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?Rob Wesley-Smith (RWS) knows the Timor Leste (East Timor) government as well as any Australian. He is personal friends with current and former Presidents and Prime Ministers of that country. He was recently awarded that nation’s highest honour, the Order of Timor Leste. He says the Australian government’s spying behaviour was unconscionable, and the current charges against lawyer Bernard Collaery and Witness K are appalling.
Australians with consciences who care about our democracy are beginning to speak out against this travesty of justice. “The Wilkie statement is now two days old: not a word from the government, the ALP, the ABC, today’s Fin Review. Is everybody running scared?” asks a former Labor MP. A major protest is being planned for the first mention of the charges in the ACT Magistrates Court on 25 July 2018. If you care about the rule of law in Australia, and stopping the process under way of Australia becoming a police state, please follow this story, and take action.
The federal government plans more draconian security legislation, even as the cabinet documents farce mocks its own rhetoric. These are more over-the-top laws we don’t need.
Students doing law or journalism or another course involving liberties and rights questions might like to think about an internship with CLA. Here’s some information on how.. 5 Dec 2016
As the wrong parliamentary committee considers such a vital question as Australian citizenship, it will be deliberating on a crucial liberties and rights issue that is nowhere defined in law. 24 July 2015
Data retention legislation is awful, but the Minister Dutton’s proposed ‘Refugee Riot Act’ breaks all the international rules about human rights of anyone, not just refugees, CLA says. 8 April 2015