HITLERISM, HOWARDISM AND TERROR LAWS

by Ian Wilson LL.B.
The Victorian Secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia, Kevin Bracken, has said that the US and Australian anti-terror laws, introduced in the wake of 9/11, were similar to Adolf Hitler's "civil controls" imposed in 1933. Hitler, he said, burned the Reichstag then brought in the civil controls. Likewise the Bush administration and the US military were involved in 9/11, presumably setting it up.
"Today, people can be arrested without trial. You can disappear and the authorities don't have to tell your relatives you have been arrested."
He also said: "If our own security people were objective, they would have known that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. All they do is just follow what's led out to them, instead of doing the job they are supposed to do." (The Australian 13/9/06, p.4)

Academics have been warned that their research into terrorism could contravene the anti-terrorist laws. For example, Flinders University Sociologist Professor Riaz Hassan received $829,000 from the Australian Research Council for interviewing the leadership of various terrorist organisations.
Leaving aside why such research should be funded to the tune of that amount and how there could be an objective scholarly test and verification of the research results, the issue of concern here is that Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock warned Hassan that his research could violate the anti-terrorist laws which preclude association with terrorist organisations. Hassan is quoted as saying that he questioned the link between Islamic fundamentalism and suicide bombing and terrorism.

George Williams and Edwina MacDonald ("Fear of the Law on Terror," The Australian 20/9/06 p.30) express concern about the sedition laws which make it an offence for a person to urge "another person to overthrow by force or violence" the Constitution, a state, territory or commonwealth government or the authority of the commonwealth government. A very limited defence is permitted, allowing someone to lawfully advocate changing a law (hence allowing a republic debate) but the defence does not cover general academic research. The government can also ban books on security grounds even if they are not caught by the sedition laws by refusing classification.
Academics, even if they have not committed an offence can be taken into custody by ASIO if there are reasonable grounds for believing their information will "substantially assist the collection of intelligence in relation to a terrorism offence". If the academic is believed to be likely to destroy information he/she may be detained for up to a week.Williams and MacDonald rightly note that all of this will have a "chilling effect" on the scholarly study of terrorism.

Constitutional challenge:
Can there be a successful Constitutional challenge to this body of law? There is, after all, no specific head of Constitutional power permitting the federal government to deal with national security or even crime. But there are a number of powers which in combination clearly yield such power, such as the power with respect to the naval and military defence of the Commonwealth, and the control of these forces to execute and maintain the laws of the Australian Commonwealth as well as the vesting of the executive power of the Commonwealth in the Queen which permits the execution and maintenance of the Constitution and the laws of the Commonwealth of Australia. The "implied nationhood power", plus external affairs, plus the trade and commerce and postal power would seem to cover most situations. Just to be sure the States transferred their own power on this matter to the Commonwealth.
The only way then a Constitutional challenge could be mounted is if the anti-terrorist laws, or part of them, infringed the Constitution in some other way, such as being inconsistent with the separation of powers or against Chapter III of the Constitution, which vests the judicial power of the Commonwealth in the High Court of Australia or in such federal courts that the Parliament vests with federal jurisdiction. There is also the issue that the restrictions an academic research may be in conflict with the implied freedom of communication on political and governmental matters.

In Chu Kheng Lim v Minister for Immigration (1992) 176 CLR1, the High Court held that there existed "a constitutional immunity from being imprisoned… except pursuant to an order by a court". (at pp.28-29) Thus: "the involuntary detention of a citizen in custody by the State is penal or punitive in character and, under our system of government, exists only as an incident to the exclusively judicial function of adjudging and punishing criminal guilt." (p.27) On this basis it can be argued that the federal legislation allowing detention in the cases mentioned above would violate this freedom from (non-judicially sanctioned) detention.
Nevertheless, in later High Court cases testing the detention of illegal immigrants, such as Al-Khateb v Goodwin (2004) 219 CLR S62, it was held that the Migration Act 1958 as amended, did not contravene Chapter III of the Constitution because the purpose of the detention was not punitive but protective. It could be argued in reply that the purpose of the anti-terrorist laws are purely protective and not punitive.

In reply to this argument it could be said that recent High Court decisions only restrict the application of the principle in Lim: detention by the Executive is not always penal or punitive in character. The matter has to be decided in the context of the full circumstances of the case. It will be a hard case to win, but there is a window of opportunity to challenge the anti-terrorist laws on this ground.

One would have thought that the very point of the implementation of anti-terrorist laws would be to protect traditional God-given freedoms. That these laws directly undermine them and put us on the road to a multiracial version of Germany in 1933, is a matter of key concern

SECTION 457 AND OTHER GOVERNMENT SELL-OUTS

by James Reed
As writers for this movement predicted Section 457 visas, which have allowed Asian guest workers to take jobs in Australia, is leading to the situation where there is "'No Check' on Migrant Workers' Pay," (The Australian, 25/9/06 p.6).
Opposition Immigration Spokesman Tony Burke has said that visa holders were being paid below minimum wages. Workers were also denied payment for public holidays. Migrant workers are particularly vulnerable to exploitation because bosses can not only dismiss them, but arrange for their deportation as well.
In 2005-2006 a total of 39,530 such visas were granted. The professional group getting the highest number of Section 457 visas at present is doctors and nurses. Don't get sick!

