It is five years and two or three days since we learned that two asylum seekers, who had been sent back to their own countries, had been killed. One at least was killed by the people that he had declared would kill him.

Since then, at least nine others have died because the relevant members of the
Department of Immigration made mistakes, and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal did not pick them up. If James McConvill’s argument is legitimate, he has the blood of eleven people on his hands.

The Department has permitted asylum seekers to be subjected to conditions which have caused the latter to become mentally ill. It has resisted change. It has vigorously resisted efforts to have detainees seen by psychiatrists, even in those cases where it was clear that its own procedures had not been such as to produce a reliable diagnosis. (Is James responsible for the illnesses?)

It has repeatedly used spurious criteria for denying refugees refugee status. It is incompetent, and often immoral to the point where it is tempting to talk of it as evil.

The defeated legislation would have left that Department making the decisions about asylum seekers transported to Nauru, without any appeal to an independent reviewer. Of course it was opposed. I am proud to have done so.

The original argument concerning queues was that people should stay in the country of first refuge until they were selected for immigration by other countries. Given the conditions in refugee camps, it was never a very moral argument.

The defeated legislation was supported by a different notion of queue jumping. It now appeared that refugees should stay in their own country, risking death or torture, and not emigrate to a neighbouring country until invited to do so. This argument made a mockery of the international processes for people seeking asylum. If all countries took the same view, there would be nowhere for asylum seekers to go. We’d be complicit in their deaths.

It is all a big political football.The Federal police thought they could take the heat off themselves and Charpelle Corby by letting the Indonesians spring the trap on the Bali nine.They were the sacrifical lambs for Charpelle to get much lighter sentence or be found innocent because of how poorly the whole enquiry and courtcase was conducted.If Charpelle's dilemma had not reached the media,she could have bought her freedom.That idiot mobile phone sales opportunist from Queensland really got her in a pickle.

Now the Indonesians have got both the lambs and the hapless Charpelle,and they will play it for all it's worth.

Marilyn Shepherd “McConvill, Rouge, Leigh and others should learn one thing blah blah

…Hicks, the Bali 9 and others know very well that the government will not.”

Marilyn, I was taught when a child that doing the wrong thing, peddling drugs, using terrorism as a tool against the country in which I live is not only plain dumb but any limp-wristed wet nurse apologist will be useless in a real fight – they are only out to salve their own guilt or bolster their own ineptitude.

If you, like me, had learnt that choices are made and we are responsible for those choices, then you would not be so arrogant or cavalier as to suggest anything about what I need to learn, instead focusing on the deficiencies of your own “education”.

As for “The attitude of Col Rouge is one I find particularly disturbing”,
I am pleased that something disturbs you Marilyn, shake you out of your idealistic non-accountable twilight zone.

What disturbs me is when people are murdered at the hands of those suffering chronic psychotic episodes
due to extensive drug abuse. I would observe, very few junkies are “born”. Most are created and they are created by exposure to the drugs the Bali 9 would have shipped into Australia. The dealers and the mules, at every point in the chain deserve the death penalty.

“How dare you say that these young people should be put to death”

Not only do I “DARE” and I also DEMAND it – a campaign slogan “hang ‘em high and let them die”

And if they were caught and tried in Australia I would still campaign to have the scum hang, or be shot or maybe, with some sense of irony – simply be given an “O.D.”

Fester “why the hell are Australian authorities putting Australian citizens at their mercy.”

I do not think “Australian Authorities” put anyone at the Indonesians “mercy”.

The Bali 9 Drug peddlers were participating in their own private endeavour and the Indonesian justice system has merely issued the punishment they so richly deserve.

Everytime l hear converstaion about or take the bait on these bali bombing/bali-9/corby episodes l almost always come away with the sense that the most vehement voices tend to be loosley defined as 'anit-indonesia' voices. These folks have a very useful conversational pretext for slagging off the Indonesians. Oddly enuff, some of the most emotional diatribes from people who get 'offended' and dole out the 'how dare you' mock shock come from individuals that, in my own personal experience, have clearly demonstarted histories of anti-asian bias. Its hillarious too, one of these guys l know 'loves asian food' but hates the people (his grand daddy was killed by Japanese in WW2). Sheesh, these types of people, say juxtaposed to serbia and croatia, would be razing the neighbours home their mother's uncle's friend killed his father's aunty's mailman.

Of course, guys like him dole out their veiled hate almost as vociferously as they deny their hate.

"If you cant do the time, then dont do the crime."

As far as I know, Australian citizens cannot be legally executed in Australia. As far as I know, the Australian Government does not approve of the legal execution of citizens of any country, with the exception of John Howard's unfortunate approval of the legal execution of the Bali terrorists. (Unsurprisingly, the learned professor makes no speculation on how these comments may have prejudiced the treatment of the Bali 9.) So it strikes me as inconsistent and disturbs me greatly that a public Australian entity can convey information to a country which could lead to the legal execution of an Australian citizen or citizens. And it is totally farcical that the Executive of Government then appeals for clemency based on what it considers to be a basic human right, that of the right to life. What the AFP did is no less unconscionable than Sir Henry Bolte's role in the legal execution of Robert Ryan. The fact that the AFP have acted legally suggests to me that the law is currently deficient in this respect.

"McConvill, Rouge, Leigh and others should learn one thing - when and if they are ever in serious trouble it will be the dreaded civil libertarians who will help them out and defend them and hold their hands."

I don't know if this is true or not but I suspect that many Australians would suspect that it would only be the case if any of the above had chosen to break the law and ignore the civil liberties of somebody else.

Maybe it's selective reporting but the civil liberty organisations don't have a very high profile in being there to defend and hold the hands of the victims of wrongdoing. They don't have a very high profile in helping those who have not done harm and yet fall victim to an unjust family law system.

There is a legitimate role for civil liberty organisations to fight to ensure those suspected of crimes are treated fairly. This should be part of a role protecting the civil liberties of the innocent rather than ensuring that the guilt don't have to face the consequences of their choices.

Likewise those same organisations should if they want credibility be seen to to be doing something about the liberties of the innocent when those liberties are breached by the government.
- Legal costs for those acquited of charges against them.
- Those who have substantial portions of their lives destroyed through the excesses and biases of the family law system.

R0bert