Commissioner beleaguered

In The Weekend Australian Hedley Thomas and Cameron Stewart report that AFP Commissioner Keelty's support has vanished in the wake of his contention that the media should be gagged or at least severely restricted in its ability to report trials of terrorism suspects..

Ken McKinnon , Chairman of the Australian Press Council, puts the case against the Commissioner's views trenchantly:

Our freedoms must not be destroyed in the name of defending freedom. We have open courts so that citizens may be assured by attendance or media reports that their freedoms are being preserved. Only in the most extreme circumstances should courts be closed. The public interest is the standard by which matters investigated and reported by the media should be judged. Delaying the reporting of terrorism trials as a matter of course would be entirely against the public interest.

.....

Characteristically people in authority, ministers and commissioners alike, control sensitive information. They release what they think the public ought to be told, usually partially, from a particular point of view, and drip-fed at that. Or information is leaked to selected sympathetic journalists.

The best newspapers do not accept this as enough. Editors and journalists rightly believe it is their duty in an open society to discover the whole truth and report that to the public. That entails exploration of all sources of information, official and unofficial.

I, too, am concerned with some opinion pieces in newspapers, especially when they are at odds with what I believe. That does not mean they should not be published. And I can understand that the commissioner's onerous responsibilities are made more stressful by that kind of press analysis and criticism. But they are the necessary rules of play for commissioners and other officials. That is what democracy properly demands. Regrettably, the council has been put on notice that it is going to have to be alert to preserve those rules.

Well said. Let's hope the media continue to practice what Mr McKinnon preaches.

Varieties of Australian justice #2

Two developments today: a federal magistrate has, as widely expected placed David Hicks under a control order, and the full bench of the Federal Court has allowed Dr Haneef's appeal against the cancellation of his visa by former Immigration Minister Andrews.

The Hicks case was based upon evidence from his pre-Guantanamo Bay detention, which raises the question of whether anyone accused of terrorism, or convicted by however shonky a tribunal, can ever clear their name.

I find it hard to believe that the conditions, eg reporting to the police three times a week, only having one email account (!) and a midnight to dawn curfew will remain in force for too long (perhaps for the one year duration of this control order). If they do then I'd expect to see more recent evidence tendered showing that the leopard of 2000 has not changed his spots despite the time he spent in detention.

Varieties of Australian justice

#1 Queensland District Court (Cairns)

• The Australian editorials 10 December 2007 and 11 December 2007

• Sentencing submissions(edited).

• Judge Bradley's views on sentencing (January 2007).

• Comment by anthropologist Peter Sutton on Unleashed (ABC online) 11 December 2007

#2 Downing Centre Local Court (Sydney)

The life and travails of former Federal Court judge Marcus Einfeld aged 69 as reported by

• The Daily Telegraph

• The Age

• The Australian

• The ABC

#3 Federal Magistrates Court (Adelaide: expected soon)

The Advertiser/ Adelaide Now and The Age report that federal Attorney-General McLelland, at the request of the Australian Federal Police, will seek a control order on David Hicks , who will be released from Yatala prison later this month.

From The Age:

"David is in a mentally fragile state and unlikely to have the strength to challenge an application for a control order," [Hicks's solicitor David McLeod] told AAP today.

Mr McLeod said the public, most of whom supported the return of Hicks to Australia after more than five years in the US military's Guantanamo Bay jail, would be confused by the government's move.

"There will be a large number of the Australian people who voted for this government because of the Hicks case and they will be puzzled at why the attorney has made a decision such as this," he said."David Hicks has been treated as a political prisoner here in Australia and the United States for the last six years.The attorney had a chance to close the chapter on David Hicks but instead he has chosen the pathway of the previous government in its treatment of this man by continuing to demonise him."

Asked about the issue in October, while still opposition leader, Kevin Rudd said a Labor government would take advice from the AFP about any control order.

#4 Victorian Court of Appeal (Melbourne)

Mr Geoff Clark has, as The Age reports, lost his appeal against a damages award.

# 5 Central Australia

Over the last three weeks ABC RN's The Law Report has broadcast three programs about Central Australia: the intervention , regulating grog and , broadcast today, bush courts.

At the moment you can still listen to all three programs and read transcripts of the first two (I expect today's transcript will follow shortly).