Lynch, Andrew; Tulich, Tamara; Welsh, Rebecca --- "Secrecy and control orders: the role and vulnerability of constitutional values in the United Kingdom and Australia" [2013] ELECD 679; in Cole, David; Fabbrini, Federico; Vedaschi, Arianna (eds), "Secrecy, National Security and the Vindication of Constitutional Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013) 154

Book Title: Secrecy, National Security and the Vindication of Constitutional Law

Editor(s): Cole, David; Fabbrini, Federico; Vedaschi, Arianna

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781781953853

Section: Chapter 10

Section Title: Secrecy and control orders: the role and vulnerability of constitutional values in the United Kingdom and Australia

Author(s): Lynch, Andrew; Tulich, Tamara; Welsh, Rebecca

Number of pages: 19

Abstract/Description:

This chapter compares the role that constitutional values according individuals the right to a fair process when the state seeks to restrict their liberty have played in the development of terrorism control order schemes in the United Kingdom (UK) and Australia. The respective schemes are similar and both illustrate constitutional values under considerable tension. However, there are salient differences in the ways those values have managed to provide some resistance to incursions on liberty. These different reactions stem from broader jurisdictional distinctions, including the manner in which those values are articulated in law, that affect the capacity of constitutional values to ameliorate, if not eliminate, measures that are hostile to them. The systemic features in question expose the vulnerability of constitutional values, normalizing government incursions into areas beyond national security. The difference in the way that constitutional values have been used to limit state excess in the two jurisdictions is stark. In the UK, procedural rights are expressly protected by both the European Convention on Human Rights (‘ECHR’) and the Human Rights Act 1998 (UK) (‘HRA’). Consequently, ‘control orders’ – which impose a range of diverse restrictions, including substantial periods of home detention, upon suspected terrorists, often on the basis of secret evidence not disclosed to the ‘controlee’ – have been subject to significant challenge in the UK’s domestic court system and the European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’). Significantly bolstered by the decisions of the latter, UK courts have diminished the executive’s ability to rely on secret evidence