Crack annoyance squad wanted

Julian Morrow
July 3, 2008

Mr Watkins's war on everything

Morris Iemma leads a Government whose members have displayed a truly impressive array of human failings. If we limit the list just to convicted criminals, it has harboured in its ranks a drink driver and a pedophile, not to mention a number of serial speeders. So it's no wonder an official visit from a man who can absolve sins is appealing to the State Government.
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The point here is that the new offence is built on concepts - inconvenience and annoyance - which are vague, subjective and not sufficiently serious to justify imposing a criminal sanction.

The laws are also deviously authoritarian. What will get you into trouble is failing to comply with a direction from an authorised person: "In the name of the law, please stop being annoying." The law gives a wide licence to meddlesome officials to stop legitimate conduct just because another person doesn't like it. And it's not just the Fun Police: members of the SES or even the Rural Fire Service can lead crackdowns, too.

Now I support muzzling idiotic pranksters as much as the next member of The Chaser team. But these laws could also be used to suppress the dignified and heartfelt protests of the many, many people who have suffered disgraceful abuse, cruelty or discrimination at the hands of the Catholic Church. That is unforgivable, even by a Pope. The new law offends the most basic principles of freedom (of speech, of association, of conscience) upon which our society - though not the Vatican's - is based.

Governments in liberal democracies should not pass anti-liberal, anti-democratic laws. But they do, more and more, and regardless of political persuasion. Sadly, repressive legislation is one of the few areas where the Iemma Government is not below average. It is simply average.

So what should citizens do when governments fail them? Put simply, bad laws should be defied.

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Gus: these "that-shall-not-satire-publicly" stuff-you-laws are turning us — midget satirists — into the annoying giants bullies we're not. We're only petty humans, decidedly about to ignore the Randwick charade apart from a few quips lazily penned from our iMacChairs, but the Iemma government, in need of glory, keeps waving the red flag saying "Hello?!!! We're here!... Come and annoy us!... So we can bash you on the head...!! Bring it on... We're ready for ya..! Try us!... Com'on!!!"

Gees... They want us out there in the cold bloody wind, doing our funny stuff so they can claim a few scalps and lousy tee-shirts as exhibits to their conquests... You mean they do not build Arch-de-Triumph anymore? That's sheer governmental annoyance... Real annoyance! But then how can we resist the "moral panic"? (see below)... Our mortal well-studied scientifically based ethics are being thrown into chaos and doubt by a happy event bathing in priestcraft and bloody beliefs spruiking of an eternal after-life no one has ever seen. Eternal youth forever (deliberate tautology here to reinforce the moral panic).

How can we be so unkind to the greatest fairy-tales of them all? Unlike Morrow who may be or may be not encouraging trouble, I suggest trouble will breed from itself like a spontaneous disease. Suddenly, all the youth of the world, under the clear Sydney deep blue sky, realising that the god-concept and the reality of human life were never meant for each other will discover the relative truth...

And all had a happy time mingling in Oxford street with the real fairies.

Or may be not.
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Libertarian 'moral panic' aside, it's a happy event

Kristina Keneally
July 3, 2008

World Youth Day is an event of enormous proportions. It will bring 500,000 young people to the city centre and Randwick Racecourse and huge crowds to dozens of other venues across the city.

This is an event that the people of Sydney can choose to share in and enjoy - if they want to. World Youth Day participants from almost 200 nations are staying across metropolitan Sydney in people's homes, school halls, and various hotel and hostel accommodation.

They'll be attending events each morning in local churches and venues. In the afternoon, participants will come to the CBD for the big events - like the Pope's arrival on Sydney Harbour - and a youth festival each day.

We are Australia's major event capital, and Sydneysiders are terrific hosts. We are ready to welcome the youth of the world to our great city.
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Kristina Keneally is the State Government's ministerial spokeswoman for World Youth Day.

Court challenge for WYD nuisance powers

The Council for Civil Liberties is preparing a court challenge against new fines for people who annoy or inconvenience pilgrims during Sydney's World Youth Day later this month.

