Abbott's 'snoopers' charter continues to cause concern

Liberty Victoria has a history of campaigning for civil liberties and human rights for more than 70 years. Officially known as the Victorian Council of Civil Liberties Inc, its lineage extends back to the Australian Council for Civil Liberties (ACCL).

This is its 22 January 2015 media release:

Scrap Abbott's 'snoopers' charter, says human rights group

The human rights group Liberty Victoria today called on the Federal Government to use its review of security laws to introduce a much higher threshold for access to telecommunications data and limit access to agencies directly responsible for national security and the investigation of serious crime.

 Liberty warned that the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act, which gives government agencies access to this data, is open to abuse because information can be obtained without a warrant or any independent oversight. “A full-scale campaign has been launched against similar laws in Britain, targeting the `snoopers’ charter,’ as it is known.”

The Abbott government’s proposed data retention bill, which will amend the Act, will make things worse, enabling retrospective surveillance of the private lives of ordinary Australians throughout the two year data retention period.

“The Abbott government is trying to justify this bill as a necessary tool for security agencies and the police in the fight against terrorism and serious crime. The legislation goes much further than is necessary for this purpose, however, allowing access to telecommunications data, even if the investigation only aims at non payment of a fine or a tax.

“The law now allows Australian Post, the tax office and a municipal council, among many others agencies, access to an individual’s telecommunications data. And there is no sanction if information is accessed unlawfully by authorised officers working in these agencies.”

Liberty said that in spite of  statements to the contrary by the Federal Government, the proposed data retention bill will not necessarily limit the number of agencies that have access to telecommunications data and nothing in the bill will set a higher threshold for access to such data.

Liberty echoed the view of Alistair MacDonald, QC, chairman of the English Bar Council, that one of the aims of extremists, who are willing to commit barbaric crimes in support of purportedly religious or political ends, is that the hard-won liberties of the civil population should be curtailed and a wedge driven between those in society with different views about the degree to which personal freedom should be sacrificed for public safety.

Electronic Frontiers Australia 11 January 2015:

Right now the Government is proposing to introduce a mandatory, society-wide regime for the retention of communications data (‘metadata’) for two years. In the latest public hearing into the Government’s proposed legislation a number of important matters were revealed by the Attorney-General and Australia’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

If you weren’t paying attention to the workings of Parliament in the lead up to the festive season then you may have missed a crucial public hearing by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS), held on 17th December. This hearing delved into the Government’s proposed mandatory, society-wide data retention regime. It was a crucial hearing because from it we learned five things.

1. There remains no final definition for the data set and what exactly will or won’t be retained. In fact the hearing revealed continuing confusion about what the Government and the law enforcement and intelligence communities consider to be relevant data.

2. The Government doesn’t know how much it will cost to implement the Government’s mandatory, society-wide data retention regime, and they won’t be able to make meaningful estimates until they’ve finished defining the data set. What we do have are estimates about the costs to telcos and ISPs for implementing the regime, which the industry has already admitted will be passed on to consumers. So, you’ll end up paying more through higher connectivity charges, through your taxes, or probably both.

3. The Government and the Australian Federal Police cannot say how many times existing surveillance laws and the subsequent data collected have contributed to intercepting criminal activity or successfully prosecuting suspects.

4. There were no new details provided about the circumstances under which access to data is granted or what it will be used for. This is particularly interesting given the recent passage of laws enabling the AFP and ASIO to delete, add or change data on computers of people who are not ‘persons of interest’.

5. It was confirmed that the mandatory, society-wide data retention regime could be utilised to pursue civil legal actions, particularly copyright infringement actions, and admitted that the regime represented a security risk as personal user data would be centrally stored for two years; offering a tempting target for crackers to steal data.

For some, the public hearing confirmed our worst fears about the mandatory, society-wide data retention regime…..

What they want now is for that information to be retained for two years for ALL Australians, even if you’re not being investigated or considered a person of interest. The regime represents a massive invasion of the privacy of all Australians, while subverting a fundamental principle of our legal system – the presumption of innocence – by treating all of us as suspects.

