Voting down progress

Keith Locke's proposed amendments to part 1 of the Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill have just been voted down, 109 - 10. Given the nature of the amendments - and specifically one ensuring that the law could not be applied to peaceful protest - it is difficult to see this as anything other than the two major parties and their authoritarian hangers-on voting to explicitly criminalise political dissent and supress human rights. And this is not something we should either forget or forgive.