Arrested Development

Wil

liam prynne lived in troubled times. in 1637, when the Puritan preacher was convicted of seditious libel for his Taliban-like rantings, England was mired in political and social unrest; the Civil War was only five years away. With no police force, crime was so wildly out of control that the death penalty was routine - by the end of the 17th century it was prescribed for more than 150 offenses. Prynne got off lightly: he was fined £5,000, had both ears cut off, and was branded on his cheeks with the letters S and L. But for all its brutality, his sentence followed trial and conviction. Forty-two years after Prynne's mutilation, the Habeas Corpus Act confirmed the centuries-old right of a citizen not to be detained without trial. And 17th century trials operated under another time-honored principle: the presumption of innocence. As many jurists have observed, go back as far as you care to - beyond English common law, through Roman law, to the laws of Sparta and Athens - and that rule sparkles as the jewel of any legal code with pretensions to fairness and humanity.

Compared with Prynne's England, 21st century Australia is a remarkably safe place. So it would be interesting to have his view on the changes to those ancient rights contemplated in Australia's proposed anti-terror laws, which allow for secret detention without trial and a year's house arrest on the reasonable suspicion of a senior member of the Australian Federal Police. The government says the new laws are vital for the people's protection, but it is worth asking, before they are passed into statute, what exactly they will defend.

Australia, like other liberal democracies, justly celebrates an enlightened system of government. The individual's freedom is fenced all around by rights and safeguards that over the centuries have coalesced into a mighty protective shield. But these rights lean upon and support each other - and who presumes to measure their relative importance? As in the children's game, one stick carelessly removed could bring the whole structure down.

It is easy to see the appeal of the new laws. No one doubts that the police and intelligence agencies face a monstrous challenge. Penetrating terror organizations as formally structured as the i.r.a. was tough, even for Northern Ireland–born intelligence operatives; so much harder, then, for the average local police officer to discover the plans of ad-hoc teams of murderers like the men who bombed Madrid and London, and who hide among Muslim communities that are themselves relatively impenetrable. But frustrating as it might be to the authorities, the collective wisdom of our ancestors says that before you can be imprisoned, you must first be caught, tried and convicted.

There should be no short cuts in the administration of justice. It is dangerous and difficult work to infiltrate the Mafia, or a Triad, but dedicated and clever officers still try. Should police who cannot gather enough evidence to secure a conviction be able to imprison people without charge? It does not take much knowledge of human nature - nor does it impugn the integrity of the police - to guess whether their evidence-gathering efforts will thereafter be intensified or relaxed. And relaxation of vigilance may prove a deeper danger.

For terrorists to be eradicated, there must be cooperation from the communities they shame. Politicians tell us Muslims in Australia are as peaceful and law-abiding as any other group, but behave as though they don't quite believe it. Those on the outside have been suspicious of Australian Muslims, and slow to engage them; they have been slow to draw new police officers and intelligence agents from among them. That oversight will take a long time to correct. But the prospect of attracting Muslim recruits will be fatally diminished if they can be persuaded that the country's democratic principles are entirely disposable where their co- religionists are concerned. The extremists are efficient at spreading their poison; it would be prudent not to add real grievances to their paranoid fantasies.

So do whatever is necessary, for as long as it takes, to identify and ruthlessly eliminate the cancer: intensify surveillance, run multi-million-dollar recruitment and information campaigns, tighten immigration and deportation rules, increase penalties across the board - but leave the pillars of Western civilization alone. They survived Hitler and a thousand would-be tyrants before him; trust them to survive the latest wave of murdering nihilists. These principles cannot easily be destroyed from outside, but they can be timidly surrendered, with consequences yet unknown. It's fair to assume politicians believe that they are acting in Australia's best interests, and that they need to act quickly. But the war against terror will be a marathon struggle, and it doesn't much matter if they were slow off the mark. The country's leaders need to reconsider these ill-conceived, hastily drawn laws. Whatever they think they are protecting, it is not the Australian way of life.