RETURN TO SANITY

SENATOR FIELDING BELIEVES…

by Betty Luks
David Flint's 'Opinion Column' quoted Family First's Senator Steve Fielding as stating during the Senate debate on media ownership 11 October, 2006, the "real concern ought not be so much the concentration of ownership but the concentration of ideology: the concentration of ideas. Where is the evidence that the key factor that determines ideas is ownership? In other words, that owners dictate ideas? Out there in the real world it's nothing like that."

He continued:
"Consider the republic debate in 1999. With very few exceptions, every paper and journalist across the country actively campaigned for a yes vote. What effect did they have? Overwhelmingly Australians voted no."

Do I understand the Senator correctly? He dismisses the very idea that owners dictate ideas and yet admits - "With very few exceptions, every paper and journalist across the country actively campaigned for a yes vote!"
If the newspapers' owners (and their employees) were as disinterested in ideas/policies as the good Senator would have us believe, surely there would have been a more balanced presentation of both sides of the monarchical/republic debate in those newspapers?

No Senator, control of the media and control of the news (ideology and propaganda) in this day and age are most certainly concentric. And the Howard government has just passed legislation allowing the already 'elite few' further centralisation and control.

As for the defeat of the republican agenda at the Referendum, the good Senator doesn't give credit where it is due. There were probably a number of reasons: first, Australians have a healthy distrust of professional politicians 'who only wanted more power to do us more good' and their 'gut instinct' warned them against the move to a republic; second, there were many, many Australians who gave up their own time and used their own money, to actively campaign for our traditional monarchical system. Door knocking, leaflet letter boxing, Dr. David Mitchell's audio tape and printed address went out in the thousands.

Sadly, Family First Senator Fielding voted for the government's bill. Does his Christian faith not have anything to say to him about the dangers of the concentration of powers, the essential need for checks and balances and the division and separation of powers?

WORSE THAN WATERGATE

by James Reed
John Dean a one-time political adviser to Richard Nixon has recently published a book entitled "Worse Than Watergate". Bush lied to Congress about issues of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein's alleged al-Qaeda connections.
Dean has said, according to Impact magazine (June/July 2006, p.15):
"When you lie about the need to go to war and commit the nation's blood and treasure to victory, you are committing the highest crime against the nation. By rights Bush should be impeached and disgraced."

Neo-con Francis Fukuyama is about to release a book entitled "America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative Legacy". Fukuyama is but one of a number of leading "neocon" intellectuals who are seeing the neoconservative "legacy" as fatally flawed.
What kept them so long!

AIDE SAYS WHITE HOUSE MOCKED EVANGELICALS

by Betty Luks
Why is the following news not so surprising? When did politicians not use the gullible for their own grubby ends?
In this case, it is the evangelicals' belief that they can 'fast forward' the return of Christ by supporting Israel's territorial ambitions - no matter how barbaric, ruthless or destructive are the means used to achieve the objective.

The actions of the disciple Judas come to mind. Judas' problem was he thought Jesus' way of introducing the new world order - through changing man and his values from within, by insisting that the individual person was more important than all the systems put together, etc - was the wrong way to go about it. Why Jesus' way could take an eternity! Hence, over two thousand years ago, Judas also plotted to 'fast forward' his conception of a new world order.

The Guardian (UK) disclosed:
"A former senior presidential aide has accused the Bush administration of using evangelical Christians to win votes but then privately ridiculing them once in office. The allegations by David Kuo, the former deputy director of the White House office of faith- based initiatives, come at a devastating time, when the administration is counting on 'born-again' Christians to vote in sufficient numbers to save the Republicans' hold on Congress in the November elections.
In a book entitled "Tempting Faith: an Inside Story of Political Seduction," Mr Kuo portrays the Bush White House's commitment to evangelical causes as little more than a cynical façade designed to win votes."

THE WATER ISSUE AND THOSE WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE

by Betty Luks
We are constantly being bombarded with the news of the drought Australia is experiencing and how water should be more and more 'controlled'.

Listen carefully to the 'news' bombarding you:
You will read and see how dry is the land from lack of rain. The next instant you will hear such groups as the 'Greenies' call for more controls on the part of governments.

That's okay for the present, but pray tell me, when are we going to hear that those authorities responsible for water supplies in this country are bringing other supplies on line?

Where has the money for the headworks gone?
Toowoomba developer Clive Berghofer asked just such a question during the campaign prior to the Referendum on Toowoomba accepting treated sewage as their drinking water:
"What has happened to all the water headworks charges I and other developers have been paying over the years? I was led to believe that these costs, which are charged on every block I developed, were to be used by Council to fund permanent water infrastructure such as dams." (Water Poll, July 2006 p.8)
Mr. Berghofer has contributed millions of dollars to the Toowoomba Council for water headworks and he is now asking what happened to the money.

