If I were to disappear...

I've been reading stuff on all these new anti-terror laws, they look fun. ASIO and the Federal Police can jail people for "preventative" measures. So if they think you may be about to commit a terrorist offence, they can jail you. You don't have to be guilty, you just have to seem like you could be about to become guilty. And a court doesn't decide that, the police do. Plus they can bring you in for questioning and you don't have to even seem like a terrorist. You may just know a terrorist, or someone who seems like one. Or just know something about someone who seemed like a terrorist. And if they brought you in for questioning, you have no right to a lawyer and you aren't allowed to tell anyone you're there. If you tell anyone you can go to jail for it. Plus if the people you tell tell anyone they can go to jail too. That's getting jailed for telling someone that someone you knew got questioned by police because they may have know someone who may be about to be a terrorist or may know something that about some terrorism that may happen.

All this questioning can be done without the courts being involved. It's only when they get around to actually charging you with talking about talking to them, that the courts get involved.

Effectively this means that people can just disappear. The police can bring you in for questioning, or preventative detention and no-one will know you're there. They can just keep renewing their warrants to have you there and you don't have to turn up again. And if you do turn up you can't tell anyone where you've been.

So let me just say, if I do disappear, it may not be something as simple as a drowning or a late night walk in the bush that goes horribly wrong. I may not have run away. It may be that I am in police custody being questioned about things that I may or may not know about or I may or may not be about to commit.

And if I turn up and you ask me "Where have you been?" and I don't tell you, then I was probably detained by police.

The laws also state that people can be put under house arrest, given tracking devices, not allowed to attend meetings, and told who they can't talk to. This is almost the same as the banning orders the South African Government put on anyone they didn't like during apartheid.

But I don't have anything to worry about at the moment, I'm white and I'm not Muslim. How could I be a terrorist?