TERRORIST THREAT TO POLITICAL LEADERSHIP

Author: Rev. Tim Costello, the Chief Executive Officer of World Vision Australia

Well I want to thank President Ken Randall for the invitation to be here and also the National Australia Bank and I chair an external stakeholders' committee for them so I have an association with them, and also to acknowledge the traditional owners, the Ngunnawal people of this territory.

It was about three weeks ago that I was sitting just in the public gallery in the House of Commons. I was over there for World Vision business and had a few hours in the afternoon off. I was quite amazed to listen to a very robust debate across the whole political spectrum. A debate that really focussed on the centuries it took to build up fundamental human rights and therefore the reluctance, deep reluctance to surrender those rights quickly, easily, without debate.

I listened to people, representatives of the people who only months ago in July had seen some of their fellow Londoners killed, fifty-two of them in a terrorist attack, still take time and still argue fundamental principles, principles around the rights of journalists - should they go on a story and visit a terrorist camp? The rights of people who might be associating with terrorists either unwittingly or during the course of their work and why those people should be victims or scapegoated.

So, I couldn't help but think of the question of the terrorist threat to political leadership here and the difference of perhaps the debate, the speed, even the shrillness of the debate here.
Terrorism as the name suggests, is designed to inflict a greater damage on the psyche of society than on human bodies. While its physical impact is severe, terrorism's aim is to make not only those injured in an attempt victims, but to make society itself a victim. From citizens to the police to the judiciary to political leadership.

The challenges for political leaders in a time of terrorist threat are many and great. I want to address three this afternoon.

The first challenge is the inevitable temptation to use the climate of fear terrorism provokes for one's own political advantage. Fear is a powerful motivator but it's also precisely the response terrorists would want and I would like to contrast that with a politics of hope. A hope that we can make the world a safer, more secure and fair environment. Hope that is, I believe, the most sustainable way to defeat terrorism.

The second challenge is to find that delicate balance between freedom and security. Dr Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and former President of Ireland, is one who has acknowledged the need for those with power, governments in particular, to protect their citizens. But she also highlights the crucial need for citizens to participate and be involved in decisions effecting them and ultimately in their own protection. If we are to forsake long cherished rights and freedoms for greater security, then governments must make the compelling case for such a move and the public as fully as possible must participate in the process.

The third and final challenge that I'll spend more time is discussing the need to craft policies which don't just react to the terrorist threat but proactively deal with the climate and the causes of terrorism. I believe that is the greatest challenge for political leaders today. To take a long view. To develop a holistic response to terrorism that not only prevents its expression but also attacks its causes, that not only legislatively restricts the spread of its ideology, but also addresses the climate in which such ideas are born or find safe haven.

Well we do live in an age of anxiety since 911. In the wake of September the 11th, Madrid and Bali bombings there is a far greater level of fear and anxiety in our community. It's a very natural human response.

Ross Giddens writing in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald recently noted that Australians name terrorism the most important problem facing the nation. Well ahead of environmental problems and various economic issues. Giddens however wrote that we'd probably save more lives putting the same effort into fixing black spots on the highways. He noted that the odds of an American dying in a terrorist attack are about one in 88,000 while the odds of dying by falling off a ladder are one in 10,000. Well, that is the nature of this asymmetric threat of terrorism. Its violence is designed to prompt a state of fear disproportionate to its actual threat.

To use fear as a political tool is as old as history and Thomas Hobbes gave it a certain level of philosophical respectability in his work Leviathan. Corey Robin, author of Fear A Political History commented on the ABC last year that Hobbes confronted a world that's actually quite similar to the world that many of us know today. It was a world where people had fundamental disagreements about right and wrong, good and evil, justice and injustice. Hobbes was writing at the time of the English Civil War and nobody could come to any agreement about the meaning of these terms. So in the face of such disagreement, Hobbes reached the conclusion that whatever your view is about the good, the just, the bad, you can't pursue your vision of a good life if you're dead. So, Hobbes concluded that fear really has to be the central unifying category to bring together a decent political civilization.

Richard Nixon once famously said people react to fear not love. They don't teach that in Sunday School but it's true. Nixon wasn't in some Sunday Schools I was in with talk of the wrath of God.
But while fear is a natural human response to a perceived threat and functions best in the moment as the fight or flight response, it is also a profoundly disempowering emotion that clouds our thinking, breeds distrust and disconnection and creates a malevolent anxiety if left unchecked.

