Mr McConville's comments are frightening to read from someone who has lectured in law.
This is not worthy of further discussion.

The Prime Minister has just confirmed that indeed there is a new threat facing Australian Society. James was just smelling the wind and getting in on the action to alert ordinary Australians. From our Prime Ministers lips today.

"I find it amazing civil libertarians run around and attack me, or (British Prime Minister) Tony Blair or attack the police,".

Move over the terrorists masquerading as asylum seekers (very remiss of ASIO to say that's untrue), the kiddie throwing refugees, Saddam with his weapons of mass destruction, the non-conforming Muslims, there is a new threat in town - the latte drinking Civil Libertarians.

Personally I can't see Julian Burnside 'running around' or savaging anyone. Seems to be more a gentle pained commentary going on from that quarter. Terry O'Gorman too, I wouldn't put down as a attack dog, but he is of Irish extraction and maybe can work up to a good bit of temper so I'll take our Prime Ministers word for it. I mean when has he ever told wobblies about people before?

Anyway the further, painting of the Civil Libertarians as ferals should be worth a giggle in the coming weeks.

But I did forget a peice of advice for Bill Keelty and it might be useful information for James as well if he ever finds himself in a tricky situation.

Say for instance in the future Bill might want to make an informed wearing his independent hat of Police Commissioner. Maybe he might say, 'well yes, Australia's involvement in Iraq has made us more of a target for terrorists'. If Bill then gets a phone call from a highly placed politican's office about the comment which he might see as pressure to retract, if things were looking difficult career wise say if he didn't want to retract or soften his comments - the people to call would be the Civil Libertarians. I'm sure they would take up his case.

In the meantime, I'll try to lose the image of Brian Walters lying in wait outside Kiribilli to inflict mortal wounds on the PM with a devestating legal argument and then finishing him off with the tasty bagel he had been saving for lunch (sacrifices in the public interest must be made) or worse that whippersnapper Cameron Murphy flooring the PM with a rational argument. Where will it end?

I am inclined to the view that the Federal Police should have allowed the mules of the Bali 9 to return to Australia and arrested both them and the recipients of their delivery here. The main crime of the Bali 9 was not against Indonesia, but against the intended destination of the drug shipment, Australia.

I agree with other posters including Col Rouge - the author has failed to support his hypothesis with any evidence that there is a link between the Papuan asylum seeker issue and the fate of the Bali 9. Instead, a long bow has been drawn to knock down a straw man, if I cam mix metaphors in that way.

What interests me is how history is going to regard our current period. I used to look back at McCarthyism and the Cold War and scratch my head, not because I have ever been pro-communist, but because the rhetoric and paranoia coming out (from the west and the Iron Curtain) were beyond absurd. The irony to me in all of this lies in the fact that as a society, these days, we're so bloody uptight about ourselves that people get all worked up just because one group or another dares to have a different opinion. Honestly, if the framework of our society is that fragile that it's going to be brought down by a bunch of so-called latte sipping civil libertarians, then we're already way beyond help. Provided our grand children aren't caught up in similar nonsense of their own, they're going to look back on us and laugh, not because there was or wasn't a threat or a problem, but because of the way we handled it so immaturely. There have been a lot of stupid time periods in history, and this is just going to be one more of them. The grand narrative of our time is the overwhelming sense of idiocy from people who should know better (especially law professors). It does my head in that despite living in an age of unprecedented information and learning, we're actually stumbling over the most entry level concepts we worked out several centuries ago. If the 17th and 18th centuries were known as the Age of Reason, I propose that the 20th and 21st be known as the Age of Buffoonery.

Which is preferable - an instant death by shooting, or a long term in an Indonesian gaol? The latter would be like a living death.