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December 6, 2005
In commenting on the anti-terrorism legislation that has been passed by the Senate Senator John Faulkner said:
It is chillingly ironic that the antiterrorism bill, with its potential to infringe the freedom of speech of many in our community, is itself the subject of a gag. It was legislation that ought to have been exposed to proper scrutiny.
This legislation have control orders that are designed to make it possible for people to be put under house arrest or in actual detention when no charge has been proved or even brought against them.
This is interesting. An editorial in the Canberra Times discussing a a decsion by a Chief Justice Terry Higgins of the ACT Supreme Court about a domestic violence dispute between two schoolboys.
The fundings in the case address the power of the courts to interfere when governments were interfering with individual liberties, and about their rights to a "competent, independent and impartial tribunal" for a "fair and public hearing" before final coercive orders can be made. The editorial states that Chief Justice Higgins:
"...found a constitutional framework for it in the doctrine of the separation of powers - a doctrine which may not so much bind state supreme courts, but certainly does territory and federal courts. That doctrine poses serious obstacles. Although the Commonwealth's security legislation gives some supervisory power to judges, federal magistrates and retired judges "in their personal capacity", they are clearly not exercising Commonwealth judicial power. They are exercising executive power, and, as the High Court showed in the 1951 Communist Party case, there are walls over which the executive - even in the form of pseudo-judges - cannot jump."
The editorial states that this:
"...broad line of the reasoning is conservative, not radical (as was the High Court's rejection of the Communist Party legislation) and what the judge is saying reflects much of the criticism of the legislation which has come from legal circles since the Government floated its anti-terrorism proposals. "
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Them Labor folk would have so much more credibility had they not also voted to pass the Anti-Terrorism law. It's a shame - in 7 days of IR, sedition, welfare to "work" etc, the most damage has come from Costello's own goal.