The anti-terrorist legislation has been described as draconian, as mentioned by the honourable member for Rosevears. It has been described as unAustralian and that we are truly a police country and in our case with this legislation, a police State. That is how some people have described it.

This bill is necessary for the purpose of providing police with adequate powers and authority to deal with any event that is classified as a terrorist act or any event that is likely to lead to a terrorist act. Whether we want to believe it or not, this country has been targeted by terrorists and there is an abundance of intelligence available to say that the likelihood of further terrorist activity is real.

You would all be familiar with the recent events on the mainland - that was mentioned this morning at the briefing - with the police raids across the States, with the arrest of a number of people alleged to have been preparing for a terrorist action. There have been bombings of high-profile buildings and just to our north, Mr Deputy President, very close to us. So the threat is real. Under this bill a terrorist act will also include a threat made with the intention of intimidating the public or a section of the public, and that is made fairly clear.

If you look around the world there are many examples of terrorist behaviour or terrorist activity and nobody will ever forget the 2001 period when highjacked jetliners hit the World Trade Centre in New York, the Pentagon outside Washington and ploughed into a field in Pennsylvania. The public were under attack. Innocent lives were lost - mothers, fathers, children, wives, husbands, relatives, friends, older people, younger people. Terrorists do not spare anybody. They want to maim, they want to kill and they want to destroy and will give their own lives, quite willingly, to do so and in fact will volunteer to do so for their cause. They use religion to satisfy what I and many others see as a callous disregard for life. They are, in my view, the murderers of innocent people.

So the question to be asked is: are we prepared to give up some of our civil liberties, some of those things that we have enjoyed in the past - freedom of movement, activity - to ensure our safety in the long-term future, to have that feeling of a secure and safer environment? Yes I am, and yes we all should be.

If the police had a choice they would say that we do not need any of these extra powers because this State is safe and we will never, ever be the subject of terrorist activity. That is what the police would like to be able to say. That would be the police's position. But to believe that would be to believe in fairies. The police have to be supported. They must be given the legislative authority, in my opinion, to do everything within their power to ensure our safety, your safety, wherever you might be, at whatever event you may be attending, in your workplace, in your car or in your home.

We do not like change, particularly when it comes to granting more powers that could impact on our freedom of movement or our freedom of speech. We do not like that and that has always impacted on people and people get upset when that occurs. Not too many of us like to see changes that suggest to us that we are at greater risk. Most want to stick their heads in the sand and just pretend that nothing is happening out there and that we are not at greater risk, that terrorists are not likely to target little old isolated Tasmania.

Well, we would all hope and pray that that is the case. We would want that to be the position but unfortunately in reality we know that we are at risk. Every State, Territory, country is at risk in some way. Some places are at greater risk than others. But whatever the situation, it behoves us to mitigate that risk even at the expense of our own liberties, our freedom, to do as we please in some cases.

Who would have ever contemplated or for one minute thought that a massacre the size of the one that we experienced at Port Arthur on 28 April 1996 would occur in Tasmania? That is, prior to it happening. We could not believe that it would be so. When it did we could not believe it. I do not probably need to remind you of this but 35 people died there - children, grandparents, mums, dads, friends, relatives, visitors to this State lost their lives in that massacre.

We knew about Hoddle Street and Punt Road in Victoria but we believed that we were immune from that type of incident in this State, that it could not happen in Tasmania, it just would not happen. Then of course we had Port Arthur and our dreams of a pristine Tasmania free from that type of violence were shattered and it shattered the dreams of many people in this State.

Tasmania changed from that time, particularly for our emergency services. One only had to look at what was happening up until that time and then look at where emergency services have gone from there. Their position now of being prepared for such tragedies and such incidents with the extra training, the extra police that are provided, the extra resources, has changed the face of Tasmania. These were not acts of terrorism but they were terrible incidents that we erroneously believed would not occur here.

The police in this State are a huge weapon against terrorism. Not only must they be suitably trained in anti-terrorism tactics but they must also be given the appropriate authority to act. And that is what this bill is about. The powers authorised in this bill will not be dissimilar to the powers and authority given to police throughout Australia. We heard that there are some differences but generally, generically, the powers will be somewhat similar right throughout the nation.

New South Wales enacted similar legislation, as we were told by the Deputy Commissioner yesterday, to deal with the Olympic Games. I was aware of that and I think others might have been as well. But it worked. That legislation worked and provided a safe-running, safe competition for a world event. And we know that that event would have been targeted by terrorists. I have no doubt that the safety mechanisms, the training of the police, the enacted legislation all played a big part in ensuring that those games continued very safely. I think that people going there could be assured with everything that was occurring that they were going to be protected, that they would come back safely.

