“The Howard counter-terrorism legislation, and me”

- Media Release by Tony Kevin, Canberra 16 October 2005

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“I address here the very personal question that will face those of us like me, who will want to continue to contribute to democratic public discourse in Australia after these proposed laws come into effect. What will these laws do to the way people like me exercise our rights to take part in Australia’s public political conversation as Australian citizens, residents and voters ?”…

… I can now see clearly how this legislation, clumsily or vindictively applied, could feasibly send me to prison as a criminal. Because I am now pretty sure that I would defy this law, if I were placed in the position it could place me in of being wrongfully detained, and then being told to keep quiet about it.”

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In his brave and public-spirited act on Friday night of making public the proposed raft of counter-terrorism legislation that John Howard had laid confidentially before Australian state premiers a few weeks ago, in an obvious effort to build political leverage behind the proposals, the ACT’s Chief Minister Jon Stanhope has done all Australian citizens and residents a great service. Here are URL links to his website:

http://www.chiefminister.act.gov.au/whats_new.asp?title=What's%20New

OR

http://www.chiefminister.act.gov.au/docs/B05PG201_v281.pdf

Thank you, Jon Stanhope.

It is not as if we did not already have a pretty good idea of what the package of proposed legislation would contain. We knew its philosophy and assumptions from many speeches, interviews, and background briefings to journalists, from John Howard and Phillip Ruddock and senior officials like Mick Keelty (AFP) and Paul O’Sullivan (ASIO). Pro-government commentators like Gerard Henderson and Neil James ( ADA) have done their bit to prepare us for the alleged necessity and benign nature of the new laws. Weak populist political leaders like Beazley and the Labor state premiers have helped to soften us up.

Too many of us have already been swamped and brainwashed into accepting the alleged inevitability of all this serious erosion of our liberties, as the claimed lesser evil to feared acts of terrorism. The case for this has not been plausibly made – it has simply been asserted by the men in power now and rolled over us, led by a man who says defiantly on this, as on everything else that is important to Australians “Trust me, my record is my guarantee”. The trouble is, Howard has a rotten record of prime ministership and of truth. This man is a liar, a dissembler and a racist from the beginning of his public life.

Even Jon Stanhope to an extent succumbed to the pressure to fall into line at Howard’s cleverly stage-managed security briefing of premiers in Canberra on Tuesday 27 September, while a pair of RAAF Blackhawk helicopters circled ominously around Canberra all day, to drive home the terrorist threat perception that Howard wanted to inculcate in us: God knows what lies were told to the premiers on the day about the reason for the Blackhawks being there. Perhaps they were lied to that there had been some kind of security tip-off? Now we ordinary citizens are told by ADF-affiliated Webdiary correspondents that it was a routine training exercise for visiting defence cadets. And pigs can fly. ….

http://margokingston.typepad.com/harry_version_2/2005/10/
defending_canbe.html#more

I don’t blame Stanhope for blinking at that point – it must have been a day of enormous psychological pressure on all the state premiers.

But Jon Stanhope has bounced back now and his natural courage and animal spirits have reasserted themselves. . We now have a public document – a draft law - to read and focus our thoughts on. And that has released my courage too

We now can know why eminent Australian lawyers like Alastair Nicholson, ACT Justice Terry Higgins, John North of the Australian Law Council, Terry O’Gorman of the Australian Civil Liberties Union and Cameron Murphy of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, have expressed such grave and well-founded misgivings about these proposed laws. We can read the draft law ourselves.

I will not try to reproduce or summarise here the thorough legal analyses that such eminent Australian lawyers like those cited above are offering to the Australian public. These writers – and there will be more – show us how injurious these laws will be to our most cherished democratic freedoms, so hard-won in our brief Australian colonial history and in our prior centuries of British history. Read what they say and reflect on it, if you value your freedoms.

No, instead I am going to address here the very personal question that will face those of of us like me, who will want to continue to contribute to democratic public discourse in Australia after these laws come into effect. What will these laws do to the way people like me exercise our rights to take part in Australia’s public political conversation as Australian citizens, residents and voters ?

Such a personal affirmation has been turning around in my mind for some weeks. I am trying honestly to address the question – how will this legislation affect me in my public life as an Australian citizen? And I intend now to make my answer public, because I think to do so is in the public interest.