This is serious, Australians must start asking why there are billions of dollars for a barbaric war in Iraq and for sticking our nose into other nations' affairs, to the tune of billions of dollars annually, but no money to develop additional supplies of water for Australians.

The people must make every effort to pin their politicians down to accountability on this absolutely basic need. WE PAY THEM and expect them to DO THEIR JOB! In a drought prone land water should be one of their first priorities.

BANKRUPTCY FIGURES

DRIVE FOR MULTI-FAITH BRITAIN DEEPENS RIFT SAYS CHURCH

Jonathan Wynne-Jones, The Sunday Telegraph, 8/10/06:
The Church of England has launched an astonishing attack on the Government's drive to turn Britain into a multi-faith society. In a wide-ranging condemnation of policy, it says that the attempt to make minority "faith" communities more integrated has backfired, leaving society "more separated than ever before". The criticisms are made in a confidential Church document, leaked to The Sunday Telegraph, that challenges the "widespread description" of Britain as a multi-faith society and even calls for the term "multi-faith" to be reconsidered.

The Church says 'privileged attention' has been given to the Islamic faith It claims that divisions between communities have been deepened by the Government's "schizophrenic" approach to tackling multiculturalism. While trying to encourage interfaith relations, it has actually given "privileged attention" to the Islamic faith and Muslim communities.

Written by Guy Wilkinson, the interfaith adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, the paper says that the Church of England has been sidelined. Instead, "preferential" treatment has been afforded to the Muslim community despite the fact that it makes up only three per cent of the population. Britain remains overwhelmingly a Christian country at heart and moves to label it as a multi-faith society suggest a hidden agenda, it says.

The leaked report follows a week of tension in which a Muslim policeman was excused armed guard duty at the Israeli embassy in London, Asian and white youths clashed in Windsor, and Jack Straw suggested that Muslim women should not wear the full veil across the face in public. The report lists a number of moves made by the Government since the London bombings in July last year to win favour with Muslim communities. These include "using public funds" to fly Muslim scholars to Britain, shelving legislation on forced marriage and encouraging financial arrangements to comply with Islamic requirements. These efforts have undermined its interfaith agenda and produced no "noticeable positive impact on community cohesion", the Church document says.

"Indeed, one might argue that disaffection and separation is now greater than ever, with Muslim communities withdrawing further into a sense of victimhood, and other faith communities seriously concerned that the Government has given signals that appear to encourage the notion of a privileged relationship with sections of the Muslim community."
Insiders at the House of Bishops meeting last week, where the briefing paper was "well received", say it marks a radical departure from the Church's usually diplomatic relations with the Government on the multi-faith issue. One bishop said it was the first time the Church had launched such a defence of the country's Christian heritage.
The paper, entitled "Cohesion and Integration - A briefing note for the House [of Bishops]," argues that the effort invested in trying to integrate Muslims since the London bombings has had no positive impact on community relations and that Ruth Kelly's controversial Commission on Cohesion and Integration seems doomed to fail.
It can also be revealed that the archbishop met Miss Kelly, the Communities Secretary, last month to discuss how the Church of England could contribute. Bishops are dismayed that no Christian denomination is represented on the commission. The bishops' document questions how effective it will be and says the focus for solving the problem should not be placed on one particular minority but "with the 'majority' communities and in the core culture".

There is an agenda:
"In relation to faith, there has been a divided, almost schizophrenic approach," the briefing paper says. The Government was misguided in "scapegoating the Muslim community as the source of the problem at the same time as believing that they should be uniquely responsible for solutions".
It goes on: "The contribution of the Church of England in particular and of Christianity in general to the underlying culture remains very substantial."
The 2001 census showed that 72 per cent of Britons describe themselves as Christian. "It could certainly be argued that there is an agenda behind a claim that a five per cent adherence to 'other faiths' makes for a multi-faith society," says the document. Mr Wilkinson, who was an archdeacon in Bradford during the riots of 2001, says the Government is wrong to see faith as the cause of a divided society.

THE SOCIAL CREDIT (FAITH, TRUST) FAST DWINDLING

It is no surprise to read ("Ethnic diversity 'breeds distrust'" The Australian, 10/10/06). Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam has delayed releasing the results of his research into the effects of 'ethnic diversity' within communities. While the research was carried out in the US he believes that its findings are likely to be mirrored in other countries.
Here is another academic in his proverbial white tower who believes the problems are with the environment rather than with trying to mix up the cultures and races.
His answer? Apparently fearing that his research would be used to justify clamping down on immigration and ethnic diversity, he stressed that trends "have been socially constructed, and can be socially reconstructed". For him, all that is needed is a speed up of the process! That is, push change along more rapidly.

We highly recommend our readers purchase a set of the audio tapes from the National Seminar - it is this very subject of the Social Credit and Discredit that is dealt with by Donald Martin from the UK in his paper "The Christian Basis of Social Credit".

AUDIO TAPES: A full set of the Papers and Toasts from the National Weekend on Audio Tape are available for just $25.00 posted from Mayo Tapes, Box 6, Hahndorf, SA.5245 -- THEY ARE HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Send for your full set today. But don't keep the good news to yourself, please ensure you hand them around for others to hear the speakers.