The definition of 'terrorist act' is taken from the Commonwealth legislation so that is a common definition throughout the country. Certain events dependent on numbers and prominence of attendees will, with the approval of the Premier, be able to be treated as an event likely to attract a terrorist act. And in those cases the Commissioner of Police will be authorised to use additional powers to those normally provided to police to mitigate or remove any terrorist threat.

I just might say here - and it has been said a number of times by the Deputy Commissioner of Police and others - that this relates only to a terrorist activity or a terrorist action; these powers cannot be invoked for any other reason. It is clear and it is specific. There is another category above this where, in certain circumstances, the Supreme Court has the ability to intervene. This is where the Commissioner of Police is required to seek the authorisation of the Supreme Court to prevent or reduce the impact of a terrorist act but, again, that is done only with the authority of the Premier. The Premier is always a significant point in those applications - so it goes from the Commissioner of Police to the Premier to the Supreme Court.

One area that always creates angst is where people are authorised at law to make decisions and take actions that cannot be challenged, and I think that has to be recognised. In the case of the interim authorisations, where the Commissioner of Police believes on reasonable grounds that a terrorist act has occurred or is occurring, police under this bill will have the legal right to do almost anything, with the knowledge that their actions cannot be challenged - strip searches, the right to detain, the right to use force. In this case, my arguments of last week and a couple of weeks ago have strengthened. Some might recall those arguments: it is unreasonable and nonsensical to give an authority to a person to detain or search people without giving them the right to use reasonable force to do so. I think I made a number of comments in relation to that on some other bills that we were discussing in this House at the time.

This bill gives the police the right to use reasonable force to detain and search - some would say unreasonable force, but not me. I think that we all have to accept that in those situations where a terrorist action is occurring or has occurred, the police have to be given those rights and powers to do as they want to ensure that that situation does not escalate, that they have control of it and that perpetrators can be arrested and brought to justice at the end of the day. We cannot afford to tie police officers' hands. We cannot afford to place too many restrictions on police in those circumstances. I would not want it and I cannot see that anybody else would want it. I do not have any problem with any of this, provided the grounds for taking the action are real and based on factual intelligence. In this case, of course, an act has occurred or is occurring, so there is no problem in those circumstances. Terrorism is outrageous, it is cruel and it has changed the world for the worst.

Police, in my view, are professional and are not likely to get it wrong. We have heard of instances on the mainland where errors have occurred and there is the infamous case in the United Kingdom where an innocent person lost his life. In my view, that is not an event that we are likely to see occurring within this State.

On the mainland there is one infamous case that I am aware of, and there could well be others, where police forced their way into an innocent family's house and manhandled the occupants, and we all would have read about that. But at the end of the day, that event - that is, police forcing their way into a house; and I am not talking about the loss of a life - is worth it if we are to prevent terrorist activities occurring here.

I accept that we must take unusual steps and we must be prepared to accept and expect that our lives and the way we have lived them will change to provide for a safer and more secure country and for protection against terrorism. At the same time, having unfettered, unchallengeable laws is of concern to some people.

It is an interesting bill. Similar legislation has been debated throughout the country. Australian legislation is yet to be finalised and the Senate is still involved in discussions in relation to these matters. I understand the Victorian Parliament, at this stage, is still discussing the legislation and has postponed further debate until, I guess, the autumn sittings next year.

I was concerned, Mr Deputy President, when I read these documents yesterday about the 10-year period that this would be in place without, I thought then, a review. I felt that in all the circumstances, with the way this legislation is written, a review well and truly before the 10-year period was necessary. I indicated I was prepared to move an amendment in that regard. I do not need to do so because I have been assured that there is a national review of all of this legislation at the end of five years and the Deputy Commissioner identified that that document will be presented, I think, to the Federal Parliament. So it will become a public document and it will be available for anybody and everybody to read. That satisfies my concerns because at the end of that five-year review period, I hope, and I think everybody else would hope, there will be no reason to test the legislation. There would not be a person out there who would not want that to be the situation.

I hope that when we have a review in five years' time it simply says 'tick it off' and it will continue, because this legislation will never be withdrawn. It will never be revoked. We need to be realistic. We are now living in a world of tremendous change. We are living in a world of aggression, unfortunately, that has never occurred on this scale. However, at the same time, we need to be able to live our lives. We need to be able to get out there and do things that we love doing without the fear that we will be the subject of, or be involved in, this type of activity, and we can. If this legislation is approved, and I am convinced that all persons in this House will support it - the police are professional, the police have it right - we can continue to live our lives in a way similar to that of the last hundreds of years - that is, in safety and feeling secure with anything and everything that we do. I will be very strongly supporting the legislation, Mr Deputy President.