Extract from ABC News
Updated
Police in charge of assessing threats to the
Queensland Premier's safety have been keeping files on groups opposed to
the State Government's policies.
The threat assessments compiled
by the state's Security Intelligence Branch were obtained under right to
information, with many of the documents heavily redacted.But uncensored sections spell out the "tactics and motivations" of unions protesting against public sector cuts and environmental groups demonstrating against issues such as coal seam gas projects.
"What we’re seeing is an extraordinary use of the Queensland Police Service to keep very close monitoring of the political opponents of this government," said Alex Scott, the general secretary of Queensland's Together public sector union.
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"We're seeing a return of Special Branch under another name and what is more frightening is what has been redacted from this report than what's actually included in it."
The original Queensland Special Branch was disbanded in 1989 in line with a recommendation by Queensland's landmark Fitzgerald Inquiry.
The Special Branch had been accused of being a political tool, used by the Bjelke-Petersen government to harass and investigate political opponents.
The Security Intelligence Branch was formed under Labor in the mid-1990s, and is tasked with assessing threats against people "assessed to be at risk" from politically motivated violence.
The threat assessments released under Right to Information found that "the majority of conventional protesters are compliant with police and are generally non-violent".
But the Security Intelligence Branch assessed that demonstrators were capable of a different kind of damage to the Newman Government.
"IMGs [issue motivated groups] pose the greatest risk of embarrassment to the Premier and his Government by their continued and varied methods of protest and often intend to embarrass the Premier rather than physically harm him," one assessment said.
The police went on to warn that protests at a planned Government summit in Mackay in May 2013 could "have the potential to cause embarrassment and bring unwanted attention onto the Queensland Government and the [Queensland Police Service]".
Civil libertarians say the documents raise serious questions.
"The police haven't borne the lessons of history in mind and we're heading down that slippery slope where they've gone beyond a legitimate threat assessment into something that's in great danger of becoming the political wing of the Premier's department," said Andrew Sinclair of the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties.
This potential for embarrassing the Government described in the threat assessments had already led to the Premier changing his lunching plans.
During a visit to Townsville in early 2013, Mr Newman was told that 25 nurses from the Queensland Nursing Union were picketing outside the restaurant he was going to for lunch.
The Security Intelligence Branch reported that "subsequently the Premier changed plans and found an alternate venue for lunch".
Mr Sinclair warned that saving the Premier from potentially embarrassing media coverage is not the job of his police protectors.
"I would have thought the idea of 25 nurses walking around carrying some pieces of paper with words on it that the Government didn't want to hear, or didn't want to have put in the media, isn't something that should find itself in a threat assessment," he said.
The ABC approached the Queensland Police Service for comment but did not receive a reply.
The office of Premier Campbell Newman has also been contacted for comment.
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