A former High Court justice would swap 10 judges for one honest homosexual like singer Ricky Martin, a conference in Brisbane has been told.

Michael Kirby, former Justice of the High Court of Australia, opened and closed his keynote address at the second International Queer Studies Conference on Thursday by playing Martin's song Livin' La Vida Loca.

Justice Kirby, who revealed he was gay while serving on the High Court, praised the singer for coming out about his homosexuality.

Piers Akerman has been testing his vast capacity for self-parody. His piece in Monday's Telegraph on asylum seekers reads as if written on a bet or a dare. The frenzy whipped up over asylum seekers after the Tampa's arrival was a tragedy for this country. Akerman seems determined to repeat it as farce.

Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's bright red swimming trunks and cap will be put on display in an Alice Springs pub.

Mr Abbott made the outfit famous when he wore them in a race.

Avril Vaughn owns a pub in Alice Springs and bought the ensemble in an online charity auction for $3,400.

The money raised from the sale has gone to the Spastic Centre.

"Alice is full of fun-loving people and they I'm sure will see it for the bit of fun that it is, and a donation to a great cause," she said.

Today, in New York City, the US is torturing a Muslim detainee with no prior criminal record who has not even gone to trial.

Mr Abbott was generous in his praise of Mr Turnbull.

"In just two terms, Malcolm has scaled the commanding heights of Australian politics,’’ a statement from Mr Abbott read.

‘‘Malcolm has brought to all his public roles extraordinary determination, considerable personal charisma and great intellectual consistency.

"Personally, I have enjoyed his friendship since university days and look forward to doing so for many years to come."

It is hard to summarize Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes because there really isn't anything that can be cut from it. Every page is packed with stories of incredible sacrifice at low levels and incredible malfeasance at the highest level (low-level people thinking of sacrificing yourselves, take note).

There they go again, our very own Keystone Kops. The Australian Federal Police have bungled yet another ''anti-terrorist'' investigation. The fiasco finally came crashing down around their ears in the Victorian Supreme Court on Wednesday. To cut a long story very short, three prominent members of the Australian ethnic Tamil community - all Australian citizens - had been charged with acts of terrorism in support of the Tamil Tiger rebellion in Sri Lanka.

After eight years imprisonment without charge or trial, five former Guantánamo prisoners are beginning new lives this week - two in Switzerland and three in Georgia.

Their stories reveal, yet again, how Republican lawmakers and media pundits in the US, who have, in recent months, renewed their fear-filled attacks on those still held, are guilty of hyperbolic and unprincipled outbursts and, in addition, how these critics' attacks are damaging to the prospects of cleared men, seized by mistake, finding new homes in countries that, unlike the US, are prepared to offer them a chance to rebuild their shattered lives on a humanitarian basis.

Religious leaders have used their Good Friday sermons to launch an attack on what they call a recent surge in atheism.

Thousands of Christians crowded into churches this morning to mark the solemn Christian festival of Good Friday.

Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen told his congregation atheism is not the rational philosophy that it claims to be.

Dr Jensen told the congregation that atheism is as much of a religion as Christianity.

Mr Abbott blamed the Labor Party for the focus on his persona rather than policies.

"What we are seeing is an orchestrated campaign from the Labor Party to try to play the man and not the ball," he said.

"We saw a classic case of this on the weekend, you had the prime minister tweeting best wishes to me as I was involved in a major community event while you had his ministers out there, in what was plainly an orhcestrated way, suggesting that there was something wrong with a senior politician competing in a triathlon."

The World Health Organisation is to set up an independent panel to investigate charges that it exaggerated the impact of the H1N1 swine flu pandemic and is unduly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry.

Without public debate and without congressional hearings, a segment of the Pentagon and fellow travellers have embraced a doctrine known as the Long War, which projects an "arc of instability" caused by insurgent groups from Europe to South Asia that will last between 50 and 80 years. According to one of its architects, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are just "small wars in the midst of a big one."

By JOHN M. BRODER