Is Australia a “Police State” Curtailing media freedom, criminalise dissent and erode democratic safeguards

The changes that are going on are really concerning.  I was discussing with a friend the fact that Australia was one of the most progressive countries in the world under the Whitlam era.  We had free education, health care, public transport and a welfare system that was a income support without obligations.  I grew up during these times and I know that it was a happerier society.  Today I observe the technology that has disconnected people, communities anf families as it has severed these very important connections that build healthy functional communities.  Today we see 1:4 with mental health issues as they feel suppressed and railroaded either to keep on working, to deal with rising costs, complexities in life, bullying and social isolation.  I am in the community these days and I am seeing the atomisation of society that was once robust and connected.  

I recall the Joe Bjelke Peterson years in Queensland.  Jo was the Queensland Premier who used to say ‘you come up to Queensland’ in a shaky voice.  He was renowed for operating a police state in Queensland and in the end was running for Prime Minister. He micromanaged and was ineffective in addressing pressing issues in Queensland.  He woiuld be what I would term a fascist in the making as he was about total control and the diminishment of civil liberaties.  The Fitzgerald Inquiry in Queensland was responsible for his demise.  I played a small role in this by typing up police interviews with police which gave me insights into corruption and interrogation techniques.  I moved to Queensland only after he was removed from office.  I did not want to live in a police state.  Here is a link to some of the history of fascism in Australia, it is very concerning.  http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-01/sir-joh-bjelke-petersen-qld-30-year-cabinet-documents-released/9270744

Scott Ludlum a former Senator with the Australian Greens has compiled an article to shed light on the increasing suppression of democratic freedoms in Australia.  It is evident this is a trend occuring in other countries around the world.  I’ ve certainly seen it myself on my travels. I see it strongly linked to corporate philosophies of top down control and intolerance to differing views which are deemed dissent. This in truth reveals an anti-democratic sentiment that has no respect for sharing power but wants to hold all the cards.  I know having studied Peace Studies at La Trobe University when it was a socially oriented university, that the more you suppress dissent the more you create the conditions for social unrest.  The question is if everyone gets upset and goes onto the street, do you arrest them all?  I agree with Scott if the majority do not give consent it is a zero sum game.  The society in reality is run by the people not the government.  They just don’t realise their own power collectively as they are intimidated into silence through legislative pentalites.  I, for one, am into freedom of speech of all, including government, I was raised in a democratic country where one of the wonderful attributes was to accept different viewpoints as a right.  This is what made Australia a great country to live in. That is the country I envisage in the future.

So here is Scott’s viewpoint.  

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/26/instead-of-obeying-in-advance-we-must-put-up-a-fight-while-we-still-can?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

 

We must fight the erosion of civil rights while we still can

Scott Ludlam

‘National security’ is used as a smokescreen to curtail media freedom and criminalise dissent

Protesters dressed in white overalls block the coal line that connects the coal mines in the Hunter Valley with the port at Sandgate in Newcastle, May 8, 2016.
 ‘Nonviolent protestors at coal ports, uranium mines or commonwealth detention centres could find themselves classified as “saboteurs”’. Protesters blocking a coal line in Newcastle, May 2016. Photograph: Breakfree Newcastle/PR IMAGE

The template for Australia’s casual slide toward authoritarianism is now so well-worn that some of the players appear to be performing in their sleep. A sharp dose of targeted wakefulness is due, given the extreme nature of the changes to the Espionage Act that sit poised before parliament right now.

Unless we intervene, collectively and sharply, the national security legislation amendment (espionage and foreign interference) bill 2017 is about to be waved through the parliament with few exemptions despite fierce opposition by a wide array of civil society organisations, the Greens and a handful of crossbenchers. It is part of a package of three bills targeting foreign interference in Australia’s domestic affairs that the government is using as a smokescreen to fundamentally realign the balance of power between itself and everyone else.

Reducing opportunities for foreign interference on domestic politics sounds appealing, particularly in the context of queasy allegations of social media manipulation that preceded the 2016 United States elections and Brexit referendum in the UK. But even a superficial reading of the bills betrays what’s really going on here: the government is quite deliberately turning “national security” into a weapon with which to protect corporate interests and attack its opponents.

On Monday, charities, arts organisations and unions have won a limited exemption from the proposed requirement to register as agents of foreign influence. The original bills sought to dramatically expand the scope of foreign interference to catch the legitimate work of potential critics of government policy. They proposed to criminalise conduct that could cause harm to Australia’s “economic relations or interests,” and introduced extreme criminal penalties for whistleblowers, advocates or journalists who come into contact with certain kinds of information. Peaceful and nonviolent protestors at coal ports, uranium mines or commonwealth detention centres could find themselves classified as “saboteurs” and subjected to 20 year jail terms according to GetUp. The strategy of invisibly aligning Australia’s “national interest” with what are actually corporate interests is now well and truly out in the open.

The government calculates, accurately thus far, that Labor will trade away almost anything under the guise of “bipartisanship”, so as to avoid the accusation that it is weak on national security. The opposition is picking its battles as you’d expect, and it picks the ones it feels it can win. From the point of view of parliamentary strategy it makes perfect sense, but the downside for the rest of the country is that when a seriously unhinged set of proposals such as these are released, Australia quietly collapses into a one-party state. With the opposition in this semi-comatose state, the wheels of democracy can still turn, but they are almost completely disengaged from what is really happening below the surface.

This is a continuing process, well under way in the US and the UK and at an advanced stage in places like Turkey and Hungary, of ever-more power-hungry and authoritarian executive governments gradually seceding from parliamentary checks and balances in the name of “national security”. At the same time as the range of democratic interventions is narrowed and constricted, the definition of national security becomes ever more vague and all encompassing.

 

There is a name for regimes that sharpen the weapons of repression and turn them against their own populations while dissolving the state’s connective tissue of checks and balances. We call them police states. In their sharply worded advice on how to resist the slide toward authoritarianism in the US, Maria J Stephan and Timothy Snyder point out that even the most repressive governments still depend on the consent of the majority of the people. “The first lesson, then, is not to obey in advance” is their shorthand for putting up a proper fight while it’s still possible to do so.

Labor’s strategy of obeying in advance effectively sidelines the balance-of-power parliamentary levers of resistance, making it all the more essential for a widespread civil society organising. Without raising the political cost of this capitulation, we are condemned to repeat this dismal cycle until there are no civil or political rights left to give away.

• Scott Ludlam is a Guardian Australia columnist

 

Mohandas Gandhi

“Only as high as I reach can I grow, only as far as I seek can I go, only as deep as I look can I see, only as much as I dream can I be.”

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