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law council slams howard's scam. Law Council Slams Howard's 'Terror' Scam.

27 September 2005.

Politics, Not Public Interest, Dominates Anti-Terror Summit.

The Law Council has criticised State and Territory leaders for placing politics and their own self-interest ahead of the public interest at today's COAG summit in Canberra.

Law Council President-elect Tim Bugg said, "Decisions at today's summit appear to have been made principally to provide the public with a false sense of security about the deterrence of terrorism, rather than with a view to sound principles of criminal law."

"The claim that COAG needed to 'give peace of mind to the Australian community' reveals that the real agenda of the summit was political in nature, and that dispassionate and principled policy-making was the loser," Mr Bugg said.

"The Law Council, like the community, badly wants to see the detail of these proposals, many of which are foreign to our legal traditions. We are not comforted by a sunset clause which seems to ensure we will have legislation in place that offends human rights principles for at least a decade," Mr Bugg said.

"The Law Council will reserve its final judgment on these proposed new laws until it is privy to the details in the legislation. But we don't believe in new laws that take people outside of the traditional scope of the law's protection, and that is what preventative detention and control orders will do," Mr Bugg concluded.

http://www.lawcouncil.asn.au/read/2005/2417636439.html