So this, if you like, is my Wittenberg Declaration. For those whose history is a bit rusty, Martin Luther dealt the symbolic blow that began the Reformation when he nailed his Ninety-Five Theses against church corruption to the door of the Wittenberg Church in 1517. In the statement that follows, I am nailing my declaration of rights to the present Australian national security state’s door – a state that is now both corrupt and dangerous to its citizens.

For the past few years, I have exercised my democratic citizen rights freely, by speaking and writing in books, newspaper articles and letters, and on my own and other websites. I have expressed some strongly dissident views , touching often on delicate areas of national security and foreign policy, relating to my former professional knowledge and expertise. I have strongly criticised some actions and practices of the present Australian national state, most significantly:

Asking questions, that are well-based in evidence, as to whether the sinking of SIEV X on 19 October 2001, which killed 353 innocent asylum-seekers mostly women and children , might have involved Australian government agencies engaged in criminal life-threatening covert disruption operations – and whether such facts of state criminality may have been deliberately covered up since then.
Condemning the coalition decision to invade Iraq in 2003, outside the rules-based UN Security Council system, and the dire consequences that the unlawful coalition decision has had for Iraq and its people, and for Australia and its people.
Condemning the SAS secret commencement of invasive warfare inside Iraq, over 30 hours before Howard announced we were at war, as an illegal launch of war under the international laws of war.
Condemning Australia’s military involvement as a coalition partner in the great war crime and crime against humanity that was the coalition forces’ methodical destruction of the Iraqi city of Fallujah in October 2004, when thousands of civilians were killed and 200,000 rendered homeless from a city of 250.000.
Condemning the Australian government’s betrayal of the Australian people in ramming through parliament an unequal, exploitative and unnecessary FTA with the USA that will damage the lives of ordinary Australians.
Condemning ongoing examples of anti-Islamic prejudice and cruelty in Australia, in which I include the proposed terrorism laws.
Urging a greater public understanding and addressing of the political root causes of the present wave of global terrorism involving small numbers of enraged Muslims, while at no time do I support any such acts.of terrorism.

I have never and would never support any terrorist acts, because my moral philosophy rests on the principle that the end does not justify the means, and that belief of itself would prevent my supporting terrorism even under the worst provocations. I also note that such a belief is common to all the world’s great religions and philosophies. I happen to be a Catholic, but my position would be the same if I were a Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Confucian or atheist.

I have never, and would never, associate with any people who might in my view be at risk of inclinations to engage in acts of terrorism. I have never personally encountered such people and will not seek to do so.

Yet I can well see how some of my writing over the past few years might be construed by certain kinds of suspicious or prejudiced minds in Australia’s national security apparatus to be some kind of incitement to terrorism under the proposed laws; or how, even if this were not believed, some such officials might think it politically useful to present me with such a question. The intention of such interrogation might be a seriously based professional desire to check facts, or it might stem simply from a desire to intimidate me from expressing my political views: to fire a warning shot across my bows, so to speak.

The justifying logic would be simple to construct for a naïve, fearful and credulous public. Since I have accused the Australian state of being involved in possible acts of state terrorism in Iraq or around our maritime borders, and since I have exposed such disturbing questions to general public access, what is my defence if officials in national security authority in Australia were to call me in for questioning, to accuse me of inciting acts of terror by the kinds of public writing I put out ?

Worse than this: if such officials were to claim to me - and I would have no way of testing such a claim - that they already knew that some person had contemplated committing a terrorist act as a result of having read something I had written, could that make me some sort of unknowing accomplice in or inciter of terrorism? I don’t think it could, and I hope a decent pro bono publico civil rights lawyer could put up many convincing reasons why not, but someone who had a legal power to detain me under this new law might think it worth a try sometime even if only to give me a scare. After all, they kicked Scott Parkin out of Australia on charges no more credible.

Could such security officials on the basis of what is on my website deprive me of my liberty, for hours days weeks or months, under the proposed new law ? Could they hold me incommunicado for as long as they wanted in order to question me under stress, and deprive me of my right to complain of this treatment publicly afterwards ? Could they try to break my spirit in this way ?

