Tasmanian Liberal Senator Guy Barnett today called for an end to fair criminal trials. Well, effectively.

In Senate Estimates today, Senator Barnett discovered that the government had spent around $10 million on the legal defence of nine people charged with terrorism offences. They were eventually found guilty. So Senator Barnett reckons that legal defence was a waste of money.

Senator Barnett, who chairs the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee, issued a media release earlier today headlined $10 million spent on legal aid to defend the rights of terrorists.

Apparently if someone is to be found guilty — which he must assume can be known in advance — then the cost of their legal defence is “government waste”.

Now people who are capable of joined-up thinking may see the logical problem and risk to human rights here. Like, you know, innocent until proven guilty and the right to a fair trial and all that stuff. So I’ve just sent the following email.

Dear Senator Barnett…

I’ll cut to the chase. The way you’ve pitched your media release today is disgusting.

I suspect you’ve got some sellable points in there about why those criminal trials cost around $1 million each, and about lawyers charging like wounded bulls. I agree that there should be far more funding for Legal Aid. But then your mob were in power for 11 years and did bugger all about it, so you’re not really in a position to point the finger, eh?

But what SERIOUSLY pisses me off, and what explains the tone of this email, is that you’ve pitched this as being about terrorism suspects somehow not deserving legal representation. If these individuals were “subsequently found guilty of terrorism offences”, all well and good. But whoever they are, whatever their alleged crime, they deserve a fair trial with competent legal representation.

The anti-terrorism laws passed in the aftermath of 9/11 are seriously flawed. Our police and intelligence agencies were given sweeping new powers without counterbalancing oversight. The word “terrorism” is waved like a magic wand to reduce the accused’s rights. Anyone charged with a terrorism offence is automatically working from a far weaker position than if they’d been charged with an equivalent crime that didn’t have the “terrorism” label.

I’ve just covered the Federal Court battle between the movie industry and the internet service provider iiNet, which clocked up around $10 million in legal fees. I can well understand how terrorism cases, many of which will be test cases for these new laws, could clock up similarly large legal bills.

Should you, me, our families or those around us be charged with some offence in the future, by some government with a heart less warm and compassionate as yours, I’d like to make sure we get our fair trial.

“I think most Australians would be shocked to realise that over $10 million in taxpayers funds has been spent defending the rights of those convicted of terrorist offences,” you say. But until the fair trial has been conducted, we don’t know whether they’re innocent or guilty . Everyone is entitled to an assumption of innocence until proven guilty.

Do the Liberals have some crystal ball which can reveal in advance which trials will result in a guilty verdict? I don’t think so.

I don’t care what some ill-defined “most Australians” think. Justice isn’t mob rule. And an appeal to an assumed majority is a fallacious argument anyway.

At the next election, which I assume will happen later this year, I’ll be looking to vote for the party which will best manage our nation. I’m open to suggestions at this point.

But a party which deliberately panders to ignorance and racism? No thanks. That’s not my Australia.

Regards,

Stilgherrian

I seem to have forgotten to tell you that episode 43 of Stilgherrian Live is online for your viewing pleasure. It has been for nearly two weeks! So does that mean there’s another episode tonight? It does.

This means I need to do a number of things.

First, I need to tell you that last program’s “Cnut of the Week” finalists were: 4th Miranda Devine (18%); equal 2nd Jane Schulze and Associated Press, and The Cuffs Guy (24% each); 1st The Liberal Party Generally (34%).

Second, I need to tell you that…

Nominations are now open for this week’s “Cnut of the Week”.

Actually, it’s “Cnut of the Fortnight”, I think, since there’s bound to have been some special work in the 14 days since the last program.

Please remember the rules. We’re looking for people, organisations or other entities who are futilely trying to hold back the tide of change. It has to be something in the news in the last fortnight, and you have to explain yourself. Nominees have to be not merely doing bad things, but failing to notice or adapt to the change around them.

If you don’t link your nomination to the “tide of change” thing and just whinge about something bad that’s happened, I will ridicule you mercilessly. You have been warned.

