Updating The Chaos

We Used To Think This Guy Was Such A Fascist
Malcom Fraser used to elicit such strong emotions.
Today he's turneed out to be quite a sensible chap. I guess he was a small-l liberal all along, even though some people might find that hard to take.
He's weighed in on the anti-terror legislation too, and he's not really happy about it.

Mr Fraser believes the new laws do not belong in a democracy, and is particularly concerned about control orders and what he sees as a disturbing lack of safeguards.

"These are powers whose breadth and arbitrary nature, with a lack of judicial oversight, should not exist in any democratic country," he said.

Mr Fraser insists there is not enough protection.

"There are no real safeguards, there is no adequate official review," he said.

"The law should be opposed because the process itself is seriously flawed.

"Instead of a wide-ranging discussion, the Government has sought to nobble the field in secret and to prevent debate."

Liberal backbencher Petro Georgiou has expressed reservations about the package, calling for an independent watchdog to monitor the new powers.

Three international law experts have also criticised the proposed laws.

But a spokesman for the Federal Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, has rejected the criticism.

He says the courts will play an important role, and Mr Fraser might mistakenly believe the courts will be subservient to the police.

Well, we know how much to believe in Mr. Ruddock's sad little opinion these days after all the detention centres he ran. Surely he must be on a very short list of politicians around the world who have on their resumes 'Head of amnesty International' AND 'Head of Illegal Immigrant Detention Centres'.

Police State Blues 2
Try this link to download the legal feedback Jon Stanhope got on these proposed terror laws.
The person who dug up this document can be found here in Margo Kingston's Web Diary.

'I'm on the mailing list for Jon Stanhope's press releases, where this went up today: SCHOLARS GIVE VERDICT ON DRAFT TERROR LAWS.

Three prominent experts in human rights and international law have contributed their thoughts to the debate on the proposed counter-terrorism laws drafted by the Howard Government.

At the request of the ACT Government, the Professor of International Law at the University of NSW, Andrew Byrnes, the Professor of International Law and Human Rights at the ANU, Hilary Charlesworth, and Gabrielle McKinnon, from the Regulatory Institutions Network at the ANU, examined the first draft of the laws to gauge the extent to which crucial human-rights guarantees made by the Prime Minister at last month’s meeting of the Council of Australian Governments had been incorporated.

SNIP
An electronic version of the analysis is here.
The main points appear to be these:

a. The preventative detention order regime breaches the human rights to be free from arbitrary detention and to due process and cannot be said to be subject to an effective procedure of judicial review that provides adequate safeguards against violations of the human rights of the persons affected,

b. The control order regime breaches the right to be free from arbitrary detention, to a fair trial, to freedom of movement, to privacy and family life, and to the presumption of innocence.

The review also suggests that at least as far as the preventative detention and control order provisions go, the guarantees the Howard gave at COAG were not honored.

Haven't had time to read in full yet.

Posted by: Sue Bushell | 19/10/2005 2:36:24 PM '

Thanks to Pleiades who is on careful watchout for hese things.
he also sent in this link in relation to whether spreading democracy would necessarily stop terrorism.

Mental Illness Is A Scary Thing, Yossarian, Part 2
Within a couple off days of my comment, I notice this article has gone onto the wire. I won't claim any input, just noticing what maybe more and more people are noticing:

Neglect of mental health a 'disgrace'
Adam Cresswell and Sid Marris
October 20, 2005
MENTAL health services in Australia are "broken and failing" and the neglect shown by policy-makers over the past decade is "an appalling indictment" of federal and state governments.

In a frank assessment of the crisis in mental health, two leading mental health bodies called yesterday for a multi-billion-dollar increase in spending on the troubled sector and for a new "Mental Health Report Card" detailing progress to be made every year.

The demands were contained in a 96-page report, co-written by the Brain and Mind Research Institute and the Mental Health Council of Australia, which said mentally ill patients were "suffering every day" because of persistent state and federal government neglect.

Mental health patients run "the serious risk that his or her basic needs will be ignored, trivialised or neglected" and the system cannot even be presumed to give them "basic medical and psychological healthcare", the report says.

The damning verdict follows The Australian's series exposing the failings in the mental health system nationwide, including instances of mentally ill patients being left tied up on hospital trolleys.

Launching the report in Sydney yesterday, federal Health Minister Tony Abbott acknowledged the "pain and frustration" experienced by patients and carers, but hinted the problems would be more easily tackled if the federal Government assumed full control over the mental health sector, assuming responsibilities now falling on the states.

"People with a particular interest in mental health should be among the strongest advocates of giving one level of government responsibility for the entire health system," he said.

The report, Not for Service: Experiences of Injustice and Despair in Mental Health Care in Australia, called on governments to increase the proportion of health budgets directed to mental health by one percentage point per year for the next five years, reaching 12 per cent of total health spending by 2010. If implemented, it would require all nine governments to spend an extra $5billion a year by 2010-11.

The report also calls for a national prevalence study to determine the extent of mental problems, better community education, a recruitment drive and better provision of mental healthcare for people in the justice and detention systems.

Mr Abbott's claims that some problems were caused by state governments' failure to provide enough psychiatric beds in public hospitals were criticised by mental health experts.

MHCA chairman Keith Wilson - a former West Australian health minister who has been a carer for his schizophrenic son for 30 years - said more psychiatric beds was not the answer, and better community services that kept people out of hospital in the first place were required.

Ian Hickie, executive director of the Brain and Mind Research Institute and a co-author of the report, said health ministers had promised to tackle mental health issues since the first national strategy was signed 13 years ago, but little had been achieved.

Labor health spokeswoman Julia Gillard accused Mr Abbott of offering a shallow solution to a devastating social problem. The commonwealth had a moral responsibility to act on the report rather than float a suggestion that would not happen, she said.

Jeff Kennett, chairman of the national depression initiative Beyondblue, slammed the report as unrealistic and "a kick in the guts" for doctors, nurses and others working in the sector.

Well, from my understanding, they need more of everything, full stop. They need more carers to keep track of people with SMI, so that they take their medication and 'be good' (as in behaviorally acceptable to the wider community); but they also do need more hospital beds because when they do go out of control, they need to be taken to hospital beds, and under the current situation they just don't have any.
You sort of wonder if it would be better if only one tier of government managed it, given how variegated the problem can be. 10 people with say cancer might easily be bundled together in a bureaucratic abstraction, but 10 people with severe schizophrenia are not going to be bundled into a system so easily. By definition, they'e crazy, and they're not going to do things or go places just because you write it down for them.
Anyway, I thought it was worth noting.