Claire Harvey: Anti-terror laws threaten civil rights

If your child was in trouble, who would be the first person you would tell? Your husband? Your wife? Not if your family is unfortunate enough to get caught in the poisonous fallout from the war in Iraq.

The Australian Government has become the latest member of the "Coalition of the Willing" to introduce an "anti-terror" law which seeks to give law enforcement agencies special powers to handle the threat of suspected terrorism.

Under John Howard's proposal, which he is trying to get through the Senate, Australian parents could be charged with a criminal offence if they tell anyone - even their husband or wife - about a child being detained on suspicion of "terrorism".

Truly.

This is how it would work. Say 17-year-old spotty teen John Bloggs of Wee Waa is arrested on suspicion of having consorted with extremist groups.

John might have mixed with some dodgy types on an overseas holiday, or declared himself a Muslim convert and adopted a burqa, or surfed the web for DIY cruise missile recipes, or devoted some of his otherwise excruciatingly boring and spotty blog to a denunciation of Israeli policies in the West Bank.

He is arrested and held in "preventative detention" for up to 14 days without charge.

Under the rules, because John is younger than 18, the police have to notify one parent, so they ring dad Fred Bloggs, who lets rip with a string of unflattering remarks linking John's alleged terrorist leanings with his laziness, unreliability, cheek and failure to tidy his room.

The laws give Mr Bloggs the right to see John in detention for two hours every day, during which time he can expand on all these themes and inspect junior's cell for neatness - but Mr Bloggs cannot tell anyone, not even his wife Mary, about their son's arrest.

If he does, he faces up to five years in jail under the proposed law for revealing the details of a preventative detention.

How on Earth does Howard think this law is going to work?

What is Mr Bloggs going to talk about at the dinner table? How will he explain where he's going for two mysterious hours every day? And what does he say when Mrs Bloggs starts wondering where John is, and wants to ring the police to report a missing child?

She might just assume her husband is having an affair and storm out, which would solve the problem of what to talk about at dinner.

"Preventative detention" is just the most extraordinary provision of this bill, which will seriously change the legal processes of arrest and detention under Australian law.

Amnesty International's Australian chapter says the "draconian new laws undermine the values they are supposed to protect," and points out Australia has no Bill of Rights - unlike the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand - to protect basic freedoms of speech and association.

The Law Council of Australia's president, Tony North, believes the Howard Government's plans threaten the fundamental rights of ordinary people, and endanger the due process of law upon which the entire modern court system is founded.

And why does this matter for New Zealand? Because it is a reminder that this war has risks which extend far beyond the borders of Iraq.

And it's important that democracies such as New Zealand keep an eye on what happens in neighbouring countries, even friendly ones, and express concern about laws which might lean on civil rights.

For there is nothing to stop foreign citizens - including New Zealanders - being detained without charge under these kinds of "anti-terror" laws.

Being a "friendly nation" won't be any protection.

The United States has made clear, by allowing the CIA and military to detain "enemy combatants" without bothering with all that tiresome stuff about rights, that it will pursue suspected enemy combatants or terror sympathisers regardless of their nationality.

Britain and Australia were both part of George W. Bush's coalition, but Britons and Australians have filled the cells at Guantanamo Bay, and possibly cells in America's other, less well-known detention facilities.

Australian citizen David Hicks is still languishing in Guantanamo Bay, awaiting trial after nearly four years of detention, which he claims has included eight months' solitary confinement in a cell with no windows.

Hicks has also alleged repeated sexual abuse at the hands of his American military interrogators.

Under John Howard's new plan, anyone over 18 who is arrested will be forbidden under threat of criminal penalty from telling friends, family or journalists about their situation.

Reporters who revealed such a preventative detention would face thousands of dollars in fines, and police would have the power to require journalists to reveal their sources for such reports.

New Zealand may have kept clear of the Iraq invasion, but its citizens are out in the world, and we all know that they have a yearning for adventure.

It won't be long before some adventurous Kiwi takes a break from throwing himself off mountains and ice-caving through glaciers, and gets himself arrested as a terror suspect in Australia, or the US, or northern Afghanistan.

And how will his mum and dad ever know?