We found that the measurements implemented by the Malaysian government in order to flatten the Covid-19 curve were not very clear according to the Malaysian Federal Constitution. The government mentioned issues of medicine and health as part of public order and internal security.
But what makes it into a national security issue and where do they get the legitimacy from? According to Malaysian national policy in 2013, it seems that this issues of pandemics, infectious diseases, even of food security, those are all issues of national security, based on the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988 (Act 342).
This gives the Ministry of Health and the police the right to control the movement of people. When the King declared a state of emergency for COVID-19, quite a number of people questioned the legality of this. Our Federal Constitution stipulates for Malaysia to declare state of emergency even on the basis of Public Health to restore public order.
And for Australia, we found that the government has chosen a comprehensive biosecurity law to deal with Covid-19, which was already implemented in 2015. The purpose is to manage biosecurity risks to human health and environment arising from humans, animals and plants. We saw that the coverage of these biosecurity laws were better prepared for Covid-19 than our own prevention of diseases act in Malaysia.
So these biosecurity laws contain all the measures to control the pandemic outbreak, these measures are confined to one of stopping the disease spreading between people as well as regulating community and commercial activities. The biosecurity offices provide security by having more power to enact the regulations compared to the security measures in Malaysia. Which means that the powers to restrain movement of people are on our police and army, you know we don’t have this biosecurity office except for at the airports where they control people moving to Malaysia.
As for Italy, which was hit particularly hard by the pandemic, the government proclaimed the state of emergency due to public health issues. This gave the government the power to ensure civil protection orders and movement of people and suspending rights and cultural freedom on the basis of this national event.