Back in March 2003, Labor opposition MP Anthony Albanese made a strong speech against then Prime Minister John Howard’s proposal to give the Australian Intelligence Security Organisation (ASIO) temporary powers to secretly detain and interrogate people (including children as young as 14).

Howard wanted new powers for security agencies in the wake of the September 11, 2001 al-Qaeda terrorist attacks in the United States.

“Terrorism is a scourge. The murder of innocent people for political ends — whether by individual terrorist groups or by the state, whether in New York, in the Middle East or on the Indian subcontinent — is an unspeakable horror. But it is intellectually dishonest to exploit public fears and anxieties about terrorism to introduce laws for which no justification has been or could be made,” Albanese said back then. He continued, saying the Coalition’s plan “should come as little surprise to anyone, for this has been the basis of the government’s electoral strategy since coming to office.

“They are the masters of immoral wedge politics,” Albanese said.

“The government modus operandi is clear and unavoidable, whether it be generating fear amongst country people that Aboriginals were coming to take their farms; attacking multiculturalism and anything that smacked of political correctness in order to generate fear amongst Anglo-Australians that their way of life was under threat from an inner-city intelligentsia; fabricating the Tampa crisis in order to create the perception that we were being swamped by illegal refugees with subversive intentions; or the extraordinary children overboard affair.

“This is a government that has only maintained power by dividing our........

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