A bill granting Australia's Attorney-General sweeping powers to arbitrarily ban organizations was rushed into law on March 4, within hours of being tabled in the federal Parliament. The Criminal Code Amendment (Terrorist Organizations) Bill 2003 provides for organizations to be proscribed (banned) simply if the Attorney-General, with no requirement to test the evidence, is "satisfied on reasonable grounds that the organization is directly or indirectly engaged in, preparing, planning, assisting in or fostering the doing of a terrorist act (whether or not the terrorist act has occurred or will occur)."

The man granted these extraordinary powers, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, has spent the last few years honing his skills by running Australia's regime of concentration camps, where refugees fleeing to Australia, including children, are locked up for years without charge behind barbed wire, in the middle of the Australian desert, as a "deterrent" against illegal immigration. In January, Ruddock visited the U.S. and Canada, where he met key police state enforcers such as Attorney-General John Ashcroft, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, and Canadian Attorney-General Irwin Cotler. Upon his return, he addressed a February 19 sitting of Parliament—just two weeks before the bill passed—where he chillingly proclaimed a new era of fascism in Australia. "[T]he conventional criminal law/due process model [innocent until proven guilty, the right to a fair trial, etc.—Ed.] is not only inadequate but inappropriate," he raved. "Dealing with terrorists and the terrorist threat requires pre-emption and deterrence, our approach must be preventative as well as punitive. This approach of course, flies in the face of a conventional law and order/prosecute and punish approach."

Without doubt, Ruddock's new executive proscription power is the Australian equivalent of the infamous Notverordnung (Emergency Decree) and Enabling Law passed the German Reichstag in 1933, which handed Hitler his dictatorial powers. Then, the very opposition political parties who caved in under pressure and passed the laws, were among the first groups to be banned. The passage of the Australian bill, follows a similar cave-in by the "opposition" Labor party, which opposed the bill for two years, despite intense pressure from the Howard Government, and the Synarchist Rupert Murdoch-owned media. Initially inclined to support the bill, out of a desire to be seen to be "tough on terrorism", the ALP's opposition was catalysed by an intense nationwide mobilisation which generated tens of thousands of calls of protest against the bill when it was first tabled in 2002. This mobilization was led by Lyndon LaRouche's Australian associates, the Citizens Electoral Council, who charged that it was a Hitler-like push to impose fascism, in the face of the deepening global depression. LaRouche's CEC was the principle target of this law, as confirmed in October 2002 when leading Australian members of Her Majesty's Privy Council and their front group, the Anti-Defamation Commission of B'nai B'rith, called for the CEC to be banned. (Crucially, that call came just five days after the CEC published a full-page advertisement in The Australian newspaper, which listed over 600 prominent Australians calling for the establishment of a national bank.)

The effectiveness of the CEC mobilization was reflected by Labor Party leader Simon Crean in June 2003, when he slammed the Government's power-grab as politically motivated: "We will not agree to their carte blanche approach in giving the Attorney-General the sweeping powers that John Howard always wanted but would only ever act on if it suited his political purposes, not for the protection and the security of the Australian people." [Emphasis added] However, last December, the ALP dropped Simon Crean as party leader, and with him, its opposition to the banning power. New leader Mark Latham, a Mont Pelerin stooge described to EIR by one member of his own party as an "evil right winger", immediately announced the formation of a Department of Homeland Security, modeled on the fascist Ashcroft/Ridge department in the United States. But under questioning from the CEC and members of the LaRouche Youth Movement, Latham and his senior party spokesmen repeatedly lied about their intention to support the banning law, until the day the bill was tabled, thus short-circuiting any real chance for community opposition to be mobilized. Despite the CEC's best efforts to organize a wave of protest calls against it, the bill was passed in 24 hours. Significantly, Latham's actions have won him the support of the Murdoch media, which is now touting him as the likely next Prime Minister, after the upcoming election—if his party isn't banned first.