As the Actor represents Everyman, so Paul Hogan represents us all over the bureaucratic inequities of oppressive legality and secrecy laws in Australia. He is now locked in the debtor’s prison the nation is becoming, reverting to its penal role two centuries ago.
Vulturous ATO preys on the grave
The Australian Taxation Office’s treatment of actor Paul Hogan turns Australia into a debtor’s prison.
Hogan is harpooned within Australia’s golden soil girt by sea because the ATO claims he owes them money. The ATO speared Hogan at graveside, back from overseas to bury his mother.
He loses a parent. The ATO steals his liberty.
Even armies and guerillas fighters allow amnesties to bury the dead…not so the Australian Taxation Office, the vulture on the headstone, detaining a man when he still has legal avenues of appeal open to him.
The ATO’s stance on Hogan mirrors that of the Australian Government’s against Jeffrey Bryce, the Queensland man locked in prison because he can’t pay a debt. Only in Queensland does the law allow jailing a man for debt in this way. In NSW, a man convicted on similar charges, owing many millions of dollars more than Bryce, walks free every day…while Bryce languishes in jail.
An Australian bill of rights would resolve both the Hogan and Bryce cases in favour of freedom.
Their situation highlights the powers granted to various government officials to deny Australians liberty to leave the country – or to force others to leave it – without public proof of wrongdoing.
You’ll recall that ASIO told DFAT to refuse to issue a passport to Mamdouh Habib and his wife under a top secret security assessment which can’t be made available to them. And it took a full bench of the Federal Court in 2008 to order ASIO to tell American peace activist Scott Parkin why he was deported in 2005.
Then you have ASIO and AFP commissioners who can apply for a control order over an individual for alleged involvement in terrorism…again, not needing to prove facts beyond a reasonable doubt in court, and so restricting their liberty without judicial conviction.
The Police Commissioners in NSW and SA are able to apply for control orders over members, former members and ‘associates’ of prohibited organizations (such as, but not only, bikie gangs).
How many other little known powers, like that of the Tax Commissioner under section 14S of the Taxation Administration Act 1953 which has netted Hogan, can prohibit someone from leaving the country?
– Bill Rowlings, CEO