The contest to stage ever bigger and better events is out of hand, writes Simon Mann.

HAS Melbourne missed a gold medal opportunity at these Commonwealth Games to really grab the world's attention — to make a real difference, launch something memorable, achieve something remarkable?
Well and good the flying tram, the breathtaking pyrotechnics and the metallic fish floating in the Yarra, not to mention Delta and Dame Kiri and the 12-day festival program that amplifies Moomba's perennial pledge to "get together and have fun".
As for the goodwill of the thousands of volunteers, it's worth bottling. And, despite the sniggers of sports purists who lament the absence of so many world champions, the prospect of competition between elite athletes at any time is something to relish.

But what Melbourne could have done was roll back the ever-escalating pressure to "outdo" the previous Games with increasingly lavish celebrations. It could have made a stand and acknowledged the gross inequities in the Commonwealth itself, put humanity ahead of hubris and challenged convention, just as it did during the 1956 Olympics. Then, Melbourne's simple gesture of allowing athletes to mingle with one another during the closing ceremony established a standard for the modern Olympics.

In 2006, Melbourne could have returned the Games to a more simple, more sustainable celebration of the Commonwealth's trumpeted ideals of humanity, equality and destiny. It could have used its fleeting appearance on the world stage for something more meaningful and memorable than discordant and cliched representations of a city's way of life.
Instead of blowing $50 million on its opening and closing ceremonies, and another $7 million on its river celebrations, Melbourne could have honoured the spirit of the Games with a gesture likely to make a real difference to the countries that compete in them. Is there not something slightly vulgar about splurging millions on a piece of theatre in honour of athletes, many of whom are from nations that, to coin the vernacular, are on the bones of their bums?
More than 50 of the 71 competing nations and territories are developing countries, many battling life and death issues of which ordinary Australians (and for that matter Britons, Canadians, New Zealanders) have little real understanding.

Sure, Melbourne 2006 has nominated Plan Australia as its goodwill initiative, a Commonwealth Games first.
More than $10,000 — interest earned on early ticket purchases — has already been handed over for Plan programs, and the aid agency expects the publicity to deliver a lift in child sponsorships and donations. But its windfall pales alongside the Games' $1.1 billion total cost — and the extent of poverty across the Commonwealth.

Take Malawi, long racked by famine and political unrest. Its 12 million people have a life expectancy of less than 38 years, compared with Australians' 80. GDP per capita is just $US600 (Australia, $US30,000). Its infant mortality rate is 104 babies per 1000 live births (Australia, 4.8). More than 14 per cent of the adult population are infected with HIV (Australia, 0.1 per cent).

Just 50 per cent of Ugandans can access safe drinking water. In Sierra Leone only three out of 10 youths can read and write. Half of Bangladeshi children under five are underweight due to malnutrition. There are not enough schools in Cameroon. Tanzanians and Zambians also bear grim statistics.

In many Commonwealth countries, people die daily from basic illnesses, from diarrhoea, measles and respiratory infections, and from more sinister ones such as tuberculosis and typhoid, and from the most destructive of all, AIDS. Longer term, some face a threat to their very survival. Will Tuvalu exist in 2050, let alone compete at the 29th Games then, given the dire predictions of climate change?

Don't get me wrong, the Games are worth having. They'll be great. Anything that brings so many nations together is worth celebrating in an era in which, increasingly, there seem to be more things dividing nations than there are uniting them. But could M2006 have stood for something more dramatic?
The ceremonies budget could have been halved, and the savings used for some special initiative. Maybe each fish floating on the Yarra could have represented a specific aid project funded out of the Games budget, with the public invited to get on board. Or perhaps M2006 could have accommodated a stunning bid to help end the AIDS rout in Africa, something to stop the world in its tracks and for onlookers to say: "Yeah, I get it!" Or maybe, if sport is a fitting totem for global goodwill, M2006 could take responsibility for making sure Africa can host its first Games in 2014 and not go under.

