Terrorism Laws Just the Thin End of the Wedge as Bad Old Days Return

In the good old days of policing, those bullnecked old thumpers knew how to get their man. Accused were verballed, evidence planted and fishing expeditions mounted.

Police powers were pretty wide and all those smart, overweight cops who hung around Chinese restaurants into the late afternoon could sidestep the rules and regs without too much strife. Bribery was rife, evidence and witnesses ''disappeared'', and if material facts were not distorted, they were withheld. ''Scrumdowns'', where cops would collude to present a unified story, were the order of the day. The royal commission into the NSW police was supposed to have changed all that. What happened after Justice Jim Wood reported his findings and recommendations in 1997 was a system of ''policing by law''. Procedures were tightened by which police power was supposed to be exercised.

What's been happening in recent times is the surreptitious unstitching of ''policing by law'' and a return to powers that are ill-defined and lightly supervised. This is a direct consequence of the war on terrorism.'

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