Boots on the stairs, a broken front door at 4am, detention and interrogation for six months without the right to see a lawyer or your family and without judicial oversight except for secret courts. The military patrol the streets and arrest citizens, camps are set up for the detained, journalists are forced to give details of their sources under threat of imprisonment and the population broadly support the government’s actions. Hitler’s Germany? Stalin’s Russia? Certainly, that is what happened then. Now try Australia in 2006.
As we learn that Defence Minister Robert Hill intends to introduce a bill enabling the military to be mobilised by the government for ‘terrorist’ incidents, another linchpin of our democracy is being abandoned on the countdown to Fascism by stealth in Australia today.
I speak from a tinged perspective as my father was a refugee from Hitler’s Germany. My early years were frequently punctuated by reminders of what unconstrained power can achieve, supported by a docile population who were made to live in fear. Although not suggesting that we are heading down the path of genocide and arbitrary executions, the New World Order Fascism-lite should nevertheless be of increasing concern to people everywhere as our civil rights are slowly eroded.
As a recent migrant to Australia, I have been increasingly horrified by the ease with which repressive actions and legislation have been nodded through by parliament and senate in an increasingly strident climate of government-inspired fear. Not that the opposition would do much different as they are currently engaged in overtaking the government on the right. At any rate, we have no meaningful opposition as the current leader, Kim Beazley, is the ultimate Buggins-turn time-server who is doomed to failure. Love him or loathe him, ex-Leader of the Opposition, Mark Latham at least had a spine as opposed to the invertebrates currently occupying the opposition benches.
The 2003 ASIO Bill was not the first step in this descent but few would have imagined the Terrorism Bill currently being contemplated. This bill puts a number of features in place to ensure that, not only potential terrorists, but also dissenters and protesters from a wide spectrum of the population, can be detained and imprisoned in legal black holes without the fundamental right of ‘Habeas Corpus’, an ancient Anglo-Saxon right that preceded even the Magna Carta.
Governments say ‘Trust us’, and, obediently, we roll over and whimper, ‘Of course, Johnny’. Who amongst us would trust the Secret Services to follow ‘judges rules’ in the interrogation of suspects and dissenters while they are held incommunicado for six months? The frequently heard defence of ‘If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear’ misses the point that we will all now live in fear, as the psychology of the Terrorism Bill is that we ALL have hidden guilt, while a smashed front door at 4am will make the hardiest person feel and act nervous, hence guilty. How do think your mate down the road with the funny accent and the dark skin will feel? Without the due process of being charged and brought before a magistrate, we all become vulnerable to the whims and inevitable cokk-ups of a bureaucracy that needs to show results.
With a mobilised military, yet another layer of bureaucratic impenetrability is achieved where accountability is further lessened, recourse is virtually impossible and in which abuses are guaranteed to occur. The bones of the structure for a Fascist State are already in place. Detention camps have been tried and tested, others are mothballed and ready to go. We have also seen how, despite the previous lack of a Terrorism Bill, detainees have languished in these camps, emerging years later psychologically damaged.
Although we illegally invaded Iraq, citizens protesting the invasion and who support the rights of the Iraqi Resistance to expel their attackers will be silenced lest their blasphemies gain greater acceptance in the general Australian population. Hitler and Stalin, I am sure, are laughing in their graves while their ideological enemies tread the same path that brought them to power and while maintaining terror over their peoples.
In a civilised society, there is no need to imprison without trial anyone, whatever their alleged crime or intention to commit a criminal act. If there is proof, a magistrate can remand a suspect indefinitely, but the suspect has to be produced in court every week. Ditching Habeas Corpus will make all forms of abuse that much easier. How many of these civil liberties won over the centuries do we need to sacrifice in order to pay for the misguided policies of our governments? We, the Australian people, by our mute acceptance, are agreeing to these strictures on our fundamental civil rights as we slowly sleepwalk our way to Fascism.
