Author: TomsWrite

We get the government we tolerate. If we want a better government we need to not allow what we do not want.

From a Citizens Party email to me:

Something funny happened on the way to a police state…

Unprecedented scrutiny from people pressure has delayed the ASIO bill.

The bill expanding ASIO’s secret police powers is still tied up in the Senate, months after it was set to be waved through by the major parties.

With Parliament now risen for the winter recess, the next opportunity to debate the bill is when Parliament resumes in mid-August.

Concerned Australians who lobbied against this bill should appreciate that their efforts have had a major impact, upsetting the usually smooth process by which the major parties have colluded for decades to march Australia down the path to a police state.

Production line

At last count more than 100 security laws have passed Parliament since 2002, when the Howard government first put up seven bills in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack that severely undermined civil liberties in the name of “security”.

At first all of Howard’s bills were going to be waved through, over the protests of Constitutional experts, because too many politicians are cowards when it comes to responding to “threat” narratives, going along with enacting draconian powers so as not to be accused of being “weak” on the ostensible threat.

At the time, the Citizens Party intervened and mobilised opposition all across Australia from organisations and individuals who didn’t accept that the “threat” justified cancelling the people’s civil rights.

This opposition, directed at Parliament through phone calls and emails, empowered previously timid politicians to speak up, which stopped the bills from being waved through and instead sparked a huge debate that lasted more than 18 months.

Even Liberal Party Senator David Jull broke with his party, writing in his chairman’s foreword to a report on Howard’s ASIO bill (which originally enacted the powers that the current ASIO bill seeks to expand) that “The Bill, in its original form, would undermine key legal rights and erode the civil liberties that make Australia a leading democracy.”

Labor leader Simon Crean decided to take a stand, accusing Howard of trying to establish a “police state”; Labor’s Member for Grayndler Anthony Albanese went further in a fiery speech in 2003, quoting Hitler’s Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering and likening the proposed ASIO powers to the Nazis.

However, Howard and the Murdoch media relentlessly attacked Labor as weak on national security, especially as Crean-led Labor also opposed the 2003 Iraq invasion, so eventually Labor relented and passed the laws, but only after insisting on a sunset clause for the ASIO powers.

Once Labor capitulated, and especially after Crean was toppled as leader, the party put up no more fights against such laws; the most they did was complain about the erosion of civil liberties and say they would improve them when they were in government, but they never did.

This is how more than 100 draconian security laws have been enacted since 2002, including powers for intelligence agencies to spy on all Australians online, and a sinister 2014 law that jails journalists for ten years for reporting on an ASIO operation.

It’s become a smooth production line—until this year.

People pressure

Because of a lack of media scrutiny, the Citizens Party only discovered the ASIO bill in January, at the same time as Albanese called a special sitting of Parliament to ram through his hate crimes bill.

Albanese’s hate crimes bill sparked unprecedented opposition for its assault on free speech and due process, however, because for the first time in two decades a security bill received real scrutiny. Albanese only passed a version of it through a dirty deal with the Liberals that split the Coalition and cost Sussan Ley her job.

In the climate of extra awareness, the Citizens Party was also able to draw unprecedented attention to ASIO’s powers, including the bizarre fact that Albanese originally likened the powers to the Nazis, but now as prime minister is pushing to expand them.

Pressure from the people directed at Parliament has forced the major parties on to the back foot, upsetting the smooth production line: in April they backflipped on their original intent to remove the sunset clause to “normalise” the powers; and they still haven’t been able to pass the bill.

The next opportunity for the Senate to debate the ASIO Bill No. 2 will be the mid-August setting, so keep calling and emailing your Senators to insist they oppose this bill. Click here for their contact details. https://citizensparty.org.au/campaign/repeal-asio-powers#contact-senators

During final season of “Magnum P.I.” (1980), Tom Selleck asked for something that had nothing to do with his mustache, his red Ferrari, or his own star treatment.

He wanted the regular crew to get $1,000 bonus checks, because the show had been delivered with savings, discipline, and the kind of work viewers never saw.

CBS would not make crew bonuses part of the deal, so Selleck found another door. He negotiated a bigger payment for himself, then used that money for the people carrying the series from call time to wrap. It meant electricians, drivers, makeup artists, camera workers, sound people, and set hands were not invisible. The leading man did not just play Thomas Magnum. He looked at the people sweating behind the Hawaiian breeze and made sure their names reached the checkbook too.

That is what made the story hit harder than a normal Hollywood thank-you. A star could have taken the extra money, smiled for the cameras, and called it business. Selleck turned it into a personal thank-you to the workers who helped make him look effortless on screen. Years later, when he was asked what he would miss on another long-running set, he still went straight to the people behind the scenes, the writers, the crew, and the daily faces who made work feel like home.

In November 2020, the same quiet pattern showed up at Elio’s on the Upper East Side. The bill was $204.68. Selleck left $2,020 for the servers. The handwritten note did not brag. “For Elios, I am honoring my friend Donnie Wahlberg’s ‘tip challenge’ with my sincere hope for a better 2020. Thank you all.” Donnie Wahlberg found out later, even though he had worked with Selleck through several dinner scenes after it happened. That detail made it better. Selleck had a perfect chance to tell his TV son, and he said nothing.

On “Blue Bloods” (2010), Wahlberg called him TV dad, but it grew into something heavier than a nickname. After years of Reagan family dinners, hallway greetings, police commissioner scenes, and long shooting days in New York, Donnie spoke about Tom like a set anchor, not just a costar. “Passing Tom in the hallway and saying, ‘Hi, Dad.’ I’ll never forget the first time he responded back, ‘Hey, son.'” The line sounds small, but on a 14-season show, small rituals become family language. The set had nearly 300 episodes, countless family-table scenes, and crew members who watched each other’s lives change. Selleck did not need to act louder to lead. He let people feel steady, respected, and safe around him.

That steadiness also came from a life before television made him famous. Selleck served in the California Army National Guard during the Vietnam era, with the 160th Infantry, and later carried that respect into public remembrance. When he became involved with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund’s Education Center project, he did not treat veterans as background symbols. He brought his own connection too, because his friend Ron Montapert went to Vietnam and never came home. At one ceremony, he told the crowd, “I would like to say to all those who served and sacrificed in Vietnam and in all of America’s wars, thank you for your service.” Then he brought the point even closer, saying the center would help people think of the more than 58,000 names as individuals, not one faceless number.

That is the thread running through the crew checks, the restaurant tip, the set friendships, and the veterans work. Selleck’s care was usually practical. A check. A tip. A hallway greeting. A public thank-you. He did not need a speech when the action already said enough.

He thanked people before the spotlight ever found them.