Almost 40 years ago one of Australia’s most senior judges of the time, Robert Hope, warned that “[use] of the military other than for external defence is a critical and controversial issue in the political life of a country and the civil liberties of its citizens”.



We ought to reflect on that wise observation, made in 1979, as the Turnbull government announces that the Australian defence force will be deployed where there is a terrorism threat. The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and the defence minister, Marise Payne, want to amend the Defence Act so as to allow the military to “assist” state and territory police and to take control of situations like that which occurred in the Lindt cafe siege of December 2015.

The Turnbull government’s plan sets a dangerous precedent including the possibility of martial law type conditions being imposed on Australians, and military human rights abuses.

The sight of heavily armed soldiers on city streets is not something that Australians have seen in recent years – the 1978 Hilton Hotel bombing in Sydney was the last time. Last month, after the London Bridge terrorist attacks, the UK government deployed hundreds of soldiers across key areas. After the January 2015 attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo’s offices, 10,000 French soldiers were deployed to guard key sites in downtown Paris.

So the Turnbull government could argue it has learned from the UK and French experiences and bringing its laws into line to ensure a similar use of force and protection is available.

But amending legislation to allow for the military to inject itself into preventing terrorism or in response to a terrorist attack must, if it is to be passed by the federal parliament at all, contain extremely strict parameters because the scope for abuse of power by the military, at the behest of government, is real and profound.

Special operations command soldiers are seen at Holsworthy Barracks in Sydney. Photograph: Brendan Esposito/EPA

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the French government has utilised legislation to allow the military to search and detain persons without warrant, close down peaceful protests, harass communities and individuals, and commit assaults.

Amnesty International, in a report released at the end of May, notes that between November 2015 and 5 May 2017, 155 decrees have been issued under the emergency powers prohibiting public assemblies. Over 600 individuals have been stopped from participating in public rallies and Amnesty’s Marco Perolini was quoted in a 21 May BBC News report observing that “rights to protest have been stripped away with hundreds of activists, environmentalists, and labour rights campaigners unjustifiably banned from participating in protests”.

Amnesty also reports that the military response in France has seen “unnecessary or excessive force” against individuals “who did not appear to threaten public order”.

Writing in 2011, Geraint Hughes from the Strategic Studies Institute, a thinktank based in Pennsylvania, identified the inherent danger in the sort of plan that the Turnbull government wants to implement. He wrote:

[The] use of military means to fight domestic terrorism is fraught with political, practical, and ethical problems. No democratic politician should feel completely comfortable with the idea that the task of fighting terrorism should be entrusted to an organised body of men and women who are conditioned to the idea of using violence – albeit in a controlled and discriminate manner – to achieve set objectives, who adhere to principles of hierarchy and chain-of-command, and who are accustomed to the idea of identifying an enemy and planning and conducting a sequence of actions aimed at its destruction.

Hughes’ prescient observation applied tragically to the Howard government’s 2007 “intervention” into Northern Territory Indigenous communities. The intervention saw 600 military personnel sweep into Aboriginal communities and, along with police, seize assets, impose curfews, ban alcohol use, and suspend liberties.

We have also seen in Australia a disturbing and escalating trend whereby both the Coalition and Labor party, supported by their media allies, introduce laws to prevent terrorism that are highly corrosive of our democracy. The idea then that the military should have a key and leading role in preventing terrorism has to be seen in that context.

There is no reason to suppose that proposed legislation will do anything other than enable the military to do exactly what it is doing in France. That is, in the name of preventing terrorism, work with state and territory police forces to impose curfews, arrest without warrant or reasonable suspicion, and use violence, including of a lethal kind, on individuals.

And do not rule out the possibility of government imposing martial law – suspending the rule of law – and using the military to enforce it under the guise of protecting Australians against terrorist activity.

The military do have expertise in using lethal force and controlling dangerous situations but to allow it a greater role in civilian society is problematic to say the least. The Turnbull government’s legislation should be judged against this yardstick.