines the interrelationship between security, politics and law (domestic anti-terrorism legislation in particular) in the Australian context. It sets out a theoretical framework for the analysis of Australia’s counter-terrorism law and policy and argues that any such analysis ought to be based on the principle of proportionality.
The thesis is based on the finding that the policy and academic discourse on the subject has treated the terrorism threat to Australia as a given. There is a lack of analysis on whether Australia is (or was) subject to a terrorism threat in the first place and, if so, what the nature and scope of the threat is (or was). A key argument of the thesis is that the proportionality principle requires that any analysis of counter-terrorism policy and law begin with a realistic threat assessment. This is what appears to be missing in Australia to this day. Legal scholars refrain from examining the existence of a terrorism threat by noting that it is not a lawyer’s task to second-guess the intentions of the executive and legislature. Scholars of political science, on the other hand, tend to neglect Australia’s legal counter-terrorism framework as developed in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks.
The thesis has four inter-related key objective:
- The first objective is to demonstrate that the Australian government, led by Prime Minister John Howard until late 2007, misportrayed and misunderstood the threat of terrorism to Australia. It is argued that the government’s assessment and portrayal of the threat was fundamentally flawed and subject to a range of considerable misunderstandings and exaggerations.
- As a consequence, the second objective is to provide a re-assessment of the nature and scope of the terrorism threat to Australia.
- The third objective is to demonstrate that the Howard government’s counter-terrorism law and policy was largely disproportionate to the threat faced by Australia. To this end, the domestic response – which has largely been legislative – is submitted to a proportionality analysis in the context of security, politics and the law.
- Lastly, the fourth objective is to examine the impact and effectiveness of Australia’s counter-terrorism law and policy.