And we the public will get the privilege of paying for it all as telcos and ISPs will pass on the costs of implementing the regime to customers. While the telcos and ISPs have been measuring the possible cost of this poor policy, the Government has yet to work out how much it will cost taxpayers to implement it.

In addition, it was confirmed during the PJCIS public hearing that the laws pave the way for the pursuit of civil legal actions, especially related to copyright infringement, but also potentially unfair dismissal and in many other contexts. This means a new threat to the public who aren’t persons of interest as ordinary Australians get caught up in civil actions because they downloaded some movies from the net….

CNet 29 January 2015:

Both Australia's largest telco and a leading digital privacy organisation have warned that mandatory data retention could create a "honeypot" of personal information that could be compromised by hackers and criminals.

The warning came at a Parliamentary Committee hearing on proposed Data Retention legislation, which is hearing from telecommunications providers, security experts and privacy advocates in Canberra today and tomorrow.

Both Telstra and digital civil liberties group Electronic Frontiers Australia have warned that requiring telecommunications providers and ISPs to store metadata on every Australian for a period of two years would create a massive cache of personal information that would need to be protected with extra security to prevent hacks.

To highlight how much more data could be retained under a mandatory scheme compared to current practices, Telstra Director of Government Relations James Shaw said that, at peak times such as New Years Eve, some data is only retained by the telco for a few hours before it is overwritten -- significantly less than the two-year period that would be required under proposed legislation…

Telstra Chief Information Security Officer Michael Burgess warned that keeping two years' worth of metadata could pique the interest of people aside from law enforcement and security agencies, and that the company "would need to take further steps" to ensure security.

"The internet is a very busy place for people that choose to do harm," he said. "We would have to put extra measures in place...to make sure that data was safe from those that should not have access to it."

Furthermore, Burgess warned that the data retention scheme would require "new functionality" to be rolled out across Telstra's network to ensure the proper storage of the correct information. Compared to current storage methods, he argued that a new centralised system could provide an easier access point for hackers…..

Surviving the leadership challenge and Day One of Good Government didn't give more than a dead cat bounce in Coalition polling numbers?

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s ability to find the numbers to quash the 9 February 2015 leadership spill motion may not have translated into anything more than a dead cat bounce in polling for the Coalition.

It picked up one percentage point, Labor held its ground, the Green gained one percentage point and, the two-party preferred vote remained the same.

Which means that Labor would have won government if an election had been held between 13-16 February 2015.

This were the voting intentions of poll respondents between 4-8 February in the Essential Report of 10 February 2015:

These are the voting intentions of poll respondents between 13-16 February in the Essential Report of 17 February 2015:

Not a good look for NSW Premier Baird a little over five weeks out from a state election

"Tony and I are mates.”

[NSW Liberal Premier Mike Baird, speaking about Prime Minister Abbott on 6 February 2015]

Hamming it up for the Fairfax media on 13 February 2015

The Daily Telegraph 15 February 2015

Found at Country Labor candidate Trent Gilbert's Facebook page 16 February 2014

Undated photo opportunity

The real difference between these two Liberal leaders?

One has more hair.

Premier Mike Baird (left) in  advertisement for Tony Abbott's fan club, News Corp

October 2014

Meet the Candidates (Clarence Electorate, NSW Election) at Dundurrabin on Sunday 15 March 2015

Abbott's Australia in February 2015

# On 3 February 2015 Federal Liberal MP for Bowman Andrew Laming announced he will introduce a private members’ bill, abolishing Knights and Dames from the Australian honours system. Two titles unilaterally re-introduced into the honours system by Prime Minister Abbott in March 2014.

# On 5 February 2015 U.S. think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, published an opinion piece which stated:

Tony Abbott, however, is in charge of a regional power, a country that is the twelfth largest economy in the world and the only rich world nation to have survived the 2008-9 financial crisis unscathed. Yet in less than two years as prime minister, Abbott has proven shockingly incompetent, which is why other leaders within his ruling coalition, following a set of defeats in state elections, may now scheme to unseat him. They should: Abbott has proven so incapable of clear policy thinking, so unwilling to consult with even his own ministers and advisers, and so poor at communicating that he has to go.

