Despite a Senate committee, led by Government Senators, recommending that the sedition provisions of the proposed anti-terrorist legislation be removed from the bills currently going through parliament, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock is sticking to his guns, saying that he will not consider any substantive change to the provisions.

The updated sedition offence proposes jailing anyone who incites violence against the community or Australian troops. Fair enough. However the legislation as drafted is much more broad brush than that - it could feasibly capture just about any criticism of the government or state institutions if those in power were minded to use the laws to suppress criticism. There’s a lot of “trust us, it’ll be OK” in how the government is trying to sell the proposed laws.

The Senate inquiry found that the sedition law would impede freedom of speech and needed to be examined by the Australian Law Reform Commission before the government took it any further. Mr Ruddock said he did not believe there were problems with the proposed sedition law in its current form.

I think the objective of preventing people urging actions against Australian troops, and against advocating support of terrorists is fine - we should not accept people doing that. However Ruddock needs to get his draftspeople working harder to deal specifically with that …. not the lazy and sweeping approach that is currently proposed.

I see also that former PM, Malcolm Fraser, has again been speaking out against the government’s proposals (and the government generally … he admits he has considered resigning from the Liberal Party because of the Government’s acquisition of what he calls arbitrary powers to introduce sedition laws and preventative detention).

I see that the bill has passed the lower house (surprise surprise) tonight.