Readers beware - one of the authors of this article (George Williams) is actively seeking pre-selection for the ALP but has a questionable tendency to leave that information out of his putatively independent op-ed pieces.

For that reason his comments should not be understood as being the product of purely dispassionate academic analysis.

Don’t be alarmed at bizarre law-making George. We have witnessed a piece of retrospective legislation introduced by one of our former prime ministers which aimed at preventing his treasurer from being charged with fraud. In another case the law dealing with theft was ignored when a West Australia premier was given a gentle reminder to repay her travel allowance because she hadn’t made the proposed o/seas trip. I don’t recall the ALRC getting excited about that type of corrupt behaviour by our politicians.

As for the two people you mention at the beginning of your article we can rationalize their situations. If our population is 20 million, the detention of two people means that 19,999,998 people are enjoying freedom. Juxtapose that startling stat with that of people with mental illness who are over represented in our prisons. At one period in time the Community Court Liaison Service dealt with people with a mental illness who were awaiting criminal charges.

“During the first 18 months that the Service was operating, more than 2,345 people were referred, equivalent to 11% of court holding cells throughput. Of these, 67% were found to be mentally ill, and 1,383 people were diverted to community-based mental health services rather than custodial prison settings.

“For every one person diverted to inpatient mental health facilities, three were diverted to community mental health facilities. Those remaining were linked up with mental health services in remand correctional centres,” said Professor Greenberg.

More disturbing than the detention of people who are fans of a 7th century sex offender is the detention of people who have been denied a hospital bed in a mental health facility with prison serving as a substitute. Mental illness is not a crime – except in Australia.

So there’s a ‘position vacant’ for you George: a mental health advocate. How ‘bout you stop banging on about issues like the detention of terrorists and a bill of rights and turn your attention to the issue of the mentally ill.

Right on Sage!

George, you spend too much time on the big picture, window dressing stuff. There are plenty of things you could be doing with your power and position in society to advance the practical human rights of people in Australia or even in your own neighbourhood. It's great to be involved in the big, iconic constitutional cases but the realisation of human rights is often a case of proper resourcing of good policies that are known to all or most of the participants.

Sage's reference to David Greenberg's work is spot on. Justice Health does some excellent work making sure that people with mental illness do not have their human rights scarificed in the courts but it needs more resourcing.

Could you lobby your friends in the ALP to see this happens? You could make quite a difference if you put your mind to it. It would be a lot more useful to a lot more people if you could get your hands a bit dirty with some of these chronic, unresolved human rights issues ...

In general in Australia you have to keep talking about an issue for very long time before anything is done about it. It has been taking even longer with this stupid, stubborn Federal Government. I anticipate that there will be a long campaign about the sedition sections of the criminal code before enough people see what is wrong with them, and the pressure is great enough to get them repealed.

There are any number of other things that people could do with their time. It is a matter of priorities, and distribution of labour. There are other civil rights activists supporting the cause of mentally ill people.

All these laws, some of which are neccessary. We can not have people running about blowing people up. Even if we suspect that the laws are a part of a deliberatly contrived climate of fear.
However it is pointless to continue making more and more laws that restrict our freedoms and right to privacy without treating the cause. If one uses the methods of the enemy then one is the enemy. There is an urgent need to decrease the number of alienated disenfranched angry young men in the world. One has only to look at the transfer of funds from the third to first worlds to see the cause. The growing gap between the haves and the have nots. With modern communication the opulance of the West can not be concealed. This opulance is based, in part colonial policy of rape and pillage which continues to this day. It is true that many of these young men are from Islamic countries where sexual behaviour has protected them from AIDS. If the young men of Africa where not desimated by AIDS we would see act in the same way. Wanton and disparate, but we can not we have no part to pay in this.