The moratorium marches of my youth in Perth were pretty tame affairs. I can't recall that anyone wore crazy costumes, or masks of Lyndon B. Johnson, or acted in an outrageous manner. We held banners as we marched down St Georges Terrace, chanting anti-war slogans, and snarling at the police.

Political protest has turned into an art and a science since then. And while the baby-boom activists bemoan the conservative youth of today, they would have to admit today's demonstrators leave the old school for dead for sheer theatricality, color and strategy.

But when does today's "spirited protest" become a national security threat? When does wearing a caricatured mask of a political leader, or dressing up in a crazy costume, or linking arms en masse, or blocking the passage of vehicles, or lying on the ground to resist being carted off by police pose a serious danger to the country?

When is the nation imperiled by a group hug? These questions have been raised by the Government's chilling action in deporting Scott Parkin, an American peace activist, while asking us to believe it has done it for our sakes - not its own.

These protest techniques and self-protection strategies were advocated by Parkin in one or two of the handful of workshops he held in Australia, and appear the basis for his deportation.

As far as I know, Parkin did not get into a group hug - a technique used to frustrate police attempts to arrest anyone - when he participated in the recent demonstration against the Forbes Global CEO conference at the Opera House.

He went wrong in ASIO's eyes simply because he spoke about these techniques, even though it is not an offense to teach people how to protect themselves from police batons or horses' hooves, or even how to resist arrest in a hypothetical demonstration.

He has been deported not for what he did but for what he said. ASIO and the Government did not like his words, even though the Government admits they were not unlawful.

In the absence of an official explanation, I am making some assumptions here. The Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, said that ASIO must protect the country against "politically motivated violence, including violent protest activity". Maybe Parkin has advocated techniques more violent than the workshop attendees admit to me. More likely, ASIO is simply intolerant of tactics that may make it harder for police to drag protesters away.

Leaders of Greenpeace, who have become involved with Parkin in his three months in Australia, are sure they have not been duped. They are sure Parkin is what he seemed to be - a peace activist involved in the Houston Global Awareness Collective in Texas.

He is deeply opposed to the Iraq war. He is an expert on Halliburton, the giant company formerly headed by the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, and now the beneficiary of US Government contracts worth billions of dollars to reconstruct Iraq.

In May, Parkin was involved in a big demonstration to coincide with a meeting of Halliburton shareholders in Houston. In the theatrical spirit of modern protests, a 7.5-meter inflatable pig called Hallibacon greeted shareholders, and the demonstrators wore pig snouts and Cheney masks. Five people handcuffed themselves to the railing of the hotel where the meeting was held, and 17 protesters were arrested after police on horseback charged into the crowd.

Neither US democracy nor security was imperiled by the "spirited" protest, which drew attention to Halliburton's alleged profiteering in the Iraq war. Parkin was not considered a security risk and was free to travel to Australia a month later.

At a time when the Federal Government is asking us to trust its implementation of sweeping anti-terrorist laws that take away basic civil liberties, the Parkin case gives reason to be fearful.

A young man's name has been blackened. He was thrown into solitary for five days - and will have to foot an $11,000 bill for detention and deportation. It is likely ASIO's security assessment will prevent him from leaving the US again. He has not been told what he did - or said - that was wrong.

Those who heard him speak are baffled. He emphasized creative costuming, clever placards, making protest joyful, de-escalating tense situations. He was no bomb thrower. He emphasized that getting the "story" across was crucial - and that the message would be lost if a protest descended into violence.

The perception that ASIO has acted rashly in this case - and the reality that it is largely unaccountable - undermines the case to give it sweeping new powers. ASIO can ruin the life of an Australian overnight, as easily as it can an American visitor - if it doesn't like, or doesn't understand, or misinterprets what is said.

And it seems the boundaries of acceptable speech are being drawn tighter. Religious zealots who incite people to violence are not the only ones likely to end up in the slammer. Social activists who advocate - let alone indulge in - group hugs and other forms of resistance are also in danger of being deemed a threat to national security.

© Copyright 2005 SMH

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