As I thought about this, I discovered something interesting about myself. I know that such an experience of being detained and told to keep silent about it afterwards would infuriate me beyond measure, and I very much doubt that I could keep silent about it afterwards, even if that meant the risk of being taken back into custody, and even with the possibility of criminal indictment and jail sentencing for that very offence of revealing the fact of having been so treated.

Because I don’t think I could live with myself if I were to let myself be cowed and humiliated in that way. I would have ceased to be a free man. I would have become a political castrato. Or a defenceless boy who had been abused by a pedophile in a position of authority and trust, and warned to keep quiet about it afterwards or face dire consequences. That’s a line I could not cross, if my life means anything.

So here is the paradox I want to share with my readers. I am a law-abiding retired former senior public servant. I am not a criminal. I am a loyal Australian. I freely admit that I despise and loathe John Howard, for what I think he is doing to my country, but it is my democratic right to make those judgements about an Australian Prime Minister. I also despise Kim Beazley for his cowardice and hypocrisy.

But I can now see clearly how this law, clumsily or vindictively applied, could feasibly send me to prison as a criminal. Because I am now pretty sure that I would defy this law, if I were placed in the position it could place me in of being wrongfully detained and then being told to keep quiet about it.

And, since I will not be self-censoring my public writing as a result of this law, it is now possible that I may find myself in that position, once this law is passed as it probably will be passed.

So here is my Wittenburg challenge to Howard and his minions. If any of our national security agents ever want to have a private civil conversation with me about any of my writing, at a time and place convenient to me, I would civilly cooperate with them as a good citizen. But if they harass, intimidate or try to embarrass me in any way under this proposed new law, I would be likely to make those facts public, regardless of possible adverse consequences to me.

I find the possibility of secret temporary arrest or detention for secret interrogation, that I was not allowed to publicly reveal and protest about afterwards, abhorrent and disgusting. And I see that it is precisely this possible eventuality that would be likely to push me into making a public martyr of myself. Because I am old and stubborn enough to think that the cause mattered enough to the public interest to make such action necessary.

Australia has not had prisoners of conscience yet. This proposed law, foolishly applied to me, could make me into one. How many others are in such a situation? I hope I am not the only one. I hope others would take similar stands if necessary.

At the same time I know realistically that most people do not have the economic safety net I would have to make possible such a protest. . My main income is my fixed government superannuation pension, which I earned from 30 years of loyal and efficient public service to Australia. That pension will continue to support my family, before and after my death, and whether or not I find myself in prison. Most people do not have that level of family security. Most people have careers and career reputations to protect, and dependent families to support. Or they do have security, but are paralysed by fear of public embarrassment.

That is why the odd people like me – for whom such a personal sacrifice is conceivable, even if unpleasant to contemplate – will contemplate such acts of public protest, for the sake of the public good of our society. Because if we do not exert our freedoms, and take personal risks in their defence, we will undoubtedly lose them.

The government’s apologists will either mock or pretend to ignore this statement. But I hope you – readers to whom I have sent it – will consider its implications. .Tonight on SBS News I heard John North, Chair of the Australian Law Council, warn of Australia’s descent towards a police state. This is actually happening now. And that is why I am releasing this statement tonight.

This statement is not offered in a spirit of satire or irony – it is no April Fools’ Day joke. I am utterly serious in every word that appears here, and I am ready to be held to account for these words. Because our society needs to think about these proposed laws in such concrete and personal terms, if we are to remain free.

These proposed laws are not about somebody else. They are not only about intimidating Australian Muslims, though the proposed laws will bear down especially hard on them initially. Later, the net will widen, to intimidate all of us.

While there is still perhaps time, make your views known on this pernicious proposed legislation. Tell your MPs and Senators - of whatever party – how it affects your freedom. Tell Barnaby Joyce and Steve Fielding. Tell Petro Georgiou. Tell Greg Combet. Tell Julia Gillard. Tell your state premiers to review their thinking and get behind Stanhope. Tell the media. Tell your church leaders. Don’t let this evil man John Howard succeed in this further attack on our democratic freedoms and values in Australia. He’ll try and slide it in behind the industrial legislation while all our attention and public energy is focussed on that. Don’t let him get away with it. Protest, because the defence of our living in freedom depends on you protesting.

Tony Kevin, Canberra, 16 October 2005