The possibilities are endless. It's all very well including an indigenous component in the ceremonies — that's de rigueur these days, and so it should be — but without something more tangible in support, it risks being labelled as tokenism. Even a supposedly cosseted monarch knows it. "For many indigenous Australians there remains much to be done," the Queen said on Tuesday. A day earlier she drew attention to the AIDS epidemic.

The creative director of last night's ceremony promised the spectacular would redefine what an event ceremony has to offer. If not, it would be labelled an "also-ran" and, he said, "Melbourne is not that sort of place."

Maybe so. But M2006 was a challenge not just for Melburnians — after all, Canberra is stumping up the $50 million for the ceremonies. And, sure, Australians don't need to beat themselves up about this. It's just that maybe we could have done even better.

WHEN US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits Australia from March 16 she could well be asked about the Absent American.

The Absent American is the man or woman you would expect to be living in the US ambassador's residence in Canberra, but hasn't for more than a year.

That charming house, occupied by US envoys since Christmas 1943, has been strangely empty since Tom Schieffer took his suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe in February last year.

Schieffer, a close friend and former business partner of US President George W. Bush, is now ambassador to Japan, but has had no successor here.

The Absent American and the vacant house looking over the back of Parliament House and out over the lake, have vexed the minds of some interested in the US-Australia relationship.

Former trade minister and deputy prime minister Tim Fischer has been one of them.

Fischer has cheekily suggested that rather than go to waste, the residence could be used to give still-homeless victims of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans some R&R here.

More seriously he has said, "We're now a year without an ambassador, and it's going on a bit long."

Tim Fischer works promoting tourism to Australia, and the absence of an ambassador is bothering him and other business types.

The office of Foreign Minister Alexander Downer isn't worried: It's a matter for the Americans to deal with, not us.

However, Downer a few months ago did raise the matter of the Absent American during a visit to Washington, and there is no evidence he was given any solid assurances.

Apparently it bothered him enough back then to make inquiries, and it's hard to imagine he is totally satisfied with present arrangements.

Even in strict terms of functional diplomatic connections, the observation of protocol, it is an embarrassing vacuum.

William P. McCormick is no doubt doing a sterling job as US envoy to New Zealand, and Robert W. Fitts likewise is serving his nation's interests in Papua New Guinea. We have the Absent American.

There have been a couple of attempts to get an ambassador in the big house in Canberra but each time something has come up and the candidates have not been able to make the trip across the Pacific.

The quest is for someone who is personally, as well as politically, close to George Bush.

Bush has under three years left in his second and final term as President, so a new ambassador would not have a long tour of duty in Australia.

It's not that links between Canberra and Washington have suffered greatly. Deputy head of mission William Stanton is a capable and experienced professional diplomat standing in for an ambassador.

However, there is a broader question about the condition of Australia-US ties.

There has been rumbled discontent over the fact Secretary of State Rice ditched two previously scheduled visits here and, apparently, had to be talked into the impending visit from March 16-18.

Rice was here with President Bush in October 2003, before she was made Secretary of State. Since her elevation, her focus has been on the Middle East and not our Asia-Pacific region. The coming visit appears to be a hasty repair job on that lack of attention, with Australia lumped into a tour of Indonesia, Peru and Chile.

Downer has used Parliament to depict the Rice visit and relations generally with the US as functioning like a well-oiled machine. Contrary to suggestions that the US at the top level has been truant from security concerns in our region, Downer says they are heavily engaged.

During her visit, Rice will attend the first meeting of an Australia-US-Japan ministerial summit on security matters.

Elsewhere she has been lined up to meet Prime Minister John Howard, Defence Minister Brendan Nelson, Treasurer Peter Costello and Attorney-General Philip Ruddock.

"This visit underscores the importance of the American alliance," Downer told Parliament last week.

"We had the US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, here in November of last year.

"We are entirely unapologetic about our close relationship with the US. It is a country which we engage with very heavily over Asia-Pacific matters."

If the United States is so deeply involved in our region, it might be able to find one person to live in the ambassador's residence in Canberra.

