Oh look, JKJ is a sock puppet of LEGO. Does GY know you're using two accounts, you naughty little sausage?

That is a very good point. Plantagenet.

The Australian RAAF may drop a 500 kilo laser guided bomb on "Australian" dual nationals fighting for ISIS or Al Qaida, but we must not strip them of the citizenship because that is seen by some as unfair.

Hi Lego,
If someone is killed while fighting for ISIS, they were ISIS fighters and that is war. We can debate whether we should be taking part in that war, but that is another topic.

If someone goes to an area that is deemed a foreign combat zone but doesn't participate in military activities but is stripped of their citizenship by a minister without any testing of evidence just because they are suspected of being an ISIS fighter - that is wrong and an anathema to our so called ideals of freedom and of the rule of law.

Our laws traditionally assume people are innocent until proven guilty. This law reverses that - people will be considered guilty until proven innocent.

Even with the best will in the world, our intelligence agencies make mistakes. The minister will make his decision based on the information from intelligence agencies, and this will probably be in secret due to national security concerns.

Nothing is more certain, without proper checks and balances, mistakes will be made, and this will have significant negative impacts on the individuals involved.

Is this the society we want to be? Where people can be stripped of their right to citizenship on the mere suspicion of wrongdoing? For many Australians, it seems to be yes. They are so afraid ISIS is coming to get us, they will give away any liberties that our forbears fought and died for.

We need to take a chill pill. Our government is bringing in draconian laws that strip us of our privacy and freedoms because they want to save innocent lives? This is nonsense. I say let us keep our freedoms and the rule of law, and if you want to save innocent lives, reverse the nearly $2Billion in health funding cuts outlined in the last budget.

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamen Franklin.

Sorry I have to add, the 2015 budget cuts to health were even worse. The $1.8 Billion cuts are immediate over 4 years. Then you have the $57 Billion in health funding cuts to the states over the next 10 years. Think how many innocent lives could be saved with that money?

However, while health funding is slashed, we can spend billions on new spending in militarism, dodgy fighter jets, Japanese submarines,and the mass surveillance of the entire population.

If you think they care about us think again. Have you noticed the increase in homelessness lately? Have you noticed the cuts to services helping the needy lately?

People go on about the nanny state - this has nothing on the surveillance state that is being built.

We need the Magna Carta and the rule of law to keep us all safe. If we let these freedoms go, there is no guarantee we will get them back.

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" Thomas Jefferson

Once again, well done JKJ. I obviously don't know this Minns person or where he sources ideas, but he presents himself as a very young, unworldly person flexing his developing muscles to the adults. I might be wrong of course, but there is no other way of making a judgement than by what he says, and he certainly, to me, puts himself across as a young smart alec who isn't nearly as clever as he thinks he is.

A quick google will do it for you, old fella. Ask someone to do it for if that's beyond you, as it apparently is.

For some of us aging is an adventure, with the advantage of experience to guide us in taking the most interesting, exciting path on the great downhill slide of life.

For others, it's simply a miserable trudge along the deeply-rutted spiral path worn by the chains and balls of regrets, resentments and discarded dreams they drag along.

Bjelly, there has been an increasing tendency over the past few decades to reverse the onus of proof in statutes and even, in some cases, to make it illegal to do things that are not formally regulated. The Bligh Government, for example, introduced the notion of the "Unregulated High-risk Activity", which a couple of years ago saw some young men prosecuted for climbing a tree!

It's just another form of the Marxian managerialist approach that seeks to control outcomes by limiting actions to a small and ever-diminishing suite of options. It suits those who have limited imaginations, such as the LEGO/JKJ/ttbn sock-puppet clone, since they can't imagine anybody ever wanting to do something extraordinary.

Unfortunately though, it makes doing extraordinary things extraordinarily difficult so we end up with a stale pudding of a culture, topped with a thin rancid crust of rules, all contained under a tight lid of enforcement.