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Issue No. 123 | 21 December 2001 |
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The Unmaking of History
Interview: Braveheart International: Global Year in Review Unions: A Year at the Barricades Technology: Unions Online 2001 Republic: Terror Australis Economics: 2001: Annus Horribilis Campaign Diary: Melanie and Me Politics: Tony Moore's Final Word Review: You Are the Weakest Program Legal: The New McCarthyism
The Soapbox The Locker Room Trades Hall Tool Shed
 A Fair Go For AllThe First BastionTom Collins' Christmas Wish
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LegalThe New McCarthyismBy Rowan Cahill
The "war on terrorism" declared in the wake of the American events of September 11 dramatically threatens Australian democratic life.
Civil liberties are in the line of fire. Aiming the gun is an increasingly repressive state. The increasing militarisation of Australian law enforcement, and proposals announced by the Howard government to give the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) powers to detain people without charge, and to interrogate them without the presence of legal representation, are part of the process. In the case of ASIO, this is especially alarming given its fifty-year history of suspecting and intimidating many hundreds of thousands of trade unionists, political workers, dissidents, and concerned citizens to the left of the Liberal Party, as being un-Australian. Indeed I am one of these. I am the subject of ASIO File C/58/63, which started in 1967 and grew at the rate of about 50 file pages per year. Because of legislation limiting access to secret documents until after the passage of thirty years, this file is available for public scrutiny in the Australian Archives only to the end of 1970 (Series A6119/90, Item 2749). I won't be able to check current ASIO interest in myself until 2031, by which time I'll possibly be gaga or chatting in another dimension with Jack London, Upton Sinclair, and Rupert Lockwood. According to Dr. Jude McCulloch in the latest issue of the respected journal OVERLAND (Summer 2001), there has been a trend since the mid-1970s in English-speaking democracies to militarise law enforcement at the expense of civil liberties. McCulloch lectures in Police Studies at Deakin University, and is author of BLUE ARMY: PARAMILITARY POLICING IN AUSTRALIA (Melbourne University Press, 2001). During the post-Cold War period, intensive campaigns by democratic governments against drugs, organised crime, and terrorism have seen the military increasingly integrated with internal security, policing militarised, and more resources allocated to agencies involved in intelligence gathering on citizens. These are the sorts of measures traditionally associated with repressive political regimes. Australia has been part of this trend since the raft of counter-terrorist arrangements announced in the wake of the 1978 Sydney Hilton bombing. As Dr. McCulloch points out, many of the Fraser government's counter-terrorist measures in 1978 had been secretly planned well before the Hilton bombing, giving rise to informed speculation that the bombing was in fact perpetrated by elements in Australia's security community to enhance their power and prestige. Since then Australia has developed counter-terrorist paramilitary police who train with the military; confrontation and high levels of violence have become part of policing; fatal shootings by police have increased dramatically. Protesters are increasingly portrayed as an enemy to be confronted, an 'enemy within', and not as citizens who may be breaking the law and subject to arrest and charge. In 1997 it was revealed that Victorian police had spied on and infiltrated civil libertarian and left-leaning community organisations. The Chief Commissioner of the time argued that experience showed that "apparently innocuous groups are (sometimes) fronts for terrorist activities overseas". Amendments to the Australian Defence Act put in place for the Sydney 2000 Olympics pave the way for the Federal government to call out troops to combat industrial disputes and political demonstrations. As Dr. McCulloch explains, the definition of "terrorism" is slippery and very political. For example during the South African Apartheid era, Nelson Mandela was regarded as head of a terrorist organisation, and similarly regarded by a succession of Australian governments; so too was Xanana Gusmao for much of Indonesia's occupation of East Timor. Now both men are regarded internationally, and in Australia, as political figures of considerable stature and authority. There are serious implications in this for the trade union movement, since a number of Australian unions prominently, and against great pressures to the contrary, financially and morally supported Mandela and Gusmao during their alleged terrorist days. In the current anti-terrorist climate such support woulf be classified as aiding 'terrorism' and incur the full wrath of the police state. Dr McCulloch issues a timely warning: "In the same way that social justice aspirations and anti-war sentiment were associated with communism (during the Cold War), such sentiments will be equated with terrorism during the new war: anti-terrorism is set to be the new McCarthyism".
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