Inside Australia’s Anti-Terrorism Laws and Trials

Ten years after Australia’s first national laws were enacted to combat the threat of terrorism, additional anti-terrorism laws were passed in the Australian Parliament in late 2014. Timely, piercing, and, in regard to the first set of laws, written with the benefit of hindsight, this book investigates whether Australia really needed to enact anti-terrorism laws in the first place, let alone add to them by asking Do the new laws pose increased threats to freedom of speech and freedom of the press? Have these laws been effective in protecting the community, or do they represent a long-term threat to the health of Australian democracy? Which laws have proved their worth—and which have not? and What has been the impact of the laws in Australia’s anti-terrorism trials and on the Muslim community? Most tellingly, the book asks whether seeing these anti-terror laws as normal is a danger in itself.

Andrew Lynch teaches and researches in the field of Australian constitutional law. He is the author of Australian Constitutional Law and Theory and What Price Security? Taking Stock of Australia’s Anti-Terror Laws. Nicola McGarrity is a lecturer in the faculty of law at the University of New South Wales. She directs the Terrorism Law Reform Project in the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law. She is the author of Counter-Terrorism and Beyond: The Culture of Law and Justice After 9/11 and Surveillance, Counter-Terrorism and Comparative Constitutionalism. George Williams is one of Australia’s leading constitutional lawyers and public commentators. He is the Anthony Mason Professor, a scientia professor, and the foundation director of the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at the University of New South Wales. He has written and edited numerous books, including Australian Constitutional Law and Theory and The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia. He practices as a lawyer and is a columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald.