Canterbury Council of Civil Liberties Responds to Terrorism Bill

Republished (with permission) from the Council’s Newsletter (No 1, April 2002)

Bill on Terrorism - We Respond

The United States government’s focus on “terrorism” did not, of course, start with September 11th 2001, but the horrific and sad events of that day gave a new reality and purchase to the word. Jenny Hocking (Monash University) writes: ‘“Terrorism” and “Terror” carry with them such overwhelming moral revulsion that complex questions of causation, which must eventually be addressed, are neatly averted’. Civil Liberties people were and are confronted with the need to recognize the political contrivance of the use of the word, where ‘terrorists’ are your enemies and identical acts by yourselves or your friends are not designated in that way.

At a Cabinet meeting last October 1, the government tried to push through a long and complex Bill on Terrorism without a Select Committee process. Partly as a result of representations made by the Canterbury Council we were able to make and have our submissions considered. We, and other submitters, had only three weeks to draft these. Our case was that the executive was given much enlarged powers but that the court-based protections for those named as being involved – however remotely – in terrorist acts were quite inadequate. This is also a problem in other parts of the world as well where governments are using the language of terrorism, and civil liberties are brushed aside. The International Bar Association, which represents lawyers in 182 countries, has had a committee meeting on this very issue. But the mailer cannot be left to lawyers. As the Times in London pointed out in a heading, “Democracy and Justice are twin towers, too”.

With these considerations in mind, three Council members - Graham French Graeme Dunstall and Luke Trainer - presented an eleven page submission to the Select Committee. The chairman. Graeme Kelly. M.P. gave an indication that amendments would certainly be made. Whether or not this will be sufficient remains to be seen.

The risk of a new McCarthyism, emerging in the United States, is real and not imaginary. We think it likely that the concerns of the government, which seem to emanate from the Security Council and beyond that, the Republican administration in the United States, could have been met by amendments to other Acts rather than introducing new measures. It greatly extends the notion of terrorism and would have captured a great many activities, commonplace in the past, which have proved beneficial in the wider sense. Specifically, situations where New Zealanders have offered support in the past such as Fiji, East Timor, South Africa, Rhodesia and other countries, would now be impossible

Even while the Bill was being considered there arose small, but significant, incidents: a police action against a Christchurch bookshop, a Waikato Disc Jockey who made weak jokes and police approaches to a Petone letter writer to the newspaper at the time of the Tiger Woods visit.