Civil libertarians and many legal groups are guilty of hypocrisy in the way they allegedly defend justice in the Australian community. Their double standards are demonstrated in the loud criticism of federal terrorism laws and dead silence over NSW occupational health and safety laws.
Federal terrorism laws conform to core justice principles. NSW occupational health and safety laws intentionally breach them. Now that the case against the terrorism suspect Mohamed Haneef has collapsed a clearer perspective can enter the justice debate.
Based on present knowledge, Haneef is a victim who's owed an apology and restoration of his good name. The allegations against him that resulted in his detention proved to be false.
Prominent lawyers have claimed Haneef's treatment is a result of the design of federal terrorism laws. They say the laws threaten the rights of all Australians. This is wrong. The terrorism laws secured Haneef's presumption of innocence. The prosecutor had to prove the case. Haneef had full rights of appeal to the High Court. His detention was subject to approval from a magistrate independent of the prosecutor. The magistrate eventually refused Haneef's continued detention.
The treatment Haneef endured resulted from a flawed investigation, not the terrorism laws. But in lawyers attacking the terrorist laws and staying long silent on other more glaring legal injustices, the moral superiority they assume is demolished by their hypocrisy.
The NSW occupational health and safety laws demonstrate the point. The laws are a political product of a deep-seated cultural hatred evident in the broad labour movement.
The cultural issues are exposed in a Business Council of Australia discussion paper, Making Work Safe, which refers to two streams of occupational health and safety laws in Australia.
The dominant stream, operating in most states and the Commonwealth, applies justice principles. The other, operating in NSW, presumes the legally identified employer is guilty merely as a result of an occupational health and safety incident occurring. Making Work Safe quotes academic papers which reason that corporations' lust for profits causes corporate managers to be neutered of their normal moral principles. Managers are assumed to have no regard for worker safety and government must act in an oppressive, fearsome manner to scare managers into behaving safely.
It's an ugly, degrading view of humanity which in NSW holds such strong political sway that the Government assumes the authority to strip justice from occupational health and safety laws.
Occupational health and safety prosecutions are criminal actions. Like anti-terrorism laws, occupational health and safety laws are intended to prevent and/ or punish deeds that harm other people. But because of the severity of criminal sanction civilised societies realise that government must be restrained in its power over the individual or government will create victims. Justice safeguards are built into criminal law.
The NSW laws are far worse than anything the legal community has alleged against the Federal Government. The laws remove the right to presumption of innocence, deny trial before a jury in normal courts and prevent appeals to the High Court.
In the most high profile case since 2000 glaring double standards were exposed. In the Gretley underground coalmining tragedy, four miners drowned. The company drilled into a disused, water-filled mine after being given the wrong maps by the mines department. Like Haneef, the company and managers were victims of circumstance. Unlike Haneef they were denied justice and were convicted.
But the department was not prosecuted. A union-owned labour hire company that under the law should have been charged, was not prosecuted.
The Government experienced some political pressure on the issue before the March election. In typical "do-nothing" strategy, it pushed it off to yet another inquiry. If libertarians, churches and lawyers were genuine in their defence of justice they would tell the employer haters in the union movement that hate has no place in a civilised society. They would tell the Government to stop playing "stare down" politics and overturn its hate-inspired occupational health and safety laws.
What should be expected on past experience, however, is a steely focus on silence and a continued application of a conspiracy of hypocrisy.
ADVERTISEMENT
No comments:
Post a Comment