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Inside Australia’s Anti-terrorism Laws and Trials, by leading legal experts Andrew Lynch, Nicola McGarrity and George Williams, tracks developments since the nation’s first anti-terrorism laws were introduced in great haste and, as the authors observe, were stunning in scope and number. They claim the latest laws introduced in 2014 were similarly extensive and controversial. Yet again, powers and sanctions once thought to lie outside the rules of a liberal democracy except during wartime have become part of Australian law.
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Promulgating an academic rather than intelligence or community view, this book asks whether Australia really needed to enact anti-terrorism laws in the first place, let alone add to them? Do the new laws pose increased threats to freedom of speech and freedom of the press? Have these laws been effective in protecting the community, or do they represent a long-term threat to the health of Australian democracy? Which laws have proved their worth – and which have not? And what has been the impact of the laws in Australia’s anti-terrorism trials and on the Muslim community?
Most tellingly, the book asks whether seeing these anti-terror laws as normal is a danger in itself.
EXTRACT:
“The result in Australia is a body of law that undermines democratic freedoms to a greater extent than the laws of other comparable nations, including nations facing a more severe terrorist threat. For example,
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it would be unthinkable, if not constitutionally impossible, in nations such as the US and Canada to restrict freedom of speech in the manner achieved by Australia’s 2005 sedition laws. It would also not be possible to confer a power upon a domestic intelligence agency that could be used to detain and coercively question non-suspect citizens. No other democratic nation has vested such an agency with a power like that which the Australian government has conferred upon ASIO.
“The central challenge in enacting anti-terrorism laws is how best to ensure the security of the nation while also respecting the liberty of its people. In democratic nations, the answer is usually grounded in legal protections for human rights. By contrast, in Australia, the answer is provided almost completely by the extent to which political leaders are willing to exercise good judgment and self-restraint in the enactment of new laws. But as the processes of enactment and many reviews of Australia’s anti-terrorism laws make clear, this has not proved a sufficient safeguard.
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“A further consequence is that, in the absence of countervailing human rights protections, anti-terrorism laws have created new precedents, understandings, expectations and political conventions about the proper limits of government in Australia. This is reflected in the fact that, over time, anti-terrorism measures have come to be seen as normal rather than exceptional, and as a result have crossed over into other areas of law. An example is the modelling of state anti-bikie laws upon the anti-terrorism proscription and control order regimes.”
Andrew Lynch is the author of What Price Security? Taking Stock of Australia’s Anti-Terror Laws and Law and Liberty in the War on Terror. Nicola McGarrity is the author of Counter-Terrorism and Beyond: The Culture of Law and Justice After 9/11 and Surveillance, Counter-Terrorism and Comparative Constitutionalism. She has previously practised as a barrister in constitutional, administrative and criminal law. George Williams books include Australian Constitutional Law and Theory and The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia.
Delivery in Australia & NZ
Free Delivery Worldwide Available Soon
Kindle
iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Mac