from PoliticOz …..

On Sunday, Tony Abbott announced that no longer would Australia allow itself to be played "for mugs" by "evil people" determined to "exploit our freedom". The speech was vague and evidence-free, but he was talking about extremist Islamists who "exploit" either Australia's fair go at the border or its bail laws in our courts. No longer would these people be given "the benefit of the doubt", Abbott declared.

Just what does "benefit of the doubt" mean if not "innocent until proven guilty"? This week it emerged that when he was immigration minister, Scott Morrison refused to allow a 44-year-old Egyptian man, Sayed Abdellatif, to apply for a protection visa, despite his own department finding that there was a prima facie case 10 months earlier. Abdellatif remains separated from the rest of his family inside Sydney's Villawood detention centre, and faces the prospect of life in detention. From opposition, Abbott publicly described Abdellatif as a "terrorist" on the basis of a discredited Egyptian show trial that relied on confessional evidence adduced through torture and a red notice on his Interpol file for which no evidence appears to exist. Abdellatif's case provides what must be almost a textbook case of prolonged persecution.

For nearly two decades now, Australia has been in the habit of depriving people seeking refuge from persecution of their liberty – one of the earliest-recognised rights in western jurisprudence – while their refugee claims are processed. Is this what giving "the benefit of the doubt" looks like? For over a fortnight the government has led a ferocious attack on Gillian Triggs in her capacity as head of the Australian Human Rights Commission for doing her job by asserting the rights of John Basikbasik, a Papua New Guinean man who has been detained ever since his criminal sentence for manslaughter expired seven years ago, and of children who have criminally assaulted while also deprived of their liberty in Australian "detention centres". A recent United Nations report notes the extraordinary attack on Triggs. 

The prospect of Australia's system of immigration and justice getting it wrong in cases such as Man Haron Monis, who took hostages in Sydney in December, is scary. But the prospect of a security state in which individuals are detained on the whim of the executive is even scarier. Either Australia believes in the rule of law, or it doesn't.