The Australian Government’s efforts to deal with the prospects of terrorism amount to an extremely difficult balancing act. It is evolving all the time. I don’t think we should be too critical of efforts to date.

We can only judge so much on the effectiveness of these measures from the high-profile Haneef case, with its unique set of circumstances, which has tested new laws for the first time.

I don’t like Ruddock’s suggestion that suspects should not even be able to apply for bail. But I also don’t think that we should read too much into it. Many people over-extrapolate any mooted hardening of policy.

I disagree that this could lead to a situation where “all the Government would need to do to take someone out of circulation for months would be to accuse them” (Sylvia) or “The powers that Ruddock is seeking are so broad that they could be used to imprison at will almost any individual that this government feels threatened by” (Daggett).

We could look at practically every law in the country and envisage a progressive hardening of policy as ending up in unfair situations that impinge on basic human rights. But it doesn’t happen…or extremely rarely.

We should all have a little bit more faith in our government and in the checks and balances provided by the courts, all sorts of social commentators and general public.

60,000 Americans kill each other with a gun annually, less than this number are killed by "terrorists".
American air power in Iraq and Afganastan is killing large numbers of innocent people, they do night raids which are not reported in the Australian media.
"Terrorism" is a Western political word, which is a weasel word, so effective as a one word, short byte propaganda instrument, just as "WMD".
Terror happens on our roads daily resulting in death and injury.
The Australian language is changing all of the time, and the inclusion of American business and political language has been installed as part of normal Australian language, over generations. Our media and ambitious politicians have successfully used a weasel word, "terrorism" to create fear in an unsuspecting electorate.
The biggest threat of terror to the world as we know it, is a Bush America, with it,s arsenal of nuclear weapons. Bush has already threatened to use these WMD against one of their enemies.
The greatest terror in history was America's atomic bomb attack on Japan, lest we forget.

Read the letters to the editor recently? I am not sure what we are all worrying about. A lot of good citizens out there keep telling us that Dr Haneef is innocent and terrorism is not a threat to Australia. Gee, all we have to do is leave Iraq and they will leave us alone. Human rights (of terrorists and those who associate with terrrorists) are everything...provided of course the terrorists are not the Australian government or anyone associated with them. They are the bad guys who can never do anything right.
Gee, why aren't these people in government? Gee, if they know so much about it all why don't they tell the government?
It is easy to write letters and criticise but where's the evidence?
Ever talked to an officer who does border control in the north and asked him about the people who try to come here? He stood there one day and took a mouthful of abuse from a government detractor and then just said quietly, "Have you seen what I have seen and heard what I have heard first hand?"

You are right Communicat, there are just too mny people who are
unbalanced in their critisism of government.
There are plenty of real opertunities to critisise government without
making up conspirosy theories.

I am afraid that on here there are just too many writers who rave on
and who should really take a Bex and have a nice lie down.

If the government really goes too far in writing legislation or in the
application of legislation it will be corrected by a later government.
The parties have never been reluctant to show up their oponents.

You have a choice, democracy or theorocracy.
The risk is someone elses theorocracy.

Apologies for my melodramatic post which quoted Niemoller earlier. It was all very true, and Niemoller was an exemplary and courageous individual, but, perhaps it was somewhat tangential to the topic at hand.

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It seems to me that the apologists for the government's treatment of Mohamed Haneef are not paying any regard to facts and logic put forward by Sylvia, myself and others. As an example, I gave a number of clear incontrovertible examples of reprehensible, dishonest and anti-democratic behaviour of the Howard Government, and yet Ludwig wrote (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=830#14327):

"We should all have a little bit more faith in our government ..."

Ludwig continued:

"... and in the checks and balances provided by the courts, all sorts of social commentators and general public."

If these 'checks and balances' exist, then how is it that the Howard Government was able to get away with implementing laws which have changed the very fabric of our society, namely 'Work Choices' which were opposed by the majority of the population and are still opposed by the majority of the population? Why is it that they were able to rush through the Telstra Privatisation legislation using the votes of Senators who had explicitly promised their electorate to oppose the legislation when opinion polls showed that 70% of the Australian public opposed privatisation?

Ludwig tries to imply that the Government can be trusted not to violate our human rights, yet hundreds of thousands of workers have effectively no rights thanks to his removal of protections against unfair dismissal. If you don't have that right the all other nominal rights, such as the right to insist on a safe workplace are meaningless. Unionists are regularly hauled before the courts and threatened with fines of tens of thousands of dollars simply for holding stop-work meetings. This was once considered a basic human right as enshrined by the International Labor Organisation conventions.

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I notice Communicat tried to conflate this issue an unrelated issue, namely 'border control' with this (see http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=830#14332). ...(tobecontinued)

(continuedfromabove) ... In fact, to go 'off topic' as well as to become politically incorrect, the Howard Government has, itself, in fact, become the greatest threat to 'border control'. Has anyone noticed that immigration levels have shot up from well under 100,000 to an unofficial, yet nevertheless real and stratospheric 300,000 per annum? (See Ross Gittins in the Sydney Morning Herald at http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/backscratching-at-a-national-level/2007/06/12/1181414298095.html)

This is in spite of it being widely acknowledged that one reason Howard was elected was precisely because the public were sick of Labor's high immigration policies. Howard has done this to please land speculators, property developers and others who profit from the destruction of our environment and loss of quality of life.

Howard's secret ramping up of immigration levels, in spite of all of the humbug over the Tampa crisis, is another reason why this Government can't be trusted any further than it can be kicked and certainly cannot be entrusted with police state powers.

Buzz wrote (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=830#14333):

"If the government really goes too far in writing legislation or in the application of legislation it will be corrected by a later government. The parties have never been reluctant to show up their opponents."

In fact, this is not true. Over recent decades the Labor Party has been notoriously timid in its resolve to repeal retrogressive legislation of previous Liberal administrations. Remember Beazley being "so opposed to the GST that he was prepared to implement it upon wining Government"? Remember the Hawke Labor Government's refusal to repeal Section 45D of the Trade practices Act implement by Howard. Because of this legislation, tugboat operators could have been prosecuted if the had refused to work with the the mercenary strikebreakers during the 1998 waterfront dispute.

I would therefore suggest that one would be extremely foolish to simple pin one's hopes on a future Labor Government repealing these police-state laws (and still I do hope that, in spite of this, Howard is booted out as he richly deserves to be later this year).

(Thanks chainsmoker and Glendabeth for your supportive comments. I hope we're still friends.)