On December 31, 2003, I boarded a bus in Ulm, Germany, for a holiday in Skopje, Macedonia. When the bus crossed the border, Macedonian officials confiscated my passport and detained me for several hours. Eventually, I was transferred to a hotel, where I was held for 23days.

I was guarded at all times, the curtains were always drawn, I was never permitted to leave the room, I was threatened with guns, and I was not allowed to contact anyone. At the hotel, I was repeatedly questioned about my activities in Ulm, my associates, my mosque, meetings with people that had never occurred, or associations with people I had never met. I answered all of their questions truthfully, emphatically denying their accusations. After 13 days I went on a hunger strike to protest my confinement.

On January 23, 2004, I was handcuffed, blindfolded, and placed in a car. The car eventually stopped and I heard aeroplanes. I was taken from the car and led to a building where I was severely beaten. Someone sliced the clothes off my body, and when I would not remove my underwear, I was beaten again until someone forcibly removed it from me. I was thrown on the floor, my hands were pulled behind me, and someone's boot was placed on my back. Then I felt something firm being forced inside my anus.

I was dragged across the floor and my blindfold was removed. I saw seven or eight men dressed in black and wearing black ski masks. One of the men placed me in a diaper and a tracksuit. I was put in a belt with chains that attached to my wrists and ankles, earmuffs were placed over my ears, eye pads over my eyes, and then I was blindfolded and hooded. In the plane, I was thrown to the floor face down, and my legs and arms were spread-eagled and secured to the sides of the plane. I felt two injections, and I was rendered nearly unconscious. At some point, I felt the plane land and take off again. When it landed again, I was unchained and taken off the plane. It felt very warm outside, and so I knew I had not been returned to Germany. I later learned that I was in Afghanistan.

Once off the plane, I was shoved into the back of a vehicle. After a short drive, I was dragged out of the car, pushed roughly into a building, and left in a small, dirty, cold concrete cell. That first night I was interrogated by six or eight men dressed in the same black clothing and ski masks, as well as a masked American doctor and a translator. They stripped me, photographed me and took blood and urine samples. I was returned to my cell, where I would remain in solitary confinement, with no reading or writing materials, and without once being permitted outside to breathe fresh air, for more than four months.

During this time, I was interrogated three or four times, always by the same man, with others who were dressed in black clothing and ski masks, and always at night. The man who interrogated me asked about whether I had taken a trip to Jalalabad using a false passport, whether I had attended Palestinian training camps and whether I knew the September 11 conspirators or other alleged extremists. As in Macedonia, I truthfully denied his accusations. Two men who participated in my interrogations identified themselves as Americans. My requests to meet with a representative of the German government or a lawyer, or to be brought before a court, were ignored.

In March, along with several other inmates, I commenced a hunger strike to protest our confinement without charges. After 27 days without food, I was allowed to meet with two unmasked Americans, the prison director and an even higher official whom other inmates referred to as "the boss". I pleaded with them either to release me or to bring me to court. The American prison director replied that he could not release me without permission from Washington, but said that I should not be detained in the prison. On day 37 of my hunger strike, I was dragged into an interrogation room, tied to a chair, and a feeding tube was forced through my nose to my stomach. After the force-feeding, I became extremely ill and suffered the worst pain of my life.

Near the beginning of May, I was brought into an interrogation room to meet an American who identified himself as a psychologist. He told me he had travelled from Washington to check on me, and promised I would soon be released. Soon thereafter I was interrogated again by a native German speaker named "Sam", the American prison director and an American translator. I was warned at one point that, as a condition of my release, I was never to mention what had happened to me, because the Americans were determined to keep the affair a secret.

On May 28, I was led out of my cell, blindfolded and handcuffed.

I was put on a plane and chained to the seat. I was accompanied by Sam and also heard the voices of two or three Americans. Sam informed me that the plane would land in a European country other than Germany, because the Americans did not want to leave clear traces of their involvement in my ordeal, but that I would eventually continue on to Germany. I believed I would be executed rather than returned home.