# On 9 February 2015 Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott defeated by just 12 votes a Liberal party room motion to declare the positions of prime minister and deputy-prime minister vacant.

# At the start of the 2015 parliamentary year on 9 February were are 148 bills still being considered by the Australian Parliament or awaiting assent, 33 before the House of Representatives (including two bills aimed at encouraging state governments to sell off public assets) and 104 before the Senate.

# On the second sitting day (10 February 2015) the Speaker in the House of Representatives, Liberal MP for Mackellar Bronwyn Bishop, during Question Time declared the word “misleading” an unparliamentary term when used by the Labor Opposition Leader - despite allowing its use twice earlier that day and six times by six different MPs the day before.

# On 11 February 2015 the High Court of Australia unanimously held that a decision made by the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection in July 2014 to refuse to grant the plaintiff a permanent protection visa was not made according to law and that the plaintiff was entitled to have that visa granted.

# The Age reported on 11 February 2015 that the Australian National Audit Office will investigate Tony Abbott's decision to hand over $3 billion of public money for the East West Link without a rigorous benefit-cost analysis.

# On 11 February 2015 an emotionally out-of-kilter Prime Minister Abbott accused the Labor Opposition of wanting to see Australian submarines possibly built in Russia or North Korea. By 12 February he had also described evidence not yet presented to the court in one instance and has been publicly accused of using parliamentary privilege in an attempt to influence the judicial process "in a calculated political gambit". In another instance on that same day he had the insensitivity and bad taste to state; There was a holocaust of jobs in defence industries under members opposite. That’s what there was, Madame Speaker.

# On 11 February 2015 Opposition Leader Bill Shorten drew parliament's attention to Australian Bureau of Statistics findings that the number of adults in prison in 2014 has risen to a ten year high of 33,791 individuals with the national prison rate also at a ten year high of 185.6 up 13.4 points since 2013. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners accounted for just over a quarter (27% or 9,264 prisoners) of the total Australian prisoner population. The total Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population aged 18 years and over in 2014 was approximately 2% of the Australian population aged 18 years and over.

                                        

# The Abbott Government finally tabled the Australian Human Rights Commission's November 2014 National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention 2014 on 12 February 2015 and then the report was promptly attacked by Prime Minister Abbott for being a blatantly partisan politicised exercise for which the Commission should be ashamed, before he told Parliament that It would be a lot easier to respect the Human Rights Commission if it did not engage in what are transparent stitch-ups like the one that was released the other day. On or about 28 January the Australian Attorney-General George Brandis has asked the President of this independent commission to resign ahead of publication of the report.

                               

# According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics on 12 February 2015 Australia’s unemployment rate increased to 6.4 per cent in January (seasonally adjusted unemployed people increased by 34,500 to 795,200) and the number of employed people decreased by 12,200 to 11,668,700.

Between December and January the workforce-age population increased in size by 7,900 people and the number of people with a casual, part or full-time job fell by 251,200.

In NSW in January 2015 the unemployment rate was 6.2 per cent, representing an est. 237,600 individuals. This is a rise of 0.2% on December 2014 unemployment numbers.

# The Australian reported on 12 February 2015 on one instance of Tony Abbott's angry bullying of his own backbenchers.

# On 13 February 2015 ABC News reported that Chief Government Whip, Phillip Ruddock, was standing down following the leadership challenge. He became the first public retaliation by Tony Abbott against those in his party he now appears to distrust after the leadership spill motion vote was supported by 39 members of his own party.

# The Guardian reported on 13 February 2015 that there is growing government backbench support for Liberal Senator Corey Bernardi's private member's bill weakening Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. 

# 14 February 2015 (Valentine's Day) saw the Prime Minister and his wife the subject of a News Corp puff piece, in which Margie Abbott told the world that her husband is honourable, decent, has a lot of grace, is chivalrous and is everything that as partner in life I could wish for.