So responding successfully to any complex threat requires a healthy dose of hope and reason and that's the challenge for political leaders - to also appeal to hope and reason, to marshal vast reservoirs of these virtues in times of crisis.

So, how do we negotiate freedom and security?
Michael Ignatieff, Carr Professor of Human Rights at Harvard gave a speech in March this year in which he articulated a view of the lesser evil. An examination of the legislative problems of responding to terrorism. He put the moral hazard like this. You can do harm to yourself and then you can do harm to someone else and whatever you do you're going to lose something very important. There's no way out of this mess without having to make a choice that involves you inflicting some moral danger on someone else, imposing moral hazard on yourself in the sense that are you or are you not going to be able to look yourself in the eye.

Ignatieff was interested in lesser choices and when you make absolute human rights commitments about the dignity of persons and then have to reconcile this with the fact that societies get attacked by people whose intentions are malignant, this, he said, presents such a challenge to the collective good that we may feel that we have to sacrifice some very precious human rights in order to repel that greater evil.

But what Ignatieff believes is absolutely essential to any properly functioning democracy is that any such decision to do that is fully justified. Proper, properly functioning democracies, he says, must pass through a very elaborate, highly moralised, highly institutionalised system of justification for coercion or the loss of rights. This process is what creates public trust and why we are having to do it.

Well I think so far in this process we may have rushed with this anti-terror legislation. Were the State and Territory Premiers given a prima facie case for every item within the draft anti-terrorist bill? Or was the political pressure to not be seen to impede the fight against terrorism on Australian soil a part of that equation?

Certainly Chief Minister John Stanhope here in the ACT felt enough of Ignatieff's sense of moral disquiet to post the first draft of the Bill on his website. But would we have seen as many changes between the first and second draft if he had not. It seems the response of the Government to the Stanhope action and also some Labor Premiers at the time carried a sense of dismay that such material should have become public. The Bill would always have become public but I think there was a sense from the Government that the public should simply trust those drafting such legislation to get it right. I think this flies in the face of the absolute necessity that the public is informed and gets to participate as far as possible in any diminution of their rights.

I watched that occurring in Britain in a very robust way when the spectre of terror was only months behind them.

I believe we in Australia, when we think of this anti-terror Bill and are told just trust us - can look back at what we now know to be the chaos within the Immigration Department as a sign that coercive powers not only effect people not like us, asylum seekers, who sadly were treated it seems as non-citizens even non-persons, but coercive powers can fall very heavily upon Australian citizens.

The difference with the proposed terror legislation I guess is that such abuses of powers and processes, as we now know happened within the Department of Immigration would never see the light of day or if they did, not for perhaps five years until after a suppression order lapsed.
I think this should be of concern to the Australian Press Council who have said the Bill must be amended so that its successors as they relate to publishers are removed before enacted by Parliament and to urge a more considered, timely and open review by an appropriately composed Parliamentary Committee as has been the case with proposed security laws in the United Kingdom.

In the United Kingdom where I watched Blair's Bill being debated robustly and its going down at least the Bill in the original form that Blair wished, there was an editorial from the conservative magazine The Spectator. A magazine, one would think, if you read it might, have been writing about Australia. The article was called 'the politics of terror'. It said people are entitled to ask what the government understands by law. Is there to be - is it there to be enforced to the letter? Or is it just a kind of cosmic yelp? A gush of Parliamentary feeling? Not to be taken seriously by the criminal system. The truth is the Government doesn't really mind much about the detail of the law. They care for more that in the aftermath of the London bombings they should be seen to be doing something about the preaches of hate, even if that means doing something absurd. A conservative magazine.

Well Ignatieff says, there will always be a politics of threat management and threat exaggeration. Civil libertarians, he says tell us the sky is not falling and conservatives say you bet the sky is falling and the next time it will be worse.

Well, we may never reach a common view but that shouldn't mean that we squash the adversarial justification of the two moral principles debating it, fighting it out. Our democracies would be much the poorer if they didn't and if they didn't have time to be debated and fought out.

Well it's this that I believe has not happened adequately. I suspect there has been some undue haste and in a climate of fear there's a possibility we seem to be rushing to relinquish long held civil liberties with a very long ten year sunset clause.

