Locke Keith: Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee Third Reading 
Locke Keith: Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:626;Page:21643] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 I was speaking about the question of the extension under this bill of the designations that were made shortly after the original Act was passed in 2002. The initial designations were basically from the United Nations on Taliban and al-Qaeda entities. Under this bill they would be rolled out for another couple of years. There are two criticisms of that and they were made quite strongly by the Human Rights Commission in its submission to the select committee. 
The commission wondered why the Government knowing that those designations were expiring—and there was a renewal process involving the courts—had not made the applications to the High Court to begin the process of renewing those designations. That could easily have been done. The Government should not at this point particularly with the review of the whole Terrorism Suppression Act in Parliament push out the designations. It is not a good process. 
A lot of the discussion today has been to say that the High Court could not do this it would be too much work the High Court could not do anything else. In fact the High Court could work out how to do it and what staff it would retain to do the checking. But there is a provision in the original Act that the evidence from the United Nations be deemed as sufficient if there is no other countervailing evidence. So it would be a matter of going through and checking whether any countervailing evidence is available. In several cases there would be. It is just as easy for a court to carry out that process with the proper advice as for politicians to do it with the proper advice. 
A number of other countries have addressed this issue. Sweden addressed it because certain of its citizens who are of Somali origin were put on the US list. Sweden asked the US for information on these citizens. All it got was a set of press clippings—a bit like the Security Intelligence Service and Ahmed Zaoui. When the Refugee Status Appeals Authority wanted information from the Security Intelligence Service on him all it got was a bunch of press clippings. Those Somalis had suffered because there were problems with their assets being seized by the European Union and all kinds of things based on this false information. 
One of the problems with the UN designation system is that it is based on information provided by Governments. There is no proper checking there is no notification of the personal entity designated there is no procedure for them to challenge that designation and in the case of those Swedish people of Somali origin there was no way forward for them other than through the Swedish Government because only States can take a case to the Counter-terrorism Committee. So unless the State backs them up and Sweden did in this case they are left out on a limb. 
I think we know the way the United States operates on these questions and I refer to all the people rotting at Guantanamo Bay without due process. The United States Government operates a very loose process when determining who is or who is not a terrorist or a terrorist entity. There are a lot of errors in the system. The first Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill which was originally part of another bill—we are dealing with the No 2 bill today—was designed to allow the Government to take off entities that had been designated and I think one or two have been taken off. 
We do not need to make up for the weakness of the Government in not putting forward to the High Court a designation process for the 318 or thereabouts designations that took place 3 years ago and will expire on this October. I think the whole question of due process lies at the bottom of all this and it has been commented on. Very good comments have been made by leading justices in the House of Lords and by Kofi Annan himself. They make the point all through that if we undermine civil liberties in the name of the fight against terrorism we actually only create more terrorists. 
I believe that there is agreement among everyone in this House to do the most to fight terrorism in all its forms. We should do it in a way that respects due process because otherwise we get into this horrible situation of creating more terrorists. Of course unfortunately because of the US invasion and all the mayhem that has followed Iraq today is a seedbed for more terrorists. When some of those people go back to other countries we will have an even greater danger. Doing things in a way that does not violate conventions be they conventions on human rights or conventions against invading other countries actually undermines the terrorists. Terrorists survive only by being able to draw a certain amount of support among people—support that enables them to carry out their horrific acts against people. 
Just to elaborate further on the Swedish case that I referred to I point out that the Swedish Government filed an unsuccessful request with the 1267 Committee of the United Nations to have these people removed from the UN list. It was only after prolonged efforts with the United States that the United States joined Sweden in requesting the delisting of two of the three individuals and they were taken off the list. There is one Somali still on that list because the United States would not cooperate. So we are in bit of a mess. The Human Rights Commission indicated that we have to listen to all the critiques. Kofi Annan’s high-level panel that he set up a year or two ago headed by Australian Gareth Evans came out with very strong criticisms of the UN designation process too. So we should not treat this designation process as sacrosanct. We cannot just postpone all the designations and everything will be sweet. We have to look at due process if we are to truly combat the terrorist threat. 
There are a whole lot of criticisms around the world of the way anti-terrorism legislation has been applied. In my second reading speech and in some of the discussion that followed there was talk about Guantanamo Bay. I think that that is a case study of the worst situation that operates. People have been rotting there for years without access to due process. Bit by bit they are being released and sent back to their home countries. Some of them have been tortured in one way or another while in Guanatanamo Bay or in other countries—at Bagram Airbase for example. 
The Human Rights Commission has recommended to the select committee that before sole reliance is placed on UN-sourced designations as designations that may be extended without substantive review ministries administering the Terrorism Suppression Act carry out an analysis of the UN procedure used to list and delist individuals and groups designated and note the strengths and shortcomings identified in those procedures particularly with the observance of political rights. The select committee it hopes will report that it is able to determine the importance of domestic High Court review of the designations.