What is happening to our country?

[balthazarr]

From http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/pol...216-kxdw.html:

Backflips on protesters and privacy leave us all in the dark
December 17, 2009

Confusion still reigns over deals done on controversial projects.

IT IS nearly two weeks since The Age broke the story that the Government has done a deal on Victoria's $3.5 billion desalination plant, under which police have agreed to provide sensitive information about protesters to the private consortium building the plant.

Since then the police and the Government have sought to reassure Victorians that nothing untoward has happened on this or any other big public project and that their privacy is being properly safeguarded.

But surely they have failed. What police and ministers have said has been far from reassuring, because it reveals that no one in authority seems to know - or at least be willing to say - precisely what this deal means or how many similar agreements have been struck.

This affair, characterised by confusion, not clarity, began on August 28 when a police assistant commissioner, the secretary of the Department of Sustainability and Environment, and two directors of the international consortium AquaSure signed a 20-page desalination deal.

It is ''an agreement for the management of protest action'' at the site near Wonthaggi, and states that police ''will release law enforcement data'' to the department secretary and AquaSure. It goes on to say law enforcement data includes images, audio and video, and ''data related to individuals''.

Approached by The Age, a department spokeswoman said such agreements were ''common for large infrastructure projects''. A police spokeswoman also said this was ''a normal process'' for big projects.

The Age revealed the existence of the document last Saturday week. Two days later, police Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walshe said he had not been aware of it, nor of any similar agreements with other companies or on other projects.

Walshe said he was unhappy with the desalination document and wanted it rewritten because it left the impression police would release information that they would not and could not under the state's privacy laws.

He said he was ''not too sure'' that police would provide any data to AquaSure, but in certain circumstances they would need to pass data on to the department about incidents that led to the secretary laying charges.

Water Minister Tim Holding spoke on behalf of the Government on the Monday. He had a very different take.

Holding said a similar deal had been struck on the north-south pipeline project.

Indeed it was ''already a Government policy'' that arrangements were made for police to share data with organisations responsible for big public projects. Such information would include intelligence about proposed protest action and ''footage that might show protesters' tactics - use of scaling ladders or attempts to breach the wall or whatever it might be''.

While Holding seemed to know a lot, Victoria's Privacy Commissioner said she had been unaware of the desalination deal or other such deals on major projects.

On the Tuesday, Police Minister Bob Cameron in Parliament seemed less willing than Holding to embrace this ''Government policy''. Cameron refused to say whether he had approved the desalination deal. Nor would he say how many other such agreements with private companies the Government had implemented.

Premier John Brumby, also on the Tuesday, was less coy. He volunteered that such arrangements were ''not unusual'' and had sometimes been used for anti-logging protests.

By Wednesday, Cameron was willing to confirm to Parliament that there was a deal on the north-south pipeline, but said whether it would be made public was a matter for the police.

Walshe by now was saying he too was aware of other deals, but ''they do not have the data security clause''. And Brumby was saying there was ''no intention whatsoever to provide video images'' to AquaSure or anybody else.

On Thursday came news that Cameron had called in the police files watchdog to investigate the desalination deal. Cameron, like the other authority figures speaking on this matter, had repeatedly stated police would only pass on information in ways that met the requirements of Victoria's privacy laws. But now he was asking the Commissioner for Law Enforcement Data Security to determine whether the desalination document contained ''appropriate compliance, controls and arrangements''.

Also on Thursday, police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland entered the debate. The whole issue was a ''beat-up'', he said. Police always operated within Victoria's privacy laws. Similar deals had been struck ''as a matter of course'' on ''a whole range'' of other projects. Some of them would have the data security clause, others would not. To prove police had nothing to hide, Overland said he was happy to release a list of those projects.

But less than two hours later, his office said that, because of subsequent legal advice ''relating to privacy issues and other sensitivities within the document'', he would not be able to release the list.

The following day Overland said, disingenuously, that it was disingenuous to say he had changed his position. Then he adopted a third position: he would be prepared to release the list, but only if police got a freedom of information request and only after ''those parts that are either privacy-sensitive or we can't release'' were excised.

We'll wait and see.

In the meantime, if you have been reassured by the words of the past two weeks from the Chief Commissioner and his deputy, and the Premier and his ministers, you've probably never protested against a Government-backed project in Victoria.

Paul Austin is state political editor. His column will return in the new year.

So we have an Internet filter being implemented that nobody seems to actually want, no adult rating for games despite everybody wanting one, vastly increased police powers in Victoria - including the power to strip search people at random and with no prior suspicion (within 'designated areas'), and now, the police will hand over personal data on protesters to private corporations... for what purpose?

It couldn't be so that the corporation can sue the protesters? What a backhanded way of preventing protesting... if the police stepped in, there'd be an outcry, but if a private corporation sues some protesters for lost profits, well, surely that's okay?