I'm not alone in this view. From the belly of the beast if you like of that region which knows terrorism, the Israeli columnist Alexander Yakobson writes of Australia's draft terror Bill depriving or limiting personal freedoms without a trial even when the process is subject to judicial oversight is a heavy price to pay in terms of democratic values. It is deeply against the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition. Even if such legislation is necessary because of a danger of mass killings, it's preferable not to make the life of a government trying to pass such legislation too easy. It's important to examine every such law very closely.

Well, thirdly and finally, what about a holistic response to terrorism that picks up hope and reminds us of freedoms that we have taken centuries to win and of the values of our society that we won't give away easily.

I have been considering the proposed anti-terror Bill and considering it I hope with keeping an open mind that the response may well be proportionate to the threat. The arrests last week may suggest that. And let us suppose that it is indeed proportionate to the threat. If we are prepared to sacrifice to this degree so many of our cherished rights and liberties to prevent terrorism's expression on Australian soil, should we not at least also have a proportionate response to its causes and address the climate in which such ideas are born or find safe haven?

There is a completely understandable level of fear in the community over the threat of terrorism. For the sake of our own sanity and for the need of a sense of balance in response to such a threat, I believe we need a politics of hope. Hope that will drive us all to name the sorts of just secure better world in which we want to inhabit and our kids are left.

Well I think in World Vision we can make a few comments in this regard. We are the nation's largest charitable organisation and receive nearly half of all private Australian donations for overseas aid and development. Any significant change in the public's response to World Vision's cause is likely to be a barometer of change in the public's need to play a part in creating such a world.

Well I can tell you that change has been significant.
Around 330,000 Australians now make regular monthly contributions to World Vision's work around the world. This last financial year including Tsunami we raised about 350 Million dollars.

That's a large organisation.
Of the 330,000 Australians, 100,000, that's forty percent of them, made a commitment to support us regularly, monthly in the two years following the September the 11th attacks in 2001.
You might think the opposite. That after those attacks you'd pull up the drawbridge, you would close the gate, you would say it's a messy chaotic world out there. Let's just think about ourselves. The response has been exactly the opposite.
Well has this giving increase simply reflective of an increase in charitable giving overall?

Well the facts say no.
In 2001 giving to domestic charities increased by six point five percent. However, in the same period, giving to NGOs addressing global poverty increased by fifteen percent. Furthermore, independent public opinion tracking our research we do in a report called 'Island Nation' shows that the proportion of Australians who agree with statements such as charities can make a long term difference in the lives of the poor and every day people like me can change the lives of poor people overseas has increased dramatically. These figures rose by twenty-six percent from 2000 to 2004. More hope. More empowerment. More belief we can make a difference and change the world.

Island Nation's research showed that Australians linked terrorism and poverty. We have to wage these wars simultaneously. The research showed that Australians are the highest of sixty nations in both their fear of terrorism and their concern for poverty. The two are connected.
Well the figures suggest and the response to the Asian Tsunami perhaps confirms that we feel more connected, not less connected to the rest of the world. We're not an island nation. We actually aspire as a middle ranking power to be a model global citizen being one without the responsibilities of a super power to make a contribution.
Australians seem to sense that the fabric of civilization is delicate, that when it tears it can effect all of us in some way.

After September the 11th the President of the World Bank James Wolfensohn wrote, that essential to increasing global security was the need to address some of the root causes of terrorism, those of economic exclusion, poverty and under-development.
Even US President George W. Bush commented to the United Nations, we fight poverty because hope is the answer to terror. We will challenge the poverty and hopelessness and lack of education, failed governments that too often allow conditions that terrorists can seize.
I was there at the UN Summit in September. I have to say George Bush sounded like Bono. It was quite remarkable.

Well, the link between poverty and terrorism is a contentious issue. Though, mainly because some have claimed the strict causal link extrapolating from Gary Becker's 1968 Paper 'Crime and Punishment an Economic Approach' which drawing on the link between crime and poverty tried to show the crime could result from rational cost benefit analysis.
The trouble applying this to terrorism in particular the suicide bombing was that success entails the death of the perpetrator which makes a rational cost benefit analysis impossible.
Certainly there is no strict causal link between poverty and terrorism. In fact Walter Laqueur of the US Centre for Strategic and International Studies analysed the global origin of terrorist movements and concluded poverty does not cause terrorism. In the world's fifty poorest countries there is little to know terrorism. He went on to report that in Arab countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and North Africa, the terrorists originated not in the poorest and most neglected districts, but hailed from places with concentrations of radical preachers.
No causal link, however, I want to assert that terrorism and poverty share a symbiotic relationship. While those who commit terrorist offences may often be the more educated and a reliable pool of recruits, such networks require poverty and disorder and humiliation and a sense of injustice to hide in and grow.

