New Terror Laws will be misused in the future

Parliament passes counter-terrorism laws, criminalising terror planning and expanding warrantless search powers

Parliament has passed into law counter-terrorism powers which criminalise the planning of terror attacks and expand the ability for police to conduct warrantless searches.

The counter-terror laws, which the Government promised to pass this month in the aftermath of the Auckland supermarket terror attack on September 3, overhaul the Terrorism Suppression Act, which has for years been found wanting by authorities seeking to prosecute alleged terrorists.

The shock wave caused by the ISIS terrorist attack in West Auckland has frightened us all and while that fear is legitimate, it must not cloud our judgment.

We all want answers as to how an extremist who was on the Government’s radar managed to manipulate the refugee protocols to the point they were able to commit their violence while the rest of the security apparatus sat on their hands.

But the rush to pass the new anti-terrorism laws is the exact same fear that drove us to enact the original terrorism legislation that has proved to be so hopeless.

The Urewera terror raids show us how easy it is to abuse terror powers and how they inevitably end up being used against Maori.

These new terror powers enable the State to arrest and prosecute you for thinking about planning a crime, that’s an enormous empowerment of the State and with our previous history of how those terror powers get misused, I want to see the checks and balances before we hand over such enormous thought crime powers.

Sadly the checks and balances simply don’t exist in this legislation and we can already see how it’s going to be misused against legitimate protest in this country.

The SIS & Police have already shown us that they think MANA, the Greens, Nicky Hagar, me, environmentalists, Muslim students and Maori are the threat, so why would we trust them with more power?

Let’s not forget that even if was illegal to plot a terror attack, this ISIS extremist was charged with a weapons crime which was longer than that charge so the issue is how did he manage to manipulate the refugee laws.

The ISIS extremist was a bureaucracy screw up, handing the State even more terror powers won’t solve that.

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