“Community safety” as social authoritarianism
Writing in Arena Magazine, Christopher Scanlon raised serious concerns about Tony Blair’s Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, among other aspects of New Labour’s law and order policy. He concluded:
Rather than forging a “new politics” of the centre-Left, as was his aim, Blair has triangulated both the Tories and the opponents within his own Party to fashion a politics that tracks farther right than even many Tories would countenance. …
Those who applaud New Labour’s “modernisers” in Australia, particularly in the ALP, ought to take note. For a time it was almost plausible to paint New Labour’s illiberal excesses as the regrettable — though politically expedient — price to be paid to realise a progressive politics in the contemporary era. Such an interpretation of New Labour no longer has any hint of plausibility.
Tony Blair’s good friend Geoff Gallop is disappointingly similar on so-called “community safety” — the fluffy New Labour term for law and order. His government recently gave police new “move on” powers, which they can use to compel a person to leave an area for at least 24-hours, on pain of a $12 000 fine or twelve months in jail.
Before the new powers came into effect, we were told the police would exercise them judiciously:
Those sort of powers have to be used sparingly…the police officers have been trained particularly in the use of that power… But certainly from my point of view and the district police officers here, we’ll be making sure that police officers in the Kimberley will be using it only when it’s needing to be used.
But who believes that? In less than two weeks, police have already issued more than 120 move-on notices. They are talking tough, bragging about “taking a hard line on anti-social behaviour.”
The problem with these orders is that they give total discretion to the issuing officer, and the burden of proof is disgracefully low. The only requirement is a “suspicion” that an offence might be committed in future, or a risk of a breach of the peace.
Police Commissioner Karl O’Callaghan explained that they would be used where behaviour “doesn’t quite become an offence” or where someone is “on the verge of causing trouble” — in other words, you can now be punished, without a day in court, for something even the police admit you haven’t done.
This means the police have the ability to pick on anybody they don’t like, perhaps for something as trivial as wearing a menacing hoodie, or being young or Aboriginal in public.
It is not hard to see these orders being used to ban legitimate, peaceful protests whenever the police feel like it. Scanlon notes that ASBOs (which are harder to issue) have been misused in Britain:
[A]n ASBO was served on a protestor for kicking up a stink about the health and safety issues at his local council. He breached it and was placed on remand at Blakenhurst prison.
If he’d been in WA, a “move on” order could be issued against this fellow before he’d even started his protest, because police “suspected” that he was “on the verge of causing trouble”.
Please email Premier Geoff Gallop, Police Minister Michelle Roberts and Attorney-General Jim McGinty to tell them what you think about these authoritarian police powers.
