Press Releases

18/10/05

The TCCL commends John Stanhope, the ACT Chief Minister for his public spirited action in allowing Australians to see what The Howard goverment is proposing to do to our democracy.

The TCCL regrets that Paul Lennon, Premier of Tasmania, has not acted in the same open fashion, and has even criticised Mr, Stanhope for his fundamentally decent action.

Mr. Lennon and Mr. Howard, the Walrus and the Carpenter, are in tandem in their merry dance :- the lurch to the right, but the Australian public are the oysters, and it is their rights that are being eaten.

Indeed the Australian political landscape is beginning to resemble that of the Weimar Republic of pre WW2 Germany.

This is not only happening in the security area: this week for example the Tasmanian Parliament is set to pass the Misuse of Drugs Ammendment Bill, a move that removes all need for police to obtain search warrants from magistrates and reclassiifies a whole range of very minor drug users as dealers, thus exposing them to harsher legal penalties.

We are expecting more of the same.

Paul Storr, President of the Tasmanian Council for Civil Liberties

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27/09/2005

HOWARD'S TERROR LAWS

Many Australians of European descent are under the comfortable illusion that the new anti terror laws will not be directed at them, only against some ill defined group of middle eastern appearance. . Mr. Howard’ s assurance that the new laws will not be used to target Moslems is therefore welcome: less welcome is the corollary, they will be used to target everyone!, they will be used against students, trade unionists, peace activists, conservationists (probably rebranded as economic terrorists ), free speech advocates, refugees… Who knows what the next ten years will bring?

Osama bin Laden may have started the job of destroying our western democracies, but its our own governments that seem hell bent on completing the terrorists dream.

Mr. Howard may be an honorable man, but he is opening the floodgates of totalitarianism, for future regimes. I am reminded of the words of Pastor Martin Niemolle who was imprisoned by Hitler in WW2:

‘First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left, to speak for me.’

The Tasmanian Council for Civil Liberties calls on the people of Tasmania to inform their State MPs, that without an awful lot more demonstrated need, they reject these sinister new powers being granted to governments.

Paul Storr, President, TCCL.

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25/08/2005

CIVIL LIBERTIES 2005

The Tasmanian Council for Civil Liberties held it's first formal meeting for some time at Sirens Restaurant, Victoria St, Hobart on 24/08/2005.

Concerns were expressed that the over-reaction to the "war on terror", coupled with the political opportunism of the Howard government, is playing into the hands of the terrorists as we destroy our own democracy.

Duncan Kerr, MHR, breifed the meeting on the role of the Parliamentary ASIO Oversight committee. Members expressed the view that the legislation's Sunset clause may be retained when it is reviewed.

The TCCL is sympathetic to moves to enshrine the population's basic freedoms in a Bill of Rights, as New Zealand did in 1990, as the ACT did a few years ago, and as Victoria is likely to do soon.

The TCCL calls on the Lennon government to consider following suite, as such a move would help pressure the Commonwealth to at least define Australian human rights before they shrink so much that they can be recorded on a postage stamp.

Paul Storr, President, TCCL.

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