"political expediency trumped rule of law and justice" will always be the rule where ASIO or any other security agency is concerned. You only have to look at the David Hicks case to realise that this system is alive and well in Australia.

The article gives some of the moral reasons why we can't tolerate indefinite detentions of refugees on the basis of non-reviewable "security” assessments.

Fortunately there is also a legal reason.

The legislative power is limited to the making of law, which by definition must be compatible with the rule of law. The existence of a court presupposes the rule of law and therefore precludes the court from entertaining any proposition incompatible with the rule of law. The existence of a constitution, written or unwritten, presupposes the rule of law and therefore renders unconstitutional any attempt – by any means, legislative or otherwise – to circumvent the rule of law.

And the rule of law cannot abide a situation in which the freedom of one person depends on the arbitrary will of another, without appeal to the judicial branch on questions of law and fact.

Civil libertarians need to stop campaigning for a new bill of rights and start enforcing the one we already have: the rule of law.

Actually the parliament and then the high court ceded the rule of law when they allowed Al Kateb to stand as law. This vile law allows for the permanent imprisonment of people who will never be charged with any crime and 4 out of 7 high court judges found that to be perfectly reasonable.

Now DIAC are using it to jail Indonesian children in adult jails before they pretend they are people smugglers.

Our Feds and spooks have been a laughing stock though for decades, they just keep getting more and more money thrown at them and David Irvine thinks he is still in the cold war.

I mean to say, they found babies to be a risk to national security.

Unless my arguments were actually put before the High Court and rejected in its judgment, Al Kateb is not a relevant precedent.

In the light of the Patriot Act,Preventative Detention,Defence Authorisation Act in the USA and our Sedition Laws here,I'd say you could not trust any of our authorities.

Hi Sasha.

Josef Broz Tito was a highly intelligent, fearless and remarkable man. He was a benign dictator who held his country together for forty years. When he died, Yugoslavia died from multiculturalism, and a million Yugoslavs died with it.

During WW2, the British were astonished to discover that Tito's partisans were holding down 15 German divisions, while the entire might of the British and Commonwealth armies were failing to control the depradations of 2 German divisions and 2 Italian ones in North Africa.

After WW2, Tito created the Non Alighned Movement, and was the only communist country to refuse to join the Warsaw pact. When Stalin mobilised his forces to invade Yugoslavia, Tito had himself flown to Moscow. Tito spoke Russian. He marched right up to Stalin and screamed in his face "You invade my country, and I will give you 20 years of war!" Stalin blinked and war was averted.

Tito was also the first communist leader who was smart enough to know that a bit of capitalism was no bad thing, and he understood the benefits of farmers owning their own land. He also maintained good relations with Western countries, as well as Communist ones.

The Croations, who were Nazi collaborators in WW2, committed several bombing outrages in Australia, in which Australians were killed and wounded. That is why ASIO needs to keep on top of the present imported Muslim danger to Australia, and why we should support ASIO. Although it seems to me that hiring Muslims to work in ASIO is like hiring German Abwehr operatives in WW2 to police German migrants in Australia.