The counter-terrorism white paper issued today is long overdue. Announced by the Prime Minister in December 2008 as “forthcoming”, the release has been delayed several times, presumably to give the government enough time to cleanse the document of any real detail and manage the process of strategic leaks that now seem to routinely precede any major announcement.
While offering the usual generic statements of the obvious, the paper foreshadows a welcome shift in discourse. The government makes important acknowledgements on the root causes of terrorism stemming from poverty and injustice, and states that an open democratic society can promote long-term resilience against the kinds of marginalisation and radicalisation that breed terror networks.
Howard-era cries for war on everybody are mercifully silenced; more nuanced language is used to legitimise the retention and quiet expansion of the former Government’s extreme counter-terrorism laws and their consequential surveillance and intelligence regimes.
The government is at pains to explain that it does not support the use of torture or other unlawful methods, and sub-headings about “lawful, proportionate and accountable response” emphasise the role of the newly established Independent National Security Legislation Monitor to review our counter-terrorism laws.
The gravity of the task before the monitor makes it all the more important that the Government accepts the Senate’s amendments providing for genuine reporting obligations to the Parliament, rather than annual reports laundered through the Prime Minister’s office.
The Government won’t reveal which countries will be subjected to the blocklist for biometric profiling, but today’s borderless world makes the merits of this scheme highly ambiguous — however headline worthy. It recalls the recent announcement of body scanners in airports — newsworthy, but divisive and of questionable worth.
The white paper correctly notes that the availability of nuclear and radioactive materials magnifies the terrorist threat, but is silent on Australia’s role as one of the world’s largest suppliers of the feedstock material.
Having already experienced an exponential growth in budget and personnel, ASIO is even further strengthened through the establishment of the multi-agency co-ordination Counter Terrorism Control Centre. Quite what this new addition to the sprawling acronym soup of security agencies will add to the mix is uncertain, but ASIO’s rapid growth and mooted overseas expansion point the way.
Having already experienced an exponential growth in budget and personnel, doubling its staff over five years, ASIO is one of Australia’s least accountable agencies. It is impossible for the parliament to know if it is getting value for money and results.
In December 2009, the Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on the protection of human rights while countering terrorism issued a report expressing concern about international core data protection principles. Specifically the Rapporteur says that countries that lack constitutional or statutory safeguards around information on individuals have been able to radically transform their surveillance powers, in our case, over Australians. Beefing up surveillance through more extensive sharing of the data about travelling Australians means more information is shared about us with countries and private security actors — identification information, financial data, medical data, prior travel information, frequent-flier information. A data-sharing agreement should extend constitutional or statutory safeguards to protect privacy and the security of that information.
The government acknowledges that “most of the major anti-Western terrorist attacks of recent years, including those with the most direct impact on Australians, were perpetrated by terrorists who had links to, or had trained in, Afghanistan or neighbouring Pakistan”. Lowering the death toll of Afghan civilians might reduce our vulnerability. The fact is that the Taliban are not only enduring, the Taliban are growing, issuing three communications in five languages on a daily basis. Meanwhile, there is no “international” co-ordination or common diagnosis by NATO and company.
The Australian Greens are a party founded on democracy and non-violence, and we fundamentally oppose politically motivated violence and the ideologies underpinning terrorist attacks. But with the sluggish and contested process of bringing an Australian Human Rights Act into play, the contest between security and the rights to go about our lives free from unwarranted surveillance and interference from intelligence agencies still looks decidedly asymmetrical.
By claiming that “most anti-western terrorist attacks were perpetrated by terrorists who had links to or had trained in Afghanistan or neighbouring Pakistan” the White paper merely perpetuates not only a line of mythology but also deflects from both the real perpetrators of “terrorism” and the goals they pursue.
By most reasonable definitions of terrorism the world’s greatest perpetrator is the United States, which since WW2 has bombed, invaded or worked to overthrow the governments of more than 50 countries. The civilian deaths caused by the invasion of Iraq alone are equal to many times the number of people killed in “terrorist” attacks in western countries combined.
Most “terrorists” on the government’s version are in fact people working to remove foreign occupiers from their country: Iraq and Afghanistan being the two principal current examples.
The White Paper makes no mention of terrorists trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the Americans to wage asymmetric warfare against the former Soviet Union and China. It fails to mention American support for Jindallah, terrorists operating out of Pakistan in efforts to destablise the Iranian government, or the Mulihideen el Khalq (MEK) similarly trained in Iraq for the same purpose.
And of course there is no discussion on removing a host of obnoxious laws from the statute books passed by the Howard government with the acquiesence of Rudd et al. In the absence of a Bill of Rights or similar protection Australians have fewer safeguards against intrusive and anti-democratic surveillance, detention without charge or even being able to notify one’s relatives or lawyers, etc etc than almost any other western democracy.
We need look no further than have Operation Gladio morphed from being a plan to combat a Soviet invasion of Europe into a means of propping up right wing governments including the use of terrorist tactics blamed on the “left” to see the extent to which so-called democratic governments have at their base a distinctly undemocratic desire to retain power at all costs.
Sadly, there is nothing in this White paper to suggest that Australians are going to be protected from the inevitable abuses that accompany untrammelled power.
The government never bothers to explain why Australia is a target of terrorism. Maybe it is our unjust policies, especially in relation to the Palestine/Israel conflict, that is inciting terrorism.