When the plane landed, I was placed in a car, still blindfolded, and driven up and down mountains for hours. Eventually, I was removed from the car and my blindfold removed. My captors gave me my passport and belongings, sliced off my handcuffs and told me to walk down a dark, deserted road and not to look back. I believed I would be shot in the back and left to die, but when I turned the bend, there were armed men who asked me why I was in Albania and took my passport. They took me to the airport, and only when the plane took off did I believe I was actually returning to Germany. When I returned I had long hair and a beard, and had lost 18 kilos. My wife and children had left our house in Ulm, believing I had left them and was not coming back. Now we are together again in Germany.

I'm filing this lawsuit because I believe in the American system of justice. What happened to me was outside the bounds of any legal framework and should never be allowed to happen to anyone else. Ultimately, what I would like from this lawsuit is an acknowledgment that the CIA is responsible for what happened to me, an explanation as to why this happened, and an apology.

From a statement made to the American Civil Liberties Union in December by Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen who was abducted and detained in Macedonia and Afghanistan from December 31, 2003, to May 28, 2004. The ACLU is charging that former CIA director George Tenet acted illegally by authorising agents to abduct El-Masri, beat him, drug him and transport him to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan.

Twenty-six years after the Islamic Revolution the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems to have lurched back towards radicalism.

Many revolutions have passed through an initial quiet period after an early phase of radicalism, only to experience a resurgence years later. The initial quiet is often marked by corruption and a retreat from revolutionary goals. Believing stronger pursuit of revolutionary ideals is the only way to strengthen their country, idealists seek to inspire a return of the radicals, triggering conflict with pragmatic co-revolutionaries.

The Mexican revolution of 1910 began with peasant uprisings and worker revolts, The revolution's radical phase seemed to end in 1920 when Alvaro Obregon seized power; he limited land reforms and sought reconciliation with the United States. For the next 14 years General Obregon and his ally, Plutarco Calles ruled Mexico.

Then, in 1934, resentment against corruption led General Calles to choose an honest idealist to become president. That honest reolutionary Lazaro Cardenas, toured the country building popular support and then turned on Calles, expelling him from Mexico.

In 1938, 28 years after the reovolution began, Cardenas provoked a confrontation with the US and Britain by nationalising Mexico's petroleum. Only in the 1940s, after Cardenas left power, did Mexico turn to a more conservative path.

Similarly, China's communist revolution began with a decade of attacks on the middle classes, culminating in the Great Leap Forward of 1958-59. That disastrous campaign weakened Mao's influence while pragmatists like Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping grew stronger.

Mao worried that his revolution was going off track, and in the mid-1960s he launched an effort to regain control by educating a new generation of radical youth. The Cultural Revolution tore China apart, returned Mao to supreme power and allowed him to purge the pragmatists.

But in the early 1970s, moderates gained by engineering a reapproachment with the US, capped by President Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972. Deng was rehabilitated the following year, and in the late 1970s after Mao's death, pragmatists seized control of the regime.

What do these historical examples suggest for Iran? It is likely that the relative calm dating from Ruhollah Khomeini's death in 1989 is over. The election of Ahmadinejad marks new struggles within the ruling Islamic Republic party. These pit the honest radicals - led by Ahmadinejad and supported by younger revolutionaries known as the Abadgaran, or Developers, who are strong in the Iranian parliament - against the more currupt and pragmatic mullahs who head the party, led by former president Hashemi Rafsanjani. Supreme leader Sayyid Ali Khamenie is in the middle, increasingly isolated.

How should the US and European leaders respond? Historically, phases of resurgent radicalism have lasted 5-10 years, marked by aggressiveness against internal and external enemies.

This bodes ill for improved relations with Iran in the short run, and makes it imperative that Western powers unite to make it unambiguously clear any use of nuclear weapons or materials by Iran or terrosit groups aligned with Iran will result in an immediate and devastating response. (China developed nuclear weapons just befores its Cultural Revolution, mainly to deter the Sovient Union, but never used them).