# On 14 February 2015 Tony Abbott upload a video to his YouTube account, which signalled a possible intention to remove any presumption of innocence in national security, immigration and welfare legislation. He stated that for too long there has been the benefit of the doubt and that for migrants to this country and asylum seekers; "There's been the benefit of the doubt at our borders, the benefit of the doubt for residency, the benefit of the doubt for citizenship and the benefit of the doubt at Centrelink. And in the courts, there has been bail, when clearly there should have been jail."

# On 16 February 2015 The Australian reported on the continuing disconnect between party officials, Abbott’s advisers and government backbenchers; Several sources have told The Australian Mr Loughnane’s ­assessment that the fundamentals were in place to allow the government to rebuild against Bill Shorten “didn’t go down well’’. “MPs were challenging it, immediately telling him that it was not what people in the street and in their electorates were telling them,’’ one MP said. “The weirdest part was his claim the Paris terrorist attacks and the threat of terrorism was focusing the minds of people. “While we know people are concerned, all of us know that there are bigger ­issues for people.’’

#  Perth Now reported on 16 February 2015 that; Prime Minister Tony Abbott has embarked on a nationwide tour to reconnect with voters in a last-ditch bid to restore his electoral standing and save his job. Mr Abbott will spend this week visiting every state and territory and venturing out into shopping malls and coffee shops to show he is in touch with the voters and with his own backbench. The tour comes a week after he narrowly survived a spill motion bought on by his backbench, and followed months of complaints the PM had become remote, isolated and out of touch. The PM kicked off his tour with two morning tea functions in suburban Sydney. His wife, Margie, who was rarely seen at political events with him until the leadership crisis erupted, joined Mr Abbott.

Run! There are terrorists on the NSW North Coast

He's also kept up the fight against the bats, which continue to terrorise a number of towns on the north coast. [http://www.nswnationals.org.au/chris_gulaptis]

On the NSW North Coast it is easy to spot the many ‘terrorists’ in our midst.

According to the NSW Nationals MP for Clarence, Chris Gulaptis, they all look like this:

Photograph from  http://www.bats.org.au/

And they are lurking with intent to terrorise.

Can't you just tell there's a state election in a little over five weeks time?

Senator Nova Peris: "We are only talking in circles and using Aboriginal people - our lives and our disparity - as political footballs"

Senator Nova Peris, 13 November 2013. Photo: Mamma Mia

Labor Senator Nova Peris on her feet in the Australian Senate at 4.36pm on 11 February 2015 (transcript from OpenAustralia.org):

I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the Ngambri-Ngunawal people, on whose land we stand today, and acknowledge my ancestors past and present and our future leaders. Today is an opportunity for all of us to speak out about reality. It is a day on which I stand here as an Aboriginal woman with the inherent responsibility to fight and sustain our culture for future generations. Unless you are on some other planet today what is being echoed in the walls of Parliament House by Aboriginal people who have gathered here today is that there are a lot of unhappy people out there.

Whilst a lot of people come to Parliament House to talk about Closing the Gap and walk away with a warm and fuzzy feeling about what it means to them and think that we are progressing, the gap in fact is not closing. People reflect on Australia as a nation of hope and a nation of opportunity, but we are a nation that continually lets down Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples—we are failing citizens of this country. We are not on track to close the gap on life expectancy, and the gap is not closing because things that work are being ignored. I have been listening to Senator Nash—and I have the greatest respect for her—and she understands what she says. But here is big difference between actually understanding it and wanting to implement what people are saying out there in the communities.

I have been around a long time, and Aboriginal people feel that what we say is falling on deaf ears day in and day out. Today we heard the Prime Minister claim that he is profoundly disappointed that the Closing the Gap has stalled. It is great that he has said that, because today we have heard truth in this place. That is what happens when you cut the funding from frontline services that have been proven to work. It is simple: Closing the Gap has fallen through the cracks of a divided and dysfunctional government. When we heard the opposition leader talk about cuts to frontline services, I saw 10 coalition members just get up and walk out. We heard Senator Nash talking about that this has to be a bipartisan approach, but to sustain lives everybody needs to be at the table to give hope and to implement the right things that Aboriginal people need. That walkout showed a total disrespect not only for leaders of this country but for a race of people—the oldest collective race of people in this world whose lives we are trying to enhance and for whom we want to make things better. I just do not get that you have people walking out of the chamber.