Al-Qaeda would have struggled much harder to mount terror attacks if it were not for a failed core state, Afghanistan, that provided a haven for training, recruiting and inspiring foot soldiers. And the Taliban would not have taken control of Afghanistan were it not for the 45,000 odd Madrasses in Pakistan of which ten to fifteen percent are affiliated with extremist religious political groups. The Taliban developed their roots among young boys, from crowded refugee camps, taught at radical Madrasses. Radical Preachers and poverty, the two, no one being the necessary condition totally.

Indeed, in 1997 when the Taliban offensive stalled the [indistinct] Madresser completely shut down. It sent its entire student body across the border into Afghanistan helping the attack of the Taliban to succeed.

So these schools have become the new breeding ground for radical Islamic militants. It's for this reason that Madresses and their centrality in education in weakened, impoverished states like the Pakistani state is so critical to address. In Pakistan which spends only two percent of its gross national income on public education, one of the lowest rates in the world, it's the religious schools, the Madresses that have filled the void in a basic area of social service education where the government has failed.

The parallels are found in other essential areas such as clean water, health care, even law and order, all of which many of the radical groups that sponsor Madresses provide now to their new constituents. That's why we welcome the overnight announcement of the Howard Government of 40 Million dollars to Pakistan including scholarships and education. That's the right direction. Similarly, social services are carried out by Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon and the recent appearance of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba banned by the Pakistani Government, in the earthquake zone reveals another occasion where extremism enters areas when social networks disintegrate. That's why Western NGOs including World Vision also need to be in those zones.

Well in short terrorists often fill a desperate social need and seek refuge in areas where the rule of law is not in place. They look to the disenfranchised. But smart aid and development can do, whether through NGOs or government, what needs to be done, building wealth and transparency, creating hope and diminishing fear and bringing the poor and excluded into the global market place so they have a stake.

There's a lot of evidence that as countries have a greater stake in the global market, the terrorism does decrease.

In an article in the journal of Conflict Resolution last year, authors Quan Li and Drew Schaub discovered that as a country becomes more developed, the number of trans-national terrorist incidents decreases within its borders. Even a one percent increase in the GDP per capita of a country decreases the number of trans-national terrorist incidents within that country by nineteen point three percent.

So well targeted aid, development assistance certainly, economic growth is an essential response to eliminating the climate in which terrorism is born or finds a safe haven. It's why fair trade still provides the greatest hope to lift people out of grinding poverty. As we've seen millions lifted out in India and China. It's why Europe, Japan and the US need to abolish their agricultural subsidies without demanding that poor countries simply open up their markets. 400 Billion dollars a year in agricultural subsidies from taxpayers to support inefficient farmers in Europe, Japan and the US. We only give 50 Billion a year aid. 1200 Billion a year in weapons and armaments. 400 Billion that lock out Asian and African farmers. And yet when it comes to free and fair trade we can't simply say to developing countries just liberalise it. If Indonesia was forced to liberalise its rice trade too quickly there would be an influx of cheaper rice that would mean a loss of income for many of the 40 million people who depend on rice, displacing them into an uncertain future in urban slums providing disenchanted people for many - as recruits for radical causes.
Well I want to conclude by saying that this decade I believe tackling the causes of poverty is one of the best solutions to addressing terrorism.

I believe that whether you agree with that proposition or not, poverty remains the great moral issue of this century. Now for this generation the issue of reducing extreme poverty is the new slavery cause and crusade.

In a world where forty million people are now infected with HIV. Twenty-five million have died, six million children died this year. It puts terrorism in perspective.
Where thirty thousand children will die today from preventable diseases. Ten world trade centres every day.

A world where three billion people live on less than two dollars a day.
A world where Africa remains the epicentre of poverty. Where World Vision supporters give more to Africa than actually our Ausaid programme. Though I think our Ausaid programme focussing on our region is still the right priority.

