which provides that it is the duty of authorities to ensure lawyers’ access to appropriate information, files and documents in their possession or control, in sufficient time to enable effective legal advice to clients. • Restrictions on Family Communications. The ASIO Amendment Act, section 34F.8, also provides that detainees may be refused contact with their family or other persons. The capacity for detention to amount to an apparent “disappearance” of a detainee through the capacity to extend the initial 48-hour period of arrest, amounts to a significant breach of Article 9.1 of the ICCPR provision against arbitrary detention. Such “incommunicado detention” also contravenes Principles 16.1 and 19 of the Body of Principles on Detention. • All questions must be answered by detainees. The ASIO Amendment Act (section 34G.8(b)) provides that a detainee must not fail to give information requested in accordance with a warrant and may not decline on the grounds of self-incrimination. The failure to provide such information and the failure to satisfy the evidentiary burden imposed by section 34G.4 carries a 5-year imprisonment penalty. These provisions infringe the right to silence, the right not to be compelled to testify against oneself and reverse the presumption of innocence protected by Article 14.3(g) of the ICCPR and Principle 21.1 of the Body of Principles on Lawyers. The Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee on the ASIO Amendment Act considered that there is no general duty to disclose information relevant to a terrorist offence (at 6.47). Perhaps the most troubling aspect of section 34 is that it shifts the burden to the detainee positively to prove their non-association with terrorist activities. The right to a presumption of innocence is articulated in Article 14.2 of the ICCPR and mirrored in Article 62 of the ECHR and Principle 36.1 of the Body of Principles on Lawyers. • The rights of children. Under the ASIO Amendment Act, children are generally made subject to the same provisions as those applicable to adults. Classification as a child applies only to the age of 16, by contrast to the age of 18 under the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Any questioning of children may continue in the absence of a parent, guardian, an appropriate adult or a legal adviser. Suspension of the presumption of innocence and the right not to be compelled to give testimony or to confess guilt are applied equally to children by the ASIO Amendment Act. In these respects, the ASIO Amendment Act contravenes CRC (Article 37 ( d), 40.2(b)(i) and (ii) and (iv) and the provisions of Fundamental Perspective 17 of the United Nations Rules. When ratifying the ICCPR and CRC, Australia made reservations which exclude provisions requiring the 82