2 Comments

1. b

   November 6, 2011

   Your thoughts on government efforts about protecting its people would be greatly appreciated for my uni study. :) http://edu.surveygizmo.com/s3/703514/Is-the-pursuit-of-public-safety-and-national-security-unnecessarily-compromising-people-s-rights-to-privacy

   Thanks ;)

2. whyisitso

   November 6, 2011

   Retrospective criminal law is an abomination, as is retrospective law in any field whether financal (eg taxation) or civil. Its enactment by any so-called democratic government is simply totalitarian. It's not good enough to say that a particular government has the "power" to enact such legislation. It ought not have that power.

   Ken calls me a crusty old Tory, but this is a principle that all right-wingers should hold dear. If they do not, then as far as I am concerned they are lefties.

   I think John Howard blotted his copybook badly when he retrospectively criminalised perps of the bottom-of-the-harbour schemes all those years ago. Of course Homer will say that "you would say that wouldn't you", but that's because he is not intelligent enough to distinguish between his justified gross distaste for such schemes and the abandonment of the central principle of "the rule of law".