It's my hope that Australia will not neglect the chronic poverty still suffered in Africa. That we'll take our part alongside Britain and other countries arguing for a better deal on aid, trade and debt forgiveness for Africa.

Let me conclude by saying that earlier this year Nelson Mandela launched the Make Poverty History Campaign in London's Trafalgar Square. He went against Doctors' advice because he's so frail. In a trembling voice, but still resonant with moral authority he said these words, like slavery and apartheid poverty is not natural. It is manmade and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It's not an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right. The right to dignity and a decent life. While poverty persists there is no true freedom. Bono got up, he was standing next to him and with that Irish lilt, looked out on this crowd of young people and said, you might think it's mystical Irish sentimentalism when I say let's make poverty history. But I'm prepared to spend the rest of my life giving it a go. And suddenly saw these young people on their feet with this sense, here is a cause. Here is a moral frame bigger enough to harness our energies in a world where we've solved the problem of supply, you know, the problem of how many mobile phones a sixteen year old teenage girl needs and how many wide screen plasma TVs we need. Here was a movement being born with live aid concerts billions watched a new political constituency here with the click of a finger every three seconds, another child has died and saying I don't want to live in a world like that. In a global village I can't avert my head.

Well, poverty is the new slavery issue for this generation. Next week here in Parliament there'll be hundreds of young people circling Parliament, visiting over sixty politicians from Oak Tree Foundation and World Vision, young people saying this is the issue for our generation. And this movement has already had some wins. The parable of terrorism and poverty really was the G8. There were the Live 8 Concerts. Sting singing 'We'll Be Watching You'. Watching the G8 and then it's derailed by the bombings and you think oh! no, the poor are going to wait at the back of the queue again, just after 911 when we were told the world had changed. In fact 30,000 people died on 911 and it went unreported and the day after and it went unreported. 911 was about us and our security, that's why the world has changed.

Would the poor go to the back of the queue again?
Well thankfully this movement has some wins. The G8 did vote for a 50 Billion dollars extra for Africa. It made no move on fair trade.

This movement is the new slavery movement. When Wilberforce raised slavery in 1789 it was unthinkable it could be abolished. The King had slaves. The aristocracy had slaves. Slavery to the British Empire was the economic backbone was like I guess minerals and wheat and wool to Australia in the 1950s. But here was a generation who caught a moral vision.

In saying that I believe that we have seen some wins also with our own Government.
Prime Minister Howard at the UN Summit announced that a near doubling of aid. There ain't no votes in aid as Nixon said. And yet here was a near doubling because there had been so many people petitioning under the media radar, our politicians. This was a great win even though that Summit, UN Summit, which was called the benchmark how we're going five years into the millennium development goals, a global plan to reduce poverty was hijacked by terrorism and by reform of the Security Council. Again the poor going to the back of the queue.

Poverty is the issue for this generation.
Let me conclude, terrorist threats do aim at political leadership. They do suggest to our political leaders that fear will prove more useful than hope. They do stampede us to actually disregard the public in the choice between freedom and security and their participation. They can sidetrack us so that we spend more time swatting the mosquitoes of terrorism rather than draining the swamps of poverty and humiliation where they breed.

QUESTION: David Humphries from the Sydney Morning Herald Rev Costello. If I could take you back to your remarks about fear as the common denominator of human behaviour and its effectiveness as a marker in determining anti-terror policies. How appropriate is that now in the era of the suicide bomber encouraged as he is to the view that his actions amount to martyrdom?

