Government Spin - the Original Rope-a-dope

After a run of bad publicity Bligh blames it on the one percenters...




1%ers account for one in every hundred convictions, but the state government are in another legislative bid to usurp the power of the judiciary and improve pollies' pulling power at the polls. This was what The Australian ran, and this was what was in the press release. Sadly, there is not much difference between the two, and it is the case that widespread redundancies in the mainstream media industry have forced journalists to use publicity releases by government spin doctors as copy. Dwindling newspaper circulations are creating an increasingly huge need for copious amounts of quick copy, in order to sell advertising space in the country's dailies. This could of course be countered via an increased market in independent copy in the savagely unregulated freelance market that exists in Australia without union restraint, and without award compliance.


Qld politicians do lead the way in the push for preventative detention. The Qld public was conditioned to accept the first preventative detention laws, at odds with the Australian Constitution, strategically implemented on the most unacceptable citizens through the DPSOA.
Under Article 14 of the ICCPR: 'All persons shall be equal before the courts and tribunals. In the determination of any criminal charge against him, or of his rights and obligations in a suit at law, everyone shall be entitled to a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal established by law.'
However it's generally interpreted that a country's obligations to UN Conventions should be observed but can not override the laws of a nation, even though ours are merely a slow drip feed from the UK.
With the new focus by the Rudd government on human rights, the UN Conventions that Australia ratifies should theoretically inform any new laws made in the states and territories who have promised their compliance to improving the country's standing on human rights in the international arena.
Was the sharp decline in popularity of the now former political leaders associated with launching preventative detention under the guise of national security fears, such as Bush, Blair and Howard, also an indication that any move to treat people unequally before the law, whether state or federal, isn't popular or commonly accepted?

Preventative detention is now being marketed in Queensland, and some other states against 1%ers and anyone who can be labelled as a 1%er, is now considered worthy by elected representatives of an unequal application of the state's laws.

So what racial or religious minorities will be first up on the list of those never to be released in the redneck state, in which, authorities see everyone but their own corrupt public officers as a clear and inherent risk?

Some might suggest that the blatantly unaddressed Indigenous incarceration rates comprise a massive human rights violation, and openly demonstrate preventative detention against racial minorities has been in effect for centuries and it is not the innovative or efficient crime prevention concept that new spin decrees.


The proposed laws curb the capacity for those suggested to be potential 'outlaws,' by Qld politicians and police, to do the things that other citizens have the freedom to, like socialize with friends and family who've also been branded as 'potential outlaws'(seeing them more than 3 times a year makes them an inmate), or to hold a liquor licence or a weapons licence. To work in security and to have enhanced security around one's home, is also 'outlawed' for those stigmatized as 'outlaws,' or suspected of future crimes via anti-association provisions.

If journalists actually speak to 'outlaws,' instead of just politicians and spin doctors, or have sources who are branded as 'outlaws,' it can and will justify intelligence officers surveilling them, and intruding on their work, and jeopardize the confidentiality of their sources. But strangely, the Qld media remain silently unopposed to the impact of the Act on the integrity of their work.

In the media release the Qld government strongly refuted that the laws would persecute just anyone who rides a motorbike, and that the underfunded 'Public Interest Monitor' could protect the interests of the innocent - although it could be argued that the existence of the court system is to determine guilt or innocence, rather than fortune telling to predict whether a citizen or a group of citizens may commit a crime at some point in the future.

Civil liberties groups have argued that the short-sighted bill does less than nothing to address the weaknesses in Qld's corrupt public sector and that as a consequence, the laws will actually circumvent public sector transparency with the illusion that organized crime is under the control of a government which has not yet legislated to control its own questionable actions.