Table of Contents
This chapter reports data from an empirical study of lay perceptions of terrorist acts and counter-terrorism initiatives in Australia. Relationships were measured between the following independent variables: perpetrator motive, offence construal (how an incident was described by a police spokesperson), siege mentality beliefs (the belief that you are alone in the world and under siege), and human rights beliefs. The measured dependent variables were: perceived blameworthiness of the perpetrator and perceived appropriateness of counter-terrorism initiatives. Measurement of human rights beliefs were also made, including whether participants agreed that violations of civil and political rights were justified in response to a food tampering incident due to an overarching ‘right to human security’ (derived from the right to life). A ‘right to human security’ had been asserted in Australia by the former Commonwealth Attorney-General in statements preceding data collection.[1]
Participants in this sample were generally not in favour of increasing the police or state’s ability to counter terrorism with unprecedented criminal processes. Participants were also not in favour of a ‘right to human security’ that would trump other civil and political rights. However, even in this sample, participants perceived the perpetrator to be more blameworthy if motivated by a jihadist cause rather than by an anti-corporate motive, despite the fact that the remaining facts surrounding the terrorist act were identical in all four experimental conditions. The implications of this effect are discussed for jurors’ perception of blameworthiness in Australian terrorist cases that incorporate motive-like elements such as perpetrating an act or issuing a threat of action with the intention of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause in Australian counter-terrorism offences.[2]
The chapter begins by outlining the main reasons for conducting this empirical study: (i) the tendency to describe post-September 11 political violence as exceptional examples of criminality, and (ii) the concern over inclusion of motive elements in terrorist offence definition.
[*] Senior Lecturer in Law, ANU College of Law, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia <mark.nolan@anu.edu.au>. This research was funded by an Australian Research Council grant ‘Terrorism and the Non-State Actor After September 11: The Role of Law in the Search for Security’ (DP0451473 awarded for 2004-2007, http://law.anu.edu.au/terrorismlaw/). Thanks to Prita Jobling for her assistance in collecting and entering these data and conducting data analyses. Thanks to Dr Kristina Murphy and Professor Craig McGarty for allowing us to invite their psychology students to participate in this study as approved by the ANU Human Research Ethics Committee, Protocol Number 2005/219.
[1] For example, statements made by former Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock in the 2004 Deakin Law School Oration as published, P Ruddock, ‘National Security and Human Rights’ [2004] Deakin Law Review 14. See other statements by Ruddock such as in press interviews: <http://www.abc.net.au/ worldtoday/content/2005/s1497863.htm>; G Carne, ‘Reconstituting “Human Security” in a New Security Environment: One Australian, Two Canadians and Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ (2006) 25 Australian Year Book of International Law 1, note 11, citing P Ruddock, ‘Recent Developments in National Security’ (Press Release, 6 February 2004). In this press release, Ruddock supported the views of Irwin Cotler, then Attorney-General of Canada, stating: ‘Cotler has been a prominent human rights advocate over time and he made in a number of addresses, an examination of this question about how you get the balance right between security and what are seen often as civil and political rights. But his starting point was to emphasise the importance of the civil and political right that citizens are entitled to expect in a civilised society and that is to be safe and secure, to be safe and secure from terrorist activities in which citizens are targeted.’
[2] See M Gani, Chapter 13 this volume, for a review of these offences.