Tony Abbott highlighted the importance of Indonesia knowing that the Australian government is ‘absolutely resolute’ on stopping the boats.
AAP/Tracey Nearmy
The government goes into the parliamentary session’s final fortnight on the back foot over two highly contentious issues: its citizenship legislation and Indonesia’s demand to know whether Australia paid…
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton will have the sole power to strip dual nationals of their Australia citizenship if they are believed to be involved in terrorist activities.
AAP/Dave Hunt
Simply having judicial review for the contentious power to strip citizenship from dual nationals suspected of involvement with terrorism – without independent merits review – is far from reasonable.
Tim Wilson sympathises with the government’s aim of finding ways to tackle the national security threat posed by foreign fighters, but has reservations about the method.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
It’s awkward for the government – but very good for the public debate – that the Coalition’s citizenship-stripping initiative coincides with the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta. Next Monday’s birthday…
Discussing the rights and responsibilities of Australian citizenship is pointless without more information on the nature and justification of what is proposed.
AAP/Dan Peled
Most of the government’s discussion paper is devoted to framing citizenship in a way that is conducive to its proposal to strip dual nationals involved in terrorist activities of their citizenship.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s default political position is confrontation.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
Liberal backbencher Craig Laundy, who won the marginal seat of Reid from Labor in 2013, this week started making videos that he’s promoting as “spin-free”.
Nothing of what William’s subjects had in life escaped the Domesday Book. Today, more covertly, those in power are using mass surveillance to collect all the digital details of our lives.
Flickr/Andrew Barclay
Almost 1000 years after their ruler demanded every detail of serfs’ lives, the digital age and mass surveillance are creating a new and undemocratic imbalance between citizens and those with power over them.
Malcolm Turnbull warned against ‘bravado’ on the citizenship debate, and expounded on the rule of law and constraints on government.
AAP/Lukas Coch
Malcolm Turnbull has laid down some fundamental principles for the citizenship debate in an intervention that seems driven by conviction and wanting to explain his position rather than a view to self-interest…
Prime Minister Tony Abbott threw aside cabinet processes last week – and he’s been singed as a result.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
Quizzed about last week’s sensational cabinet leak, Tony Abbott says people around Parliament House want to focus on “process but the public want the government to focus on "outcomes”.
The Abbott government has announced a plan to strip dual nationals involved in terrorism of their Australian citizenship.
AAP/Lukas Coch
A number of countries – including Canada, France, the US and the UK – allow for the deprivation of citizenship on national security grounds. But the scope of ministerial discretion varies significantly.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott wasn’t happy with Treasurer Joe Hockey offering up GST revenue.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
The Abbott government desperately tries, but nearly always fails, to run to a tight script.
What possesses a Queensland teenager like Oliver Bridgeman to go to fight in Syria? Online propaganda is not an adequate explanation on its own.
Facebook
Simplistic views of terrorist recruitment focus on online messages to Western youth. Foreign fighters are coming from many other countries, lured by many means, and we need more sophisticated responses.
Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Philip Ruddock at parliament house on Tuesday.
AAP/Lukas Coch
The government will soon introduce legislation to give the immigration minister wide discretionary power to strip Australian citizenship from dual nationals involved in terrorist activities.
Court says no to government sifting through metadata.
Semmick Photo/Shutterstock
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals went beyond striking down the NSA’s metadata surveillance program; the court also created a road map for Congress to balance privacy and security issues
President Barack Obama and his inner circle follow the assassination of Osama bin Laden, which made headlines worldwide but is seemingly unimportant four years on.
EPA/Pete Souza/White House handout
Memories of the killing of Osama bin Laden are fading, but the legacies of al-Qaeda and the war on terror’s many ‘own goals’ haunt us in the form of multiplying threats and lost civil liberties.
Notions of the ‘right to know’ forced Hillary Clinton to defend her use of a private email account as secretary of state - a far cry from the days when citizens didn’t even know how their representatives voted.
EPA/Andrew Gombert
The idea of the right to know as the ‘lifeblood of democracy’ is a surprisingly modern development. And in an age when transparency is prized, privacy and secrecy can still be justified in many cases.
Melbourne teenager Jake Bilardi was troubled and thus susceptible to Islamic State propaganda well before he joined them and died as a suicide bomber.
AAP/Twitter
The instinctive response to Islamic State propaganda is to counter it with more propaganda. But my analysis shows that’s not working. We should not play their game on their field with their ball.
The constitutional status, rights and obligations of Australian citizens are by no means clear, despite recent legislative reforms.
AAP/Dan Peled
Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten are both desperate, for their separate reasons, to get the metadata legislation cleared away this parliamentary fortnight rather than have it hanging until the budget session…
Australian Muslims feel that they are being targeted as a group by counter-terrorism laws.
AAP/Julian Smith
The majority of Muslims in Australia condemn terrorism and extremism. But they feel that counter-terrorism policing and laws unfairly target their community, causing a troubling community backlash.
The story of Jake Bilardi (centre) has distorted the characterisation of what most people think of as a radicalised individual.
AAP/Twitter
There will be more Jake Bilardis to come, and Australia must realise that no two cases will be entirely the same. Radicalised individuals will come from all areas of society.