Repeal, don’t expand, ASIO’s authoritarian secret police powers (Australian Citizens Party)

The Albanese government is pushing through a bill that will put Australia under a permanent police state regime.

In 2003 the law that originally gave the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) secret police powers was so controversial it took 15 months of fierce debate to pass Parliament.

The law gave ASIO coercive questioning powers to interrogate anybody, including children as young as 14, without a warrant from a judge and without the right to silence.

The government insisted such powers were absolutely necessary in the life-or-death situation of ASIO needing information to avert a mass casualty terrorist attack.

The Labor Opposition leader Simon Crean called it a “police state”; a young Anthony Albanese gave one of the strongest speeches against the law, likening it to Nazi Germany.

The Labor Party only let it pass the Senate eventually when the Howard government agreed to put a sunset clause on the powers to make them temporary.

Now, it’s the Albanese Labor government which is legislating to expand the scope of ASIO’s interrogation powers from terrorism to include everything ASIO does, most of which is not of life-or-death urgency.

And the government’s bill, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Amendment Bill No. 2 2025, will repeal the sunset clause, so that these secret police powers are permanent—Australia will have an authoritarian police state regime permanently.

Please watch the video, sign the petition, and help the fight to free Australia from police state rule.



[Posted at the SpookyWeather2 blog, April 2, 2026.]