The Opposition is not living up to its name By ABCs Jonathan Green Thu 2 Oct 2014, 9:50am Why is the ALP both famously in lockstep with the Government on issues of security and fiercely adversarial in almost ever other area of government endeavour? Jonathan Green writes. The proposition the ALP asks us to accept is that the Abbott Government is a derelict band of nincompoops and wreckers in almost every portfolio area, from treasury to education, from communications to family services. Simultaneously, and we see it in the stern faced sober approval of the Opposition frontbench, this same Government is the unimpeachable font of reason in every facet of its response to the various threats to our national security. Its hard to read the current behaviour of the federal Opposition in any other way: famously in lockstep with the Government on issues of security, fiercely adversarial in almost ever other area of Government endeavour. The quick justification for this almost seamless unanimity over national security is the gravity of the issue, the terrible latency of terrorism, its perpetually menacing set of lethal possibilities. An alternative view is that it is this very seriousness of both terrorism and the measures arranged against, that argues most forcefully for a robust, reasoned but adversarial process to test the worth of law like the National Security Legislation Amendments Bill. This legislation made its final passage through the Parliament yesterday, unmolested by amendment and with only three lower house votes - none of them from the ALP - in opposition. A handful of its provisions are famous by now: the granting of greater surveillance and search powers to ASIO, including the potential for almost unlimited access to computers and online networks; new whistleblower offences; extended immunities from prosecution for ASIO officers; officers whose identity is now protected by provisions that might see offenders jailed; and the possibility of jail for journalists and others who report on special intelligence operations, a category of operation that can be created at the order of our Attorney General. The elevated powers have raised eyebrows outside of the Parliament, perhaps most tellingly from the former national security legislation monitor (an office now abolished), Bret Walker, SC, who told Fairfax Media: I cannot see any justification for information relating to a special intelligence operation not being able to be disclosed if ... it shows the special intelligence operation has been conducted illegally. Mr Walker said he was deeply concerned, disturbed by the fact nothing could be disclosed publicly under the new laws about a special intelligence operation, even if it involved, for example, the death of an innocent person. Such an operation might, by way of alternative example, have involved the monitoring of the deliberations of the East Timorese cabinet as it contemplated potential treaty arrangements over the Greater Sunrise oil and gas deposits. The interest of our security agencies in this process has been revealed, to the discomfort of both politicians and security agencies. Today those revelations, through various acts of journalism and whistleblowing, could lead to jail. The effect would be to nip in the bud stories of the type that laid the East Timor imbroglio - an unseemly appropriation of state resources to the aid of commercial interest - bare. Editors contemplating the publication of stories like this one, would be forced to do a calculation of legal risk in much the same way they now consider the possibilities of defamation and libel. The effect, as they said, would be chilling. All that would be required would be for the Attorney General - politician as much as law officer - to declare any given activity a special intelligence operation and the cone of silence would come down. This is of course only the first of three packages of legislation to be spread through the next months. By the time we are done, metadata will be harvested, and certain foreign destinations will be forbidden to Australian passport holders. These things are contentious; these things alter the balance of our liberties. These things avoid the normal clamour of political debate, a state, we assume caused by the Oppositions desire to appear robust on matters of national security, to remove the possibility of that most appalling and incendiary of sleights, that it is weak on terror. The Oppositions support also suggests a curious double standard in political debate, a standard that exempts issues of national security from the normally robust conversation that otherwise surrounds almost any given piece of legislation. It seems that in national security we have an issue so serious that it transcends the routine jabbering theatre of our parliament. When we talk spies, war and terror we suspend the calculated and cynical pantomime out of deference to the gravity of the subject matter. You might ask why that same principle might not extend to the equally grave possibilities of a political conversation on, say, health care ... a policy area with a vastly greater potential for fatal unintended consequence than any recent Australian deliberation on terrorism. Isnt a debate on tertiary education just as significant to the long-term welfare of all Australians? Climate change perhaps? On the other side of the coin its not as if discussion around defence and national security doesnt offer various possibilities for mature, informed and constructive disagreement. Should we be actively involved in warfare in Iraq? Does that have the inverse domestic security response to the effect we are seeking? Does a more powerful ASIO contribute a range of social positives? You would hope our Parliament might be capable of debating these things with sincere vigour in open session. Instead Government and Opposition take on the demeanour of professional mourners, sit on their hands and wave the various long-held wish lists of the national security bureaucracy through into law. Its as much a cynical position as the monkey theatre that propels most other public discussion in our parliament ... neither flatters the process of politics, both are calculated plays aimed at political advantage over policy substance. Perhaps in the unanimity over war and national security we see an even greater truth of our politics, a thing even more sobering than its universal tendency to tragicomic vaudeville. In the deep and fundamental consensus of the political class on national security, we see a group of people whose principal business is power, people who are inclined by instinct and happy self interest to see nothing but merit in reinforcing their own position of authority. For make no mistake, that is the consequence of the changes we saw pass the Parliament yesterday, a set of measures advanced in the context of our collective anxiety, but destined to be used in secrecy; perhaps to protect us, perhaps to keep the darker workings of the state from our notice while extending the possibilities of surveillance and suppression. The Attorney General, George Brandis would argue otherwise. As he told the National press Club yesterday: I do approach these issues as a Liberal. I do approach these issues with a philosophical commitment to keeping the power of the state as small as reasonably necessary. The evidence suggests otherwise. Jonathan Green hosts Sunday Extra on Radio National and is the former editor of The Drum. abc.net.au/news/2014-10-02/green-the-opposition-is-not-living-up-to-its-name/5784408
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 08:12:30 +0000
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