Boaz

As the kids are finally asleep I can at last reply.

Regarding immigration - criteria based on ethnicity or community values is always a can of worms because it is frequently too restrictive - prompting too many justifiable exceptions.

eg a computer executive from Shanghai arrives with his family and $5 million, speaks no English, no knowledge of Australian culture, but starts a small international computer software company that employs 8 rapidly assimilating Chinese-Australians. I reckon a good result but should we have let him in on ethnicity-Australian knowledge grounds?

On Islam. I have no problems with Muslims if they get rid of any "old country" sectarian passions. In Australia's history other groups have (largely) made peace eg. Croats and Serbs through assimilation (usually a key ingredient). I don't think its useful seeing Islam as a monolithic force internationally.

If "National Socialism or Marxism had triumphed" it would be a sad, sad world. Both creeds were grounded on "false gods" depending on extreme dictators eg Hitler, Stalin, Mao. Their similarities were greater than their differences.

Like most posters on this blog my contributions don't consistently fall into any political category (I hope) - though my head is conservative (I've been in a couple of very conservative professions) I try to keep my heart on the left. Over to u Boaz.

While some members of the parliament seeks to hide behind their excuses, the truth is that none, I state none really had the guts to stand up for what is constitutionally appropriate.
John Howard, on 26 September 2005 finally admitted that constitutionally he does not have the powers to detain any person for 14 days. Well, I have been writing for years explaining this extensively. Including in one of my books;

INSPECTOR-RIKATI® on CITIZENSHIP
A book on CD about Australians unduly harmed.
ISBN 0-9580569-6-X

When a real terrorist finally does end up killing people then he probably will walk free from the Courts because of the unconstitutional legal provisions. While the Parliament may ignore it all, any terrorist would benefit from my writings to get of charges. As long as we got cowards of politicians who are afraid to speak up because of the political consequences, and so use appeasement for John Howard, then it will be those cowards who ultimately will have to face reality if a terrorist walks free. After all, if they had done their job in the first place to ensure that legislation was constitutionally valid, they could avoid it.
In my view, every legislation (Bill) presented to the Federal Parliament must in its heading show within which constitutional power it is provided. Now, no one knows and it is left ultimately to the Courts to find some backdoor way to try to make it constitutionally valid. Surely, common sense ought to prevail that constitutional justification must be address from onset.

The terrorist are the very politicians who ignore constitutional validity and by this allow the general community to be terrorized until some day it is discovered there never was any legal justification for the legislation!

How then can those allegedly seeking to act against terrorism but in fact by their ignorance themselves become terrorist upon the general community make our lives any better.

Any parliamentarian who even seeks to make out that past so called anti terrorist legislation was acceptable obviously lack to understand what the Constitution really is about