Shoot To Kill

The state premiers all say that John Howard didn’t include a shoot to kill clause in his initial presentation of his anti-terror laws that they signed off on.

Well of course he didn’t - he neither wants nor needs it.

It’s a classic diversionary tactic.

The Prime Minister added that section after the initial presentation, knowing it would cause the premiers, press and public to blow up and say they couldn’t possibly support it.

That neatly takes all the attention off all the other much more dangerous, anti-democratic and illiberal parts of his proposed so-called anti-terror laws. You know, the preventative detention, the control orders and all the other building blocks of a police state. The stuff he REALLY wants.

In due course Mr Howard will graciously ‘bow to the will of the people’ and the premiers, and take out the shoot-to-kill stuff – which he never really wanted in the first place, and, as he admits, doesn’t need anyway.

This fake ‘concession’ will leave him with all the really scary, dangerous and unnecessary powers to cow dissent and stifle free speech, which were what he wanted in the first place, totally intact and in no way watered down.

If we, the people, the press and the premiers are dumb enough to fall for this one, we deserve everything we get. If you thought it was bad when innocent refugees driven from their homelands by the Bush/Blair/Howard wars got locked up in Pacific concentration camps, wait till they start shoving Australian citizens into our own Guantanamo Bays.

Or do we think it’s just coincidence that all those so-called ‘detention centres’ have been emptied and mothballed, rather than demolished?