CLA President, Dr Kristine Klugman, has formally asked the chair of the new Human Rights Committee, former Speaker Harry Jenkins, for his committee to define what the peoples rights are, based on the seven major Conventions Australia has ratified. The defined rights would comprise a benchmark against which we can measure proposals for draconian laws or over-the-top terror legislation, Dr Klugman said.
There are no fewer than four major inquiries under way into anti-terror laws, 11 years after “9/11”. There should be just one, CLA says, and it should await the first full-year report of the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, Bret Walker SC, which is expected by December. Where Australia is headed is shown by the massive database on innocent people being kept by police in the UK.
Other items in this issue include:
- Trade agreement tries to turn ISPs into copyright cops
- Federal government continues to under-fund legal aid
- Security boosters ramp up fear: read CLA’s scenario
- Urine drug tests at work ruled unfair
- New ginger groups seeks greater police accountability
- Scandal-plagued crime commission undergoes reform
- Beware! You may be ‘wire-trapped’
- Reprieved killer demands to be executed
- Germans to hold Facebook to high standards
- British police keep massive files…on the not-guilty