cam: Ruddock appears to be all round the place: defending the sedition laws. He asks, \"Why the fuss?\" I think the simple answer is, many do not trust the government to make these decisions.

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cam: Political Expediency:

The last time the sedition clauses were used ;

But any suggestion that the 1948-1949 prosecutions were a genuine response to a threat is risible. The Chifley government prosecuted the communists because of an imminent election, and the damaging anti-communist campaign led by Robert Menzies, a campaign buttressed by ruthless pressure exerted on the government by the American and British governments. The government was desperate to prove that it was not \"soft on communism\".

They will be used for political and partisan purposes, to defend the incumbents in the court of law and public opinion. This is why government cannot be trusted to make, or oversee these laws.

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avocadia: The supporters, though:

The supporters of the Sedition Laws, and there are a few, are somewhat interesting. Not a novel kind of interesting, because for most of them it has been long noted that they are fair-weather friends of the notion of small government. They are generally - and that should be a neon sign telling you to take the rest of this post with a grain of salt - the ones who also find the Victorian Racial and Religious Intolerance act repugnant on grounds of freedom of speech ¹ . You can\'t find that law repugnant for its real - if not necessarily exercised - ability to stifle free speech and then waftily wave off suggestions that the sedition parts of the anti-terror legislation have the exact same qualities.

What am I saying here? Probably that the spectre of terror has become the ultimate polarising issue, but you can\'t define the world in terms of binary beliefs. When you do so, you are stifling opinion and dissent already. When Piers or Tim or Andrew say that Australian terror suspects should be locked up without trial for years on end, and Margo says that they should be bought back to Australia for trial, it shouldn\'t be held that Margo is soft on terror and a supporter of the Iraqi insurgency. A mature society should be able to see that Margot is not the Black to the others\' White. The same holds in the other direction, of course. Terrorism readily allows debate to base as binary - support this belief, no matter how reactionary and/or draconian, or else you support the terrorists. I am reminded of the story of the vicar in the UK who reportedly justified cutting down a tree in the church grounds because "a pedophile might hide behind it."

To get back on course, the Sedition laws are the ultimate litmus test in whether a commentator really believes in freedom of speech - or limiting the shadow of government over the people or whatever - or if they are just partisan hacks. Because you simply cannot hold that government can have a chilling effect on speech and ignore the potential chilling effect on political speech that the anti-sedition laws represent.

1. I\'ll be kind and pretend that I don\'t think many are against the Act because they are reactionary people who equate it to political correctness. Or that at heart some of the opponents of the Act really are bigots masquerading as anti-PC activists. Even reactionaries can be right. Or should I say correct?

cam: The vicar story: I completely believe it, we lost a fenceline of trees and bushes near us - even after we challenged in the town planning meeting - because a) one of the appointed officials thought they were junk trees (ie natural) and b) because there is a school nearby and the coppers wanted a tree line that had no branches under six foot above the ground so they could see the children.

So they laid waste to an established fence and tree line. Bye bye town edge.

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