TIM COSTELLO: Well, it certainly underscores fear. How do you negotiate with someone who doesn't value their own life? How do you enter into the assumption that there is always something, you know, we can trade off? The discussion around what produces a suicide bomber is a really complex one I've suggested. It is radical preachers who solve the identity question for a suicide bomber, who often has the identity question may be as a second generation Australian or Brit, who under that preaching is given a vision that they have a cause. Their cause is Islam and the humiliation of Islam being wound back. But also in my work in World Vision and we work in Palestinian camps and we work in many Muslim countries. We have around Australia Muslim community centres collecting for World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organisation for the Pakistan earthquake. They've collected nearly 500 Thousand dollars. So with Muslim employees, with Muslims collecting this is a sign to me that most Muslims fear Taliban style rule and burka and Sharia imposition as much as many Australians and certainly Christians and when it comes to the concerns I hear from the Muslim community I am amazed how they echo the concerns I hear from the Christian community in Australia. They are mainly concerned about marriage breakdown and drugs and promiscuity and too much gambling. In fact what we share in common is great including that fear of suicide bombers. So, that fear with not being able to negotiate it is real. I don't want to trivialise it but I do want to say that in finding ways to address identity questions, to address the humiliation and the burning injustice that many of those suicide bombers and others feel, which we may say is really unfair, but they feel, we have to still find ways of dealing with that, without making concessions that what they do is right. Death, violence is always wrong. Suicide bombing is always wrong and some European justifications of saying well the exception is Palestinian suicide bombing because what other avenue do they have, they are so powerless? Well yes, they are so powerless. But Palestinian suicide bombing is wrong. Morally wrong. It is never justifiable. But having said that, to deal with that fear we still have to ask the question, how do we dislodge them from that passion that makes them suicide bombers and dislodge the rest of the community from the Muslim community from being stigmatised by catch all laws.

QUESTION: Thank you. Very difficult asking questions or talk when you agree with just about every word that's said. But I'd like to first of all continue just a little bit about the fear thing 'cause I think it was in Michael Moore's film 'Bowling for Columbine' and I think he had this nice two liner saying, oh! there's two things that governments need to be successful, you've got to keep them afraid and you've got to make sure they keep spending money and then you'll get re-elected. And I think this is part of the subconscious thing of the politic, political situation in which we're in now. Keep people slightly afraid. But to get on to the causes of terrorism which I think is the real crux of this and how we do that, because I think that very term the war on terror, as soon as we say that we fail. Because I think it was Miles Franklin who said why is it war can never be won? And as soon as you declare war as we've looked at in this twentieth century, Japan, the two Germanys, Vietnam and so on, if you declare war and go in particularly against an impoverished nation, you're never going to win. So I think we've got to first of all change that perception if you like that it's a war. It's not. It's an understanding and - so the question is what, what do you think our Christian leaders can do, the Bushs, the Blairs and the Howards - what can they do from their Christian backgrounds to tackle this, this problem of values? What can they do to understand the - what should they be doing to understand the mind that goes in the terror...and I'm sure on the Muslim side it's exactly the same? Because they think they're on the high moral ground. We think we're on the high moral ground. How do we invest our intellectual or behavioral patterns so that we can downplay the war bit and increase the empathy bit if you like?

TIM COSTELLO: I think Gore Vidal said about the war on terrorism, how do you have a war on an abstract noun? And I think that probably is right. I think if we've learnt anything from the last century it is that war has outlived its usefulness. Whatever objects war once achieved, it rarely achieves those objects and now with the war in Iraq going so badly more and more Americans are asking that question. What have we achieved? Regime change yes. But building a democracy? And I think more Americans are saying if we thought we could do this in Iraq maybe having a look at our history of trying it in South America for the last twenty years might have been a good test case. What can we do? What can Christian leaders do? I personally think this is where we have to recognise that the more we talk about fear, fear works to evaporate hope and to evaporate trust and it is hope and trust that ultimately allow us to hear the other person. That their concerns might have legitimacy. That there are injustices that we have to acknowledge. The injustices of the trade system where African, Asian farmers are locked out of trade and we say oh! it's just a handout and why don't they fix their corrupt governments. All fair questions. When the hand up by them working hard as most African farmers do and still watch their children die of malnutrition because they're locked out of markets is an injustice. So it's hope and trust that actually allows us to listen. It's fear that actually slams the doors shut and I think Christian leaders of all people, because if there was any note that Christian faith strikes it is that God isn't a God of judgment it's a God - he is a God of love. Showing us in Jesus a face that not only loves but struggles against everything that cripples and deforms human life. That's a good definition of sin. Everything that cripples and deforms. Injustice does that. And when the image of God is crippled by poverty, salvation is also restoring that image saying that poverty must be addressed. So Christian leaders need to read their Bible to take some of that seriously because appealing to fear slams the doors shut and doesn't allow that bridge that says look we share things really in common. Our hope for our kids. Our hope for some future. Those things we must emphasise.

QUESTION: Andrew Fraser of The Canberra Times. I was wondering how important you thought a bill of rights would be as the nation considers our response to the anti-terrorism legislation before the Senate and do you favour a particular model of a bill of rights?

