http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jun/06/gillian-tri...

http://www.theguardian.com/australi...ores-of-laws-threatening-fundamental-freedoms

extract from article:

Triggs referred to the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta – which she said had “symbolic power” – as she raised concerns that the supremacy of the law over the executive government was “under threat in Australia’s contemporary democracy”.
“Over the last 15 years or so, the major political parties have agreed with each other to pass laws that threaten some of the most fundamental rights and freedoms that we have inherited from our common law tradition,” she told an audience at the Human Rights Law Centre in Melbourne on Friday evening.
These laws undermine democracy, especially in granting powers to the executive that aren't subject to judicial scrutiny
“For, over the last decade, particularly since the attack in 2001 on the twin towers in America, Australian parliaments have passed scores of laws that infringe our democratic freedoms of speech, association and movement, the right to a fair trial and the prohibition on arbitrary detention.
“These new laws undermine a healthy, robust democracy, especially if they grant discretionary powers to the executive government that are not subject to judicial scrutiny.”
Triggs said the expansion of ministerial powers represented a “growing threat to democracy” and she cited numerous examples of executive overreach including:
Powers to detain indefinitely various classes of individuals, including refugees and asylum seekers, those with infectious diseases, those subject to mandatory admission to drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities and the mentally ill;
The holding of four Indigenous men with intellectual and cognitive disabilities for years in a maximum security prison in the Northern Territory even though “each complainant had been found unfit to stand trial or found not guilty by reason of insanity”;
The indefinite detention of asylum seekers and refugees including children because of adverse security assessments “without meaningful access to legal advice or judicial review”;
The reduction of freedom of association from Queensland’s “anti-bikie” laws;
Constraints on judicial power to assess individual circumstances due to “a spate of mandatory sentencing laws”.
Triggs also spoke at length about the significant expansion of counter-terrorism powers in Australia on the grounds of community safety, arguing the strength of the rule of law was “more truly tested when security is threatened than in times of peace”.
“To the extent that Australia is threatened by terrorism, the need to protect our traditional liberties and freedoms assumes an even greater urgency,” she said.
“Many laws introduced with unseemly haste before Christmas in the name of national security go well beyond what might be deemed to necessary, creating a chilling effect on freedom of speech and the press and breaching the right to privacy.”
A detention centre on Nauru. Triggs also used the speech to criticise the indefinite detention of asylum seekers and refugees because of adverse security assessments from Asio, without any course of meaningful appeal. Facebook Twitter Pinterest
A detention centre on Nauru. Triggs also used the speech to criticise the indefinite detention of asylum seekers and refugees because of adverse security assessments from Asio, without any course of meaningful appeal. Photograph: Remi Chauvin for the Guardian
Referring to the data retention laws passed with bipartisan support in March, Triggs said it was curious that a “journalist information warrant” was required to access the call logs of a reporter but such a warrant was not needed for agencies to look at other citizens’ metadata.

“As the metadata will be collected in respect of most of the 23 million Australians, and those involved in terrorism or paedophilia are very few, it might be said that the act employs a sledgehammer to crack a nut,” she said.
Triggs also raised concerns that accused persons would face an evidentiary burden to defend themselves against a 10-year prison sentence for entering “declared areas” listed by the foreign affairs minister under the Foreign Fighters Act.

Go Triggs go, slam those fascists good.