The recent Australian Federal Police raids on a News Corp journalist and the ABC are an alarming extension of growing repressive tendencies by the Australian government. When you combine bad laws and expanded unquestionable powers with poor management decisions and a curtailing of public and media reviews, the result is that unalert citizens unknowingly become subjects of a police state. John Passant asks: how far along that path are we?Just as the nation’s journalists revealed legitimate questions requiring answers of substance by government and power elites, down descends the black curtain of warrants authorising raids by AFP officers who should have no role in deciding where truth lies in the Australian democracy. Rebecca Ananian-Welsh explains how we’ve become the world’s most secretive nation.
We have a new government, but the same old problems remain: citizenship issues, legal systems gone awry, refugee claimants in limbo, and re-born Ministers with a proven history of putting their interests ahead of those of the people. Stand by to go back to the future.
It’s Australia’s most Asian-aligned jurisdiction, adopting aspects of Chinese-style surveillance, as Darwin and the NT become flooded with CCTV cameras that can identify you, record your image, and bank it in a centralised database to follow you at will. It’s scary stuff, says Peter Rogers.
We seem to focus on machine failures and ignore management (human) systems that lead to machine failures by blaming the operator (or in the Boeing 737 Max analogy, the pilot). Repeated failures of police internal investigations reveal the design and structure is wrong: it is not at all clear that new Queensland legislation will tackle the core problem, Terry Flanders says.
Prisoners should undergo health, mental health and education level checks on entry for baseline measurements to check how rehabilitated they are when eventually released, CLA proposes in a detailed submission to the Queensland Productivity Commission’s current major inquiry into prison reform.
More and more people in Australia are questioning whether jingoism – extreme patriotism – is an increasing danger in and to Australia. Even noted leaders of the warrior class are speaking out, as this ANZAC DAy speech by a former Vice Chief of the Defence Force illustrates. Ray Funnell questions where we are headed, and whether we’re following the right types of ‘leaders’.
Oath-against-Oath trials are fraught with dangers, says Brian Tennant AM. Lives are being ruined by courts and juries accepting verbal statements, with no physical evidence, that are impossible to prove or refute. Perhaps we need to have a new set of rules, and less vindictive punishments, for such cases, he says.
Many citizens are upset that the plight of refugee claimants held in limbo for five years on Manus Island and Nauru are not front and centre in the current election campaign. But the policies of the major parties are somewhat similar. Here CLA’s refugee champion, Director Jennifer Ashton, explores the issue.