The regulations empower police, firefighters and State Emergency Service (SES) volunteers to stop people who engage in conduct that causes annoyance or inconvenience to Catholic pilgrims during the week-long event.

People who do not comply could be arrested and face a fine of $5,500, but the SES says its volunteers do not want to enforce the rules.

Protest groups and civil libertarians fear the rules could lead to the confiscation of items such as placards and T-shirts bearing anti-World Youth Day slogans.

The secretary of the New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties, Stephen Blanks, says the rules are absurd.

"They're counterproductive because they've produced the situation this week that now there are many groups who wish to use the Pope's visit as an occasion to protest against a wide variety of subjects," he said.

"That was not going to occur if the Government and the police had taken a sensible approach."

Two volunteer groups that the NSW Government wanted to police "annoying and inconvenient" conduct at World Youth Day events have refused the extraordinary new powers, which could be subject to a legal challenge from lawyers and civil libertarians. 

None of the 120 State Emergency Service representatives volunteering during the festivities would seek "authorised person" status, he said, which means they will not have the power to fine people or request the removal of jackets and shoes. Instead, they will simply help police with traffic control and bag inspections. 

The 230 Rural Fire Service members working at the event would not seek authorised person status either, said the service's commissioner, Shane Fitzsimmons. 

The president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Cameron Murphy, said his organisation had received preliminary legal advice from senior counsel that the laws on annoyance and inconvenience could be invalid. 

Volunteers Refuse To Use New Nuisance Laws

The police action comes days after the revelation that special laws have been passed for the event allowing police to clamp down on people causing an "annoyance or inconvenience" to World Youth Day participants and issue fines of up to $5500.

The laws could be used to target the actions of Pope Alice, who claims to be the "Queen of Heaven and curator of the universe", if authorities deem them to be annoying during the event.

From the Sydney Morning Herald letter pages (11/07/08)

Tyranny, not democracy, punishes polite disagreement with power

July 11, 2008

Democracy is not only a method for choosing governments. It is, or should be, a way to handle disagreement. In NSW our government is democratically chosen. But increasingly disagreement is resolved by administrative power.

Consider some of the recent stories in state politics: the controversy over the authority given to police and other agencies to remove or fine anyone said to be annoying or inconveniencing World Youth Day participants; Morris Iemma's description of unionists as "industrial terrorists" for threatening a strike to coincide with the Pope's visit; a public servant allegedly bullied by his minister into not complying with a freedom-of-information request; the alleged assault of a lawyer who offered assistance to someone being searched by police in a pub; and the alleged threats made by the Premier to a backbencher over funding for projects in her electorate. Add the debates on centralisation of planning powers and the policing of APEC, and a disturbing picture emerges.

These events share a common logic - the Government is actively narrowing the scope for political disagreement. In each case, an act of disagreement is treated as a threat to order that must be punished, rather than as a legitimate political act. The Government will tolerate some level of disagreement, but only on its terms.

Challenge the authority of a minister or a police officer in a manner which they do not approve and you are considered to be disloyal, anti-social, criminal or even terrorist.

This is a pernicious logic. It forecloses the space for disagreement because it fails to acknowledge that democratic politics can take a number of forms - from parliamentary polls to individual and collective acts of expression and protest.

Any democratic society will legitimately want to limit the forms that disagreement can take. But these limits should be justified with reference to democratic debate and principles.

None of the forms of disagreement under attack by this Government is a threat to democracy. In each case, individuals and groups want to engage in debate, not impose their will by force. They are protesters who seek to engage with institutions such as the church and state through banners and T-shirts, and peaceful assembly; workers voting to withdraw their labour in the way that maximises public impact; citizens offering nothing more than information and legal assistance.

Yes, they will cause inconvenience and annoyance to some. But in a democracy, our justification for restricting these forms of disagreement ought to evoke higher principles than annoyance and inconvenience. Such language in laws regulating World Youth Day protests is troubling enough. Of more cause for concern is that these dubious concepts seem to reflect an approach to disagreement generally.

Some forms of inconvenience and annoyance are fundamental to democratic politics.

Kurt Iveson Erskineville

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