TIM COSTELLO: I think a bill of rights is important. I think, though you can say to me as a former lawyer, you're just giving your colleagues another argument, another case. The other argument is needed. We saw with Vivian Solon and Cornelia Row and a number of the asylum seeker cases where people suffered terribly up to three or four years only to find that they were refugees under the definition. They had a legitimate right under the UN Convention to actually be given a hearing. That necessitates a bill of rights. We have not done well without a bill of rights. As to a form I think in the first instance it probably does need to be an Act of Parliament, getting a constitutional bill of rights as we saw with Republican votes, it's just too difficult. So like the New Zealand model or British model I think that gives sufficient protection...Parliament can revoke that at any time.

QUESTION: Laura Tingle from The Financial Review. I was interested in how World Vision or any NGO responds to the sorts of fear you're talking about. Have you changed your strategy and the way you spend money in the wake of 911 particularly given there seems to have been this enormous increase in how much you're getting? And I was also interested in positions where a charitable group gets stuck between government and rebels and I was particularly thinking of Aceh and the issue of resettlement camps which you were building and I was curious what had happened there?

TIM COSTELLO: Sure. Let me start with the latter one. The suggestion was that in Aceh the transitional housing centres that we set up very quickly could be co-opted by the military to watch you know whether Acehenese, free Acehenese forces infiltrated or to weed them out or to deal with them. That proved entirely a false fear. The places where they were built basically the military weren't watching. The fact that we got them up quickly and housed about three or four thousand people meant that desperate people got some shelter. Those transitional housing centres have now been welcomed by the Acehenese, by those free Acehenese who've laid down their weapons by certainly the Indonesian Government as a quick and necessary response but it highlights the issue that any aid organisation in a territory where there is great hostility has to make choices and I have to say this is the dilemma of pure neutrality versus making choices around the advocacy issues. All aid agencies found to their horror in Rwanda for example where we took the neutrality viewpoint. Feed the desperate whoever they are in the refugee camps that we were just feeding, Hutu militias who reorganised in the camps and went out and massacred. You move then on to Bosnia and Hercegovina and there aid agencies were almost giving away their neutrality, they were pleading with the foreign powers - intervene. Us just feeding people who are going to be massacred tomorrow is feeding potential corpses. So with the dilemma that then aid agencies become co-opted by the foreign powers and foreign policies. So this issue is a fundamental issue that aid agencies have to deal with. When it comes to the climate of fear World Vision certainly will resist saying look there might be a marketing spin on playing on fear. We might actually hook in more dollars if we talk it up. That is fundamentally against the very values I've been talking about. The, the aim, whether it's World Vision or any other NGO isn't to out compete that NGO. The aim is to out compete poverty. And poverty will only be dealt with if we can built the conditions of hope and trust that see us address extreme poverty, injustice, conflict resolution. That is totally counter productive if you play on fear. All you do is undercut the very purpose for why you exist.

QUESTION: Geoff Barker also from The Financial Review and this is a question of a reluctant [indistinct]. You have argued the need for an informed rational choice of the lesser evil in which you...security and balance but given that the terror law that troubles you is the third piece of such legislation after the ... and the first terrorist law and given that all of them have only been modified after public pressure, can we have any reasonable hope the present Federal Government can be persuaded to encourage the debate leading to a rational choice of lesser evil when as you say fear works so well...it's even simpler and easier than reducing poverty and fighting AIDS?

TIM COSTELLO: Probably not. It's not looking likely. However, I think the fact that there has been discussion and modification shows that at least democracy is having its pressure points and I think that's a good thing. The - it's very interesting when you think about trying to weigh up the risk at the moment. There is a real risk. There's some terrible barbaric acts that have been committed, Bali, for Madrid ...that sort of act. But there's not a risk to our way of life and our values as we often hear like I suspect the Communist risk was in the 1950s. In the 1950s Communism had a pretty universal appeal. Here in Australia politicians, trade unionists, journalists, historians actually were very attracted to Communism. They were at times Fifth Communists. Isn't it amazing that the Leader of the Opposition, you know Dr Evatt goes at the height of that fear and argues the Communist dissolution case before the High Court, saying though there is great attraction, let's not give up our fundamental liberties. There's not the universal appeal of a Taliban style, Sharia law imposition. I don't see any Australians saying because of the fear I'll put my hand up for that. That looks good. It's totally rejected and it's mainly rejected by Muslims too who can obey the religious aspects of Sharia law and live under the law of Australia and reject that notion of full Sharia law, the only law of Allah or I'm disobedient as a Muslim. But, I certainly think that in this, this climate, though it has been a climate of fear, the discussion gives us hope to say there have been amendments. My preference would be it's not the length of time for the discussion so much as almost tone from the Government saying this is the Bill, we do welcome your views, at least opportunity for it and with some amendments we have seen some of that opportunity.

