This is something I had kept recently and came across again when tidying up/packing to go home; in view of various recent writings on the site, I felt I had to share... enjoy!
DEAR EDITOR
Judging from newspaper letters pages, defending democratic freedoms has suddenly become radical.... man.
What's your favourite section of the newspaper? If you are like most Australians, the answer is (a) sports or (b) I don't read newspapers because I watch the sport on telly. When push comes to a rabbit punch behind the play, however, I think most of us have a soft spot for the letters page, laying bare as it does the psyche and opinions of your average Australian.
I have a theory. (Actually, I have many theories but experience has taught me that no one wants to hear about John Howard being a killer robot from the planet Zargon sent to destroy humankind. Ah, the dinner parties I've ruined.) Focus. My theory is that the letters page compels because it's the reality television of print media. Admittedly, you don't see anyone get their penis out while they give someoner a shoulder massage, but - close enough - you do get to read people's opinions on people getting their penis out while they give someone a shoulder massage, and other pressing issues of the day. Plus, other people's opinions (being, by definition, not yours) are almost always inflammatory, and there's nothing like reading a rant containing the phrases 'jackbooted feminazi', chardonnay-sipping socialist' and tree-hugging greenie' to sound the idiot alarum and make you reconsider your previously hardline stance against enforced sterilisation. The gift of literacy, ladies and gentlemen, is a double-edged sword, as it encourages the witless to share.
The great thing about insults (let us not forget 'chattering classes' and 'latte drinking') bandied in place of debate on the letters page - apart from making me nostalgic for the sophisticated discourse and open hostility of primary school - is that they provide a valuable indication of which human values are being whittled in the name of political or economic expediency at any given time. The latest phrase to be co-opted as an insult, and that is popping up on the letters pages with the dogged frequency of coke lines on Kate Moss's vanity mirror, is 'civil libertarian', often accompanied by the telling phrase, 'so-called'.
This one has me, as they used to say in the Raj, jiggered. If I stand sideways and squint I can kind've understand a certain type getting frustrated with feminists (we haven't half buggered up the world order with our pesky demands for equal rights, reproductive freedom and refusal to stay in the kitchen making canapes in the nude - unless, obviously, we feel like it). And if you're a logger, or the CEO of a rapacious multinational mining conglomerate, then obviously environmentalists are going to get up your nose. But with the exeption of your actual tyrants/terrorists - who are unlikely to write sniffy letters signed 'Outraged from a cave in Afghanistan' to the Herald-Sun or Courier Mail - how can any Australian have something against civil liberties? In a democracy freedom is generally considered worth fighting for, not writing pissant diatribes against (although I respect your right to do so yadda yadda).
The trigger, ironically, has been the new, chilling anti-terrorism legislation, which (if you are living in a cave in Afghanistan) will give the government the right to detain anyone for two weeks without charges, electronically tag citizens, and order journalists to hand over documents without a court order. People's homes can be searched and items removed by ASIO without the occupents being told, Freedom of Information is being reduced, and it will become a criminal offence to leave baggage unattended at an airport.
Frankly, our government needs more powers like New Orleans needs more rain. It has already demonstrated an appetite for secrecy and abuse of power: deporting peace activist Scott Parkin and charging him $11,000 for his week of encarceration, Cornelia Rau, MV Tampa and Vivian Solon.
Secrecy, unexplained arrests and unchecked political power have, historically, always led to merry hell in a handbasket, and the erosion of civil liberty commonly begins in the name of national security. The letters written so far imply that civil libertarians are (essentially) limp-wristed troublemakers for kicking up about the legislation. But giving up our civil rights in the attempt to protect them brings to mind that great quote from the sixties: "Fighting for peace is like f**king for virginity".
Aggrieved in Melbourne.
by Fiona Scott-Norman
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