Penguin unearthed

Anti-terror laws

I've been too depressed about the new anti-terror laws to seriously read them and try and understand them (not to mention not being a lawyer). But as far as I can tell, the main arguments boil down to:

Government - trust us we will only ever use these laws against people who are creating a serious threat to the state. Australian law is full of unwritten conventions that stop really stupid laws being used. (here's one right leaning blogger on the topic)

Anti government - look at the laws themselves, and ask yourself what government (or more to the point, police force) ever restrained themselves and manged to avoid locking people up unjustly when it had the power. (here's a relatively restrained blog view)

You can probably tell from my summation above which way I'm leaning. I'm starting to think that I should stop ignoring these kinds of issues in my comfortable middle class life and start getting involved.

posted by Jennifer @ 9:23 pm