It also seems advisable to offer positive incentives - including US recognition and an end to sanctions - that could empower pragmatists in their intra-party struggle much as Nixon's overtures to China helped blunt China's radicalism and strengthened the hand of pragmatists inthe Communist Party.

Nixon did not demand that China abandon communism or that Mexicao become a democracy, only that they act responsibly and learn to do business with the US. China is still not a democracy, and Mexico is only just becoming one. Neither country always sees eye to eye with the West. But both became counties with which it is possible to do a great deal of business, and both are increasingly integrated in to the global economy. That may be the only realistic goal to taming Iran.

OxCoooooo4 - ox77Po79 page 5

Throughout history, human survival has depended on the ability to identify threats and respond in timely and intelligent ways. In the distant past, threats to life tended to be more immediate and often mysterious. Plagues and catastrophes came without warning, rendering whole communities helpless. We live in a very different world, but people still have the primal fear of unknown threats lurking over the horizon. In 2003, after a mystery disease that came to be known as SARS broke out, The Age observed that fear itself posed a great threat to social and economic wellbeing. We also wondered at the complacency about the risk of a flu pandemic when even the common flu of a typical year leads to 250,000 deaths worldwide and about 2000 in Australia. Most people at risk still do not get vaccinated.

Levels of concern about defences against diseases compared with, say, terrorism are not proportionate to the relative threats to life. More to the point, a disproportionate political response is exposing all Australians to the risk that the powers created by draconian security laws will be abused. The need for close judicial oversight has been demonstrated by the abuses that occurred within the Immigration Department for want of proper scrutiny. Yet Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, who as immigration minister grossly exaggerated and exploited the threat of asylum seekers as a "national emergency", asks us to trust the Government's assessment that the terrorist threat justifies new security powers and its pledge that such powers will not be abused.

The threat of global terrorism is real, but the Government has not justified, in any meaningful way, the need to fundamentally alter the democratic balance between the powers of the state and the rights of the citizen. This shift is made possible only because political leaders have reacted so anxiously, perhaps to cover political backsides in case of an attack. This has made something of a mockery of the advice, "be alert but not alarmed". Although much parodied, that is the proper response to both terrorism and infectious disease. We suspect this week's anti-terrorist exercise, Operation Mercury, exposed concerns about operational preparedness and co-ordination that are more pressing than any deficiencies in the law.

Emergency services also have cause for concern about preparedness for natural disasters, here and overseas. The earthquake in Kashmir is the latest tragic reminder that the world has yet to master the basic practical requirements of effective disaster management. Similarly, initial responses to bird flu were alarmingly reminiscent of the SARS outbreak. There have again been cover-ups by governments concerned about public panic and economic losses.

Awareness of the danger is no longer an issue; understanding is. Three imported pigeons carrying antibodies to bird flu were treated as front-page evidence of the disease threat. In fact, while the antibodies were evidence of past exposure to a form of the virus (not necessarily the dangerous H5N1 strain), the birds were healthy, no longer carried the virus and posed no disease risk. In any case, migratory wild birds can carry the disease around the world. Although the H5N1 virus is not passed from human to human - the relatively few human cases are linked to close contact with infected birds - a higher incidence of contact and infection increases the risk of a mutation that makes person-to-person transmission possible. To limit such contact, international co-operation is needed to track and contain outbreaks. Nations must share their scientific and logistical resources - as Australia is now doing with its neighbours - if only to buy time to prepare for the moment the disease becomes transmissible between people.

