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The civil liberties we lost in 2007

04 January 2008 in Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

Photograph of Richard Ackland

In today’s Sydney Morning Herald, Richard Ackland has published his “top 10″ list of intrusions on our civil liberties for 2007.

“A year ago we published a list showing how our liberties had been whittled, starting with the sedition laws and ending with David Hicks. Now there is a fresh outcrop of abrasions to our rights, although, sadly, there is an eerie consistency about some of the players.”

His list includes an entire entry just for one man’s efforts:

4. Philip Ruddock. Once again the former attorney-general deserves his own special entry in the human rights hall of infamy. This time for his unique conception that an accused person can have a “fair trial” based on hearsay evidence and evidence extracted by coercion.

As number 1, Ackland mentions just a name: Dr Mohamed Haneef. I’m hoping the forthcoming judicial inquiry gets to the bottom of that debacle!

Review: Watching Brief

28 December 2007 in Politics by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Cover photo of Watching BriefJohn Howard, during his time as prime minister, talked a lot about the rule of law. If we are a nation of laws then those laws must, presumably, reflect what we believe about ourselves as a nation. As people. As human beings. As Australians.

Howard, quite correctly, sees a century of the rule of law as one of the great achievements of Australian federation. And yet, under his watch, fundamental legal principles were eroded. Laws made as part of the so-called War on Terror introduced imprisonment without trial, secret evidence, searches without warrant…

With these conflicting thoughts in mind, I opened the pages of Julian Burnside’s book Watching Brief: reflections on human rights, law, and justice while leaving Australia for the first time.

As dusk fell somewhere over the Timor Sea, I imagined the horror of traversing that ocean below in an over-crowded, leaky refugee boat only to be hauled off to a concentration camp a quarter of the world away. Meanwhile, I ordered another brandy and Mr Burnside provided me with a concise, clearly-written explanation of just why I’d been so angry with the Howard government, and so angry with a weak and ineffectual opposition for allowing it to happen.

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