As always, nominations close at 8.30pm Sydney time sharp, and you must nominate on the website to count.

Who do you nominate, and why?

Speaking of 8.30pm, you should also watch my friend Nick Hodge‘s program @nickhodge — yes, the program is named the same as his Twitter identity — ‘cos he’s doing something special for the forthcoming Anzac Day.

Defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon has announced that the controversial purchase of 24 Super Hornet aircraft will go ahead.

The review of the Howard government’s decision to buy the aircraft — at a total cost of $6 billion even though the RAAF hadn’t wanted them — reached some damaging conclusions, including:

• There has been a lack of sound, long-term air combat capability planning decisions by the former Government over the course of the last decade.
• The retirement of the F-111 was made in haste but is not irreversible. The cost of turning the F-111 back on would be enormous and crews and skills have already moved on.
• The former Government’s decision to leave Australia’s air defences in the hands of the Joint Strike Fighter project was a flawed leap of faith in scheduling terms and combined with the quick decision to retire the F-111 early, allowed an air combat capability gap to emerge.
• The subsequent timetable the former Government put on the acquisition of an interim fighter left Defence planners with no choice but to recommend the Super Hornet. No other suitable aircraft could be produced to meet the 2010 deadline the former Government had set. One year on, that is now even more so the case.

Cancelling the order would still incur a financial penalty and create “undesirable tensions”, and the final conclusions is that “the Super Hornet is an excellent aircraft… and is the only aircraft which can meet the small delivery window created by the former Government’s poor planning processes and politically-driven responses.”

As a shareholder in Australia Inc, I’d like to know why the former “board members” allowed this to happen. When company directors are negligent they become personally liable so why, given the report’s damning conclusions, does Brendan Nelson not become personally liable?

Why were established evaluation and purchasing processes ignored? What is the connection between former defence minister Brendan Nelson (a member of the Liberal Party), and the then chairman of Boeing Australia, Andrew Peacock, a former leader of the Liberal Party?

Hat-tip to Tim Dunlop, who also notes:

[D]o you make procurement decisions on the basis of strategy or is it on occasion necessary to build strategy around procurements that have already been made? I mean, the White Paper may be still six months away but it is hardly as if it is being written from scratch. It looks like Fitzgibbon has decided that getting the Super Hornet decision locked away was the more important factor and is happy enough to make strategy decisions with the Super Hornets in the mix. To paraphrase another Defence Minister/Secretary, sometimes you do strategy on the basis on the equipment you have.

As in this case. We’re buying the Super Hornets because, essentially, it’s the only choice left.

[Photo: A US Navy (USN) F/A-18E Super Hornet aircraft, Strike Fighter Squadron 115 (VFA-115), Naval Air Station (NAS) Lemoore, California (CA), launches from catapult three during flight operations on board the USN Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. US Navy via Wikipedia.]

While the Americans bring us sordid tales of evangelical ministers doing meth with rent boys and astronauts in diapers in kidnapping allegations, all the NSW Liberal Party can manage is sending a schoolboy-standard lewd SMS message. Pathetic.

Consider:

• If you can’t even organise someone who can cut paper in a straight line, what makes you think you can run the state of New South Wales?
• If you can’t raise the $3000 to professionally print the 45,000 leaflets necessary to hit your electorate, how little support do you actually have?
• If you can’t do the basic financial management to understand that for large print runs, offset printing is a lot cheaper than photocopying, why on earth would I trust you with a billion-dollar state budget?

1 out of 10, can do much, much better.

Journalist: Mr Costello, when did Mr Howard tell you of his decision?

Costello: Yesterday.

Journalist: How?

Costello: In words.

Journalist: (inaudible)

Treasurer: Yes, you know, words, which I heard through my ears. Sorry. Yes.

Journalist: (inaudible)

Costello: It was yesterday Michelle. The sun had risen, there was rain coming down, wind was going on, it was in words and it was heard through my ears and it was comprehended by my brain.

Source: http://www.australianpolitics.com/news/2003/06/03-06-03a.shtml