QUESTION: Michelle Grattan of The Age. Two questions. One following up on the - a specific of the Bill. What do you think about the sedition section and do you agree with the - some people who say that shouldn't be in the legislation at all? And secondly you talked about the combination of poverty and the effect of radical preachers, obviously you're talking about overseas, but what do you think should be done about, if anything, about radical preachers here and how does that fit in with your concerns about preserving and maximising civil liberties?

TIM COSTELLO: On the first question I don't understand why we don't get the sedition laws right. They're old, they're archaic, the sort of idea - don't worry we're not going to use them for that purpose. It seems to me even if this Government isn't going to use them for that purpose, this Government will eventually go although they might have a sibling who disagrees with that and another government might use those sedition laws in ways that this Government didn't intend. So I don't see why we just don't actually get them right. So I disagree with them. Secondly, on the issue of home born preachers here - I think that was the question. The - there's no doubt that they too when recruiting soldiers for Islam talk about the humiliation of Islam, the poverty, the injustice, that feeds home born people here even though they may not have experienced it. So - young Muslims in France with more reason... What do you do with those radical preachers? I think you need to have open debate. You need to have people who go along and hear their sermons and publish them and discuss was this a good idea? And put them to the test. And we've been seeing a bit of this. Lateline have been getting a couple of those radical preachers on their programme which I think's terrific. Again, I guess I have a sibling who said well if you don't like it here there's other places you can go and live. Now at one level I think that point has some validity in so far as most Muslims say we understand the Koran to teach that we are under a convention of gratefulness for the hospitality that a non-Muslim Government has given us. That's a core Koranic teaching. And we can happily live with Australian law and practise the religious parts of our Sharia law. If you can't you have got a problem here to put it bluntly. And if that continues to be resisted, accepting dual laws, then you might have to have a think about is this a place where your views agitating for a Sharia monocloned state is actually - has got any point particularly if it's recruiting young men and helping solve their identity crisis by them becoming soldiers for Islam. So I don't think I'm at the point of saying at all deport them. I'm saying publish them. Publish, publish, publish and debate it.

QUESTION: Brendan Nicholson from The Age. The - on the subject of giving up cherished rights there's a Parliamentary Committee at the moment hearing submissions and testimony on the terror legislation that's going through the Parliament soon. One of the most - that had a couple of hundred submissions, a lot of which are going to disappear into the ethos because there's just not enough time or space for anyone to handle it, but one of the most enticing ideas in them - put in a submission from Alan Beam who's a former Defence official and a former Attorney General official and one of the smarter analysts around the place and he points out that in 1943 when Britain was facing occupied France and there was still a major threat from the Nazis, Winston Churchill very vigorously defended the need to free from prison Mosely the head of the Blackshirts. Now this was, well it wasn't quite Britain's darkest hour but it was very soon afterwards and now it seems, it seems making the point that John, Winston Churchill seems to have moved an awful long way from the position taken from, from Winston, the Prime Minister at the time. Can you explain why we seem to be placing so less value on the fundamental right that Churchill defended so strongly then that seems to matter so little now?

TIM COSTELLO: No I can't. Thanks for the long question. That's exactly the experience I had sitting in the House of Commons. That's what was triggered for me. That here is a Parliamentary democracy that has suffered the worst just months before. The London Undergound as we all know is just a death trap. But still saying freedoms and not moving prescriptively against rights and hate with undue haste is going to be our way. We're going to debate it. I don't understand in Australia why there hasn't been that debate. I suspect in America and we maybe sit in robust democracies between Britain and America, they move with the Patriot Act even quicker. Only now are they starting to actually ask questions of the Patriot Act. We've moved relatively quickly. I am saying I think the British experience showed a very robust set of values that Winston Churchill exemplified in 1930.

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