Irfan Yusuf: Shock relegation to suspect citizen

The last time I was in New Zealand was in 1998. I was travelling to Brazil and had to change flights at Auckland. I used my Australian Telstra phonecard to call my friends, only to find it didn't work. I still felt like I was in Australia.

But if Howard's proposed Anti-Terrorism Bill 2005 is enacted in the Federal Parliament before Christmas, I will certainly not feel like I am in Australia.

Terrorism is one of the scourges of our time, up there with tsunamis, global warming and bird flu. September 11 changed the way we perceived ourselves as participants in liberal democracies. The London and Bali bombings brought these feelings closer to home.

And as terrorists used Islam as a rhetorical tool to justify their barbaric acts, Western Muslims were treated with suspicion. What made matters worse was that Muslim community leadership was dominated by people unable to articulate the concerns of people they claimed to represent.

The Australian Government set up a Muslim Community Reference Group as a means of rubber-stamping its national security agenda. Following the group's recent meeting, where it was briefed on the proposed laws, the President of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils endorsed the laws before they were even drafted. He was then forced to back-pedal, showing little understanding of media, public policy or public relations.

Of course, it is easy for middle-aged migrant men who dominate Muslim organisations to make nonsensical statements. If things go bad, they can always fly back to Delhi or Colombo or Suva. But for people like me, the only refuge is in Australia or thereabouts.

Under the new laws, I can be placed under house arrest or detained for a year without trial. This is known as a "control order". My crime is to maybe know something which is somehow related to terrorism. I am not allowed to tell anyone, even my employer, why I am being detained. I do not know how long I could be detained.

I can contact a lawyer, so long as my lawyer doesn't have a "prohibited contact order" made against him or her. In which case, I will be given a list of lawyers whom the government approves. Anything I tell my lawyer is not subject to any privilege.

Police can use force to take fingerprints or other materials from me. If I run away from police and they suspect I am a criminal, they can kill me.

I am not allowed to praise (verbally or in writing) any person or group that carries out a terrorist act. If I recklessly give money to a terrorist group, I can be jailed for life. Each of the groups proscribed as terrorist organisations is somehow linked to Islam or Muslims, unlike American law, which includes Israeli, Northern Ireland, Tamil and European groups.

According to the President of the Police Federation of Australia, the laws can only be implemented using racial and ethnic profiling. The police should know. They will be the ones enforcing the law. So if I have brown skin and an Arabic-sounding name, I have a greater chance of being subject to a control order. If I run from the police for some reason, my brown skin and Arabic-sounding name will make them more suspicious that I am a terrorist, and I could be killed.

Any donations I give to charities will be more heavily scrutinised. If my donation to earthquake victims in Pakistan or tsunami victims in Aceh somehow ends up in the hands of an organisation engaged in terrorism, I could be jailed for life.

Human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are outraged. The Asia Director of Human Rights Watch, Brad Adams, was quoted in the Australian Financial Review on October 13 as saying: "Locking people up or seriously restricting their liberty when they have not even been charged are characteristics of dictatorship, not a democracy."

Presuming that the most likely scenario for a terrorist attack involves people of Muslim background, surely Muslim communities would be the most useful resource in any counter-terrorism strategy. Yet the Howard Government includes ministers and backbenchers whose rhetoric seeks to alienate Muslim Australians.

Education Minister, Dr Brendan Nelson, called on Muslim schools to teach Australian values, as if to suggest they weren't doing so already. Bronwyn Bishop, a member of John Howard's NSW Right faction, has called on the Government to ban women and girls from wearing headscarves in state schools.

Mr Howard's only response was to describe the banning of headscarves as impractical. More strident condemnation came from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, who described the ban as the first step towards banning all religious symbols.

In such an environment, with the Government introducing sweeping laws and with political rhetoric actively marginalising an entire faith community, is it any wonder that an Australian-trained lawyer is thinking of seeking asylum across the Tasman?

I may have lived in Australia since I was 5 months old. I may have grown up in John Howard's electorate. I may have spent 10 years at an Anglican Cathedral School. I may speak English in a broad "Strayn" accent. I may have been most upset when New Zealand defeated Australia in the first Rugby League Test on Saturday night. I may laugh when my Kiwi "frinds" speak "Unglush".

But in the current environment, and soon to become a second-class citizen in my own country, I might be returning to Auckland Airport. Perhaps this time for good.

* The author is a Sydney-based industrial relations lawyer and occasional lecturer in the School of Politics at Macquarie University.