Bird flu certainly would not be the first virus to jump species. Even then, the mutated virus may not infect people as readily as birds nor be as lethal. It is believed, however, that past pandemics began the same way; the recent laboratory recreation of the 1918-19 Spanish flu suggested avian origins. This work highlights a life-saving difference between the war-devastated nations of that time and now. We have a good idea of what we are up against and how to counter it. Indeed, we are better placed than we were a year ago. Great leaps in microbiology and genetic engineering give us unprecedented abilities to identify, treat and protect against a new flu type, first with antiviral drugs, then with a vaccine. Forewarned is forearmed, but only if all nations work together to prime the world's defences against a pandemic

TODAY'S world is preoccupied with terrorism. How we in democracies respond is critical to the maintenance of our own values and to the ideals of liberty. There is a danger that Islam, which is essentially a peaceful religion, will be blamed for the actions of terrorists and that we will be increasingly divided by religion and race.

We need to understand that terrorism is as old as the human race. The Crusaders from Britain who fought against Islam in the Middle Ages; the Spanish Inquisition; the IRA and the Protestant militias in Ireland all practised terrorism; all were fundamentalist in their beliefs. The Chechens wanting independence are terrorists. People in some parts of the Philippines who want independence, were once called communists, then freedom fighters and now terrorists. The Basques in Spain; the Belgians in the Congo; the Portuguese and Spaniards in Central and South America; the Red Army and the Red Brigades in Germany and Italy in the late '70s and early '80s were all terrorists.

Many believe the war in Iraq has provided a new motivation for terrorists, to end the occupation of an Islamic country by an infidel army. To understand that there are different causes of terrorism is not to condone but is essential if we wish to overcome and end terrorism.

Because civilisation as we know it was so nearly destroyed during the Second World War, leaders of all major states believed they must strive and work to achieve a better world. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was agreed in 1948. In the years since, protocols and conventions established under it were designed to build a law-based world. The International Criminal Court finally came into force on July 1, 2002. It is more than unfortunate that our response to terrorism has reversed much of that progress and leaders in too many countries do not seem to understand that that is happening.

These are powers whose breadth and arbitrary nature, with lack of judicial oversight, should not exist in any democratic country.The ASIO legislation of 2002 underlines Australia's official indifference to "due process" and to what until recently would have been regarded as universally accepted Rule of Law. We're the only democratic nation, I am advised, to legislate for the detention of people whom the authorities do not suspect of any wrongdoing or even wrong thought.

In Australia, any of us can be detained merely because authorities believe we might know something that we don't even know we know. The authorities do not have to believe we are guilty of any crime, or are planning any crime, or have consorted with any suspicious persons. How could such a law be drafted by the Government and supported by the Labor opposition?

You can be detained for one week but then on a new warrant, another and another and another week. Unless it is approved in the original warrant - and why would ASIO do that? - you are not allowed to contact your wife, your husband, your child, your mother, your father and, of course, not a lawyer.

If you don't answer ASIO's questions satisfactorily, you can be charged and subject to five years in jail. But the law is reasonable, it goes on to say that if you don't know anything, then it's not an offence not to tell ASIO anything. But you have to prove you didn't know anything and so the "onus of proof" is reversed.

You can be asked to produce a paper and if you don't, you also go to jail on prosecution for five years but the law goes on to say, being fair-minded again, if you don't have such a paper, it's not an offence not to produce it but you have to prove that you didn't have it. How do you prove you do not have something that you do not even know exists. Again, "onus of proof" is reversed.

If a journalist heard that you had been detained and sought to report it, he would go to jail for five years. If a detained person were released and talked to anyone about his or her experiences, subject to prosecution, five years in jail.

This seems to be a law for secret behaviour by authorities, for making somebody disappear. It is a law that one would expect in tyrannical countries and not in Australia. Do we do nothing about it because we believe it will not apply to ourselves? Do we believe it is only going to apply to people of a different religion who look a bit different?

United States authorities and others have, time and again, denigrated those in Guantanamo Bay. We have been told they are the worst of the worst, that they are terrible people, that they do not deserve the normal protection of the law.

People who make such comments clearly do not understand or believe in the Rule of Law as it has evolved through the ages. They have taken such views because they believe those in Guantanamo Bay and others are not "people" like ourselves. In a different day and a different time, but within the memories of many, we have heard those words before.

