police state coming to a town near you

Imagine getting arrested in the street. You're thrown into a cell, no lawyer, no phone call, you don't even know what you've been accused of. No one will phone your family, you will just disappear. For 14 days...in the fist instance...

Is this happening in some regime like North Korea or China? No, it's happening to you right here in Oz and maybe just because some police officer doesn't like your face. If you're of Mi ddle E astern appearance there is a much better chance that this could happen to you.

While there is every case to be made for reasonable security arrangements that will protect us all in the event of a "terrorist" attack, these protective measures need to be assessed on the basis of need and effectiveness and these paramenters then balanced against our civil liberties which are after all, what we are attempting to protect through all these measures.

John Howard has proposed measures which are presently unconstitutional and require the states agreement to become law. In particular the issue of 14 days detention without any justification or legal protections is what he is seeking. Not JUST 14 days because this can be rolled over ad infinitum.

Howard is a very clever politician. He has wedged the state leaders so that if they fail to accept his wishes he can label them as "soft on terror". The recent antics of Beazely of late in wanting to lock down whole suburbs is an example of this race by our pollies to show how tough they are prepared to be. Now, as I said at the beginning there could well be arguments in support of all of this BUT and this is a BIG BUT, the government have made no case whatsoever for the need or likely success of these measures. They seem not all concerned with explaining to us exactly HOW being able to disappear someone for 14 days will make us safer than we are under the already draconian measures. Has anyone told us how a recent terrorist outrage could have been averted with these powers? I think not.....Even the British who have recently experienced their own attacks have not formulated such draconian legislation.

I want to see the evidence but Howard seems not to want to show me....Perhaps because there is no such evidence.

What is even more worrisome is Howard's reticence to introduce sunset clauses. He has made quite misleading statements saying that we can't have a sunset clause because we don't know how long terrorists are going to be a problem. Howard is insulting our intelligence of course because sunset clauses are for the purposed of REVIEWING legislation. If the threat is still present there is no liability to remove the law. If, however, conditions have improved the law can be removed.

Why then, does Howard want these laws to remain even if there is no threat. Why does he want to chop away at our hard fought for freedoms this way.

I have no idea because he hasn't told me or anyone else of the great unwashed massess he seems so eager to control.

Many Australians seem happy enough to give John Howard the benefit of the doubt. I am not one of those. Indeed,there is little reason to trust this man given his track record of lies deceit and failure in foreign policy terms.

Whatever your view of him though it might pay you to consider the freedoms and protections our pollies are about to give away.