I had a speech prepared, but I am not going to read a speech, because I should be able to speak from my heart to tell it how it is. When I see things like that, I think to myself: 'Why did I put my hand up for parliament?' Because I wanted to make a difference in the lives of the people who paved the way for me today.

All this rhetoric about how we have to get it right and we have to listen to people. There are so many times you see Dr Yunupingu and all these talking politicians—it just has to stop. Senator Nigel Scullion knows the Northern Territory very well—it is his backyard. He has respect for the people, and people respect him in the communities. But, Nigel, we cannot be serious about getting kids to school while your government closes 38 childcare centres. There was a report from Twiggy Forrest. Why do we have a wealthy man, who has never worked a day in the life of an Aboriginal person—he does not know what it is to live in poverty or how you get out of poverty—so why are we asking him to tell us how to live our lives? I do not get it. We are only talking in circles and using Aboriginal people—our lives and our disparity—as political footballs. I said that earlier today and it has got to stop. It really has to stop.

When we talk about constitutional recognition, there is the whole fear factor: what are we recognising? What have we got to fear? Every day we acknowledge the Ngambri-Ngunawal people. We exist. We acknowledge it here, and so what is so scary about acknowledging it in our Constitution. We cannot change the past. I said that in my maiden speech. We cannot change what has happened; we cannot drag the chains of this black history that this country has in order to move into the light. We talk about 600,000 Aboriginal people in this country, and yet every single day in the newspapers there is a story about an Aboriginal person. You do not see that about any other race of people in Australia; it is only Aboriginal people. It is almost as if we are a product of disparity. You talk about people coming in and walking together, but I have been to so many communities—and Senator Scullion knows this too—and how do you expect 25 non-Indigenous service providers to be delivering programs to a community of 200 or 300 people? There is not one Aboriginal person delivering those services. We have been oppressed and we continue to oppress citizens who have survived the 40,000 years in spite of continuous failed policies.

We cannot just keep talking about it. Every election cycle we make these promises; we say we are going to give you this and then, when we get in, we backflip on health and education. It is not rocket science. If you want to engage a child in primary school—to get them into school—they have to have a profound love of education. You cannot just say that it is about jobs; it is about housing. They are the basic fundamental things that we take for granted—every single one of us—but that is like asking a hen to have teeth. You are just asking for the basic fundamental human rights for people to have an opportunity, and we are denying the opportunity when we cannot get the basics right. It upsets me that Aboriginal people are coming to this place and begging from money to drive programs in their community. They should not have to do that. I do not tell anyone how to run their lives and so why are people telling Aboriginal people how to run their lives?

There is story I would like to tell, because it is important. We are Catholics and my grandson, who is 5½ years old, went to his first day of school this year. The principal, after welcoming everyone, talked about Jesus and God and then he said, 'And don't forget; let's us all be like Jesus.' My grandson turned to his mum, my daughter, and said, 'Well, who is Jesus?' The thing is that everyone has a religion, everyone has a spiritual belief, and this country is a multicultural country. We as Aboriginal people have our spirituality and our religion. We know what we want.

It is almost like our dreams and aspirations are continually controlled by the dollar factor. And it goes back to a Country Liberal government who wants to dilute the Heritage Act and the Land Rights Act. You have 35 per cent of people in the Northern Territory owning 50 per cent of the land. When you see incarceration rates escalating, not decreasing, what does that say about society? You just want to bulldoze the people out of the way who have control over what other people want. And that is not even telling a lie; that is telling it how it is. We heard a great speech by Joe Morrison today who said: 'We are not part of the problem. We are part of the solution'. If you want to progress this country for what it is meant to be—what other countries see it for—you need to bring Aboriginal people with you. And it is not by continually taking the top-down approach. To say that an Aboriginal kid has no dreams and aspirations is wrong. To tell an Aboriginal parent, 'you don't want your children to go to school'—that is absolute rubbish. We have the same dreams and aspirations. We should be allowed to flourish as human beings and as equal citizens in this country. This whole place needs to change.