The presumption of innocence until proven guilty, the presumption that all people should have access to "due process" in a properly constituted legal system is no longer valid in Australia. It is not reasonable just to blame the Government alone for such laws. The Labor Party approved such laws. As a consequence of the Government and the Opposition basically agreeing, Australian law already provides for the abolition of "due process", of habeas corpus and the presumption of innocence. All this is already law.

Australian law, or lack of it, has already failed many individuals and groups. Among these we can include: Aborigines; people held in the Department of Immigration detention centres; an Australian citizen deported; Australian citizens wrongly held in detention centres without medical attention; a US citizen deported without "due process" and an Australian citizen being tried before a military tribunal. By the detention of the innocent, by the questioning of people known to be innocent by the authorities, by the right confirmed by the High Court with a majority of four to three, to keep a failed asylum seeker in jail for the term of his natural life, if he could not be returned to his land of origin.

Authorities in Australia already have the capacity for the exercise of extreme and arbitrary power without adequate judicial safeguards. Much of this involves the gravest failure of administrative and ministerial responsibilities. As shown in the Palmer and Comrie reports, the Department of Immigration has been at the centre of much of it. Two ministers have been in charge, neither minister is responsible. As far as one can tell, nobody has been held accountable. The people involved appear not to have mattered to the administration or to the Government.

Australia now has new proposals in front of it providing even greater power to the police and to the Government. Attention should, in particular, be turned to those provisions that allow for "preventive detention" and the use of "control orders" to arrest and to limit and monitor the activities of individuals. No cogent case has been made for the expansion of these powers, except a general one that it is necessary to fight terrorism. It would be reasonable to ask why, it would be reasonable to expect a considered answer. Do we really believe these powers will be effective in the fight against terrorism, or do we believe that the powers themselves are likely to lead to a sense of grievance and of alienation? These are powers whose breadth and arbitrary nature, with lack of judicial oversight, should not exist in any democratic country. If one says that they will not be abused, I do not agree. If arbitrary power exists it will be abused.

All this has happened in a country which has not experienced a significant terrorist incident for many years. What would be our Government's reaction if this great city were tied up and disorganised by terrorist attacks similar to those which recently occurred in London?

The Government is really saying on these issues, trust us, but no part of the history of the Coalition's invasion and occupation of Iraq gives any member of that coalition the right to say on these issues: "Trust us." We were told there were weapons of mass destruction. There weren't.

More recently published British cabinet papers have made it clear that President George Bush had made the decision to go to war seven or eight months before the American people were told.

More particularly, after the Tampa, after the children overboard, the experience and treatment of asylum seekers, the abandonment of Guantanamo prisoner David Hicks, all suggest that any right to trust has been long destroyed. Concerning the Tampa and children overboard, the Government knew they were playing to the more fearful and conservative elements in the Australian community and with great success. The Government also knows in relation to terrorism that the public is concerned, even fearful and can be made more fearful.

It may be brilliant politics but will such laws make Australia secure? By its actions, the Government has long abandoned and lost the middle ground. The rule of law and "due process" has been set aside.

These new proposals should be opposed. No strong case has been made that they will be effective in the fight against terrorism. There are no real safeguards. There is no adequate judicial review.

The laws should be opposed because the process itself is seriously flawed. Instead of wide-ranging discussion the Government has sought to nobble the field in secret and to prevent debate.

The Government and the Labor Party have both assumed that we cannot fight terrorism and adhere to the basic principles of justice and democracy. They have assumed that certain people are outside the law and do not deserve justice. They are saying "Trust us" when they have given us every reason not to trust them on peace and war and on security for our people.

If we stand silent in the face of discrimination and in violation of the basic principles of humanity, then we betray our own principles and our way of life. I regret that many believe they must throw basic rights overboard to defend those same rights. Such views are wrong and will make it harder to overcome terrorism.

Malcolm Fraser was prime minister from 1975 to 1983. This is part of the Stephen Murray-Smith memorial lecture last night at the State Library of Victoria.