Thursday 10 November 2005

Bi-weekly report from the Nautilus Institute at RMIT, Australia.

1. Army Shoot-To-Kill On Top Of New Laws
2. Convicted Terrorists Will Keep Citizenship
3. Enough To Build 15 Bombs
4. French Defence Minister Postpones Visit
5. Asia’s New Naval Map
6. We Need Tools For Fight: Ruddock

1. Army Shoot-To-Kill On Top Of New Laws,
   Craig Skehan and Marian Wilkinson, SMH, 2005-11-8

   Soldiers will have shoot-to-kill powers before the Commonwealth Games in March, says the Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer. The Federal Opposition warned it would not necessarily support the move.

2. Convicted Terrorists Will Keep Citizenship,
   Joseph Kerr, SMH, 2005-11-10

   The Federal Government has scrapped plans to strip convicted terrorists of their citizenship. However, a new citizenship bill will give ASIO an effective veto over citizenship applications.

   Of related interest:

   Currently tabled before parliament Australian Citizenship Bill 2005 pdf

   Related documentation to the bill making arrangements for the changes: The Australian Citizenship (Transitionals and Consequentials) Bill 2005 pdf

3. Enough To Build 15 Bombs,
   John Silvester, Ian Munro and Stephen Gibbs, SMH, 2005-11-10

   The Sydney arm of the alleged Islamic terrorist group raided this week had stockpiled enough chemicals to make at least 15 large bombs to be used against selected targets, police say.

4. French Defence Minister Postpones Visit,
   Oceania Flash/PNS, 2005-11-09

   Michèle Alliot-Marie has postponed an official visit to Australia, according to the French Defence ministry. M.Alliot-Marie and Senator Robert Hill were to talk on defence cooperation between the two countries including increased involvement of the Pacific-based French army

5. Asia’s New Naval Map,
   Martin Walker, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (UPI) 2005-10-29

   The agreement to re-locate 7,000 U.S. Marines from the Japanese island of Okinawa to the U.S. territory of Guam in the South Pacific is just one component of a far more ambitious transformation of U.S. military strategy in the Asia-Pacific theater

6. We Need Tools For Fight: Ruddock,
   Patrick Walters, Australian 2005-11-10

   Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said the Government’s proposed detention and control orders, to be debated in parliament today, were crucial to improving the nation’s ability to thwart terrorism.

   Of related interest:

   Briefing on sedition offences in the Anti-Terrorism Bill 2005, Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, University of New South Wales, APO, 2005-11-10

   “The Anti-Terrorism Bill proposes to repeal existing sedition offences and replace them with five new offences. The new offences partly implement the Gibbs Review of federal criminal law in 1991, but Gibbs also recommended modernising (and narrowing) many other archaic ‘offences against the government’, including treason, treachery, sedition, inciting mutiny and interfering with political liberty. Because the government has not acted on these recommendations, writes Ben Saul, the new legislation preserves some broad and archaic security offences”

   Read the full text Briefing on sedition offences in the Anti-Terrorism Bill 2005 (PDF file)