ID card next on the agenda
PHILIP Ruddock is treating the controversial national identity card as the “the next cab off the rank” for the Howard Government’s security agenda following the passage of its tough anti-terrorism laws.
I know there is a lot of opposition to an identity card but for the life of me I cannot imagine why. Unless you are a criminal or in Australia illegally what on earth is there to be afraid of. For example, I think I should be called upon to identify myself when I vote and can only imagine if someone doesn’t want to be identified at the polling booth then they have something to hide.
What’s the problem readers?
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It’s about time we got a high tech ID card. The card needs to be foolproof and unable to be
corrupted by the various ethnic gangs like they have done to our present drivers license and medicare
cards etc, and before these ID cards are issued they should need to have proof that they are genuine
Australia citizens and not illegals.
If a major effort is made to deport all the illegals in the Australia then the populations in Sydney
and Melbourne will be halved.
Insightful John. On what basis do you know that half of Melbourne and Sydney is full of illegals…. got a link or something to point me to this FACT ??
Insightful John (Dosan) John from Newcastle has made a generalization not unlike your I understand there are only two lawyers in Australia who consider the US trail process to be fair. on another thread. Consistency, John, some consistency.
Kev – Perhaps you might like to advise which lawyers in Australia support the trial of David Hicks in light of the fact that the Law Council of Australian which represents all lawyers in our great free ande democratic country placed this on its website on Dec 12.
http://www.lawcouncil.asn.au/read/2005/2419251933.html
or try their September 21 media release
http://www.lawcouncil.asn.au/read/2005/2417533081.html
Would love to get your views on what thhe Law Council has said Kev. Cheers
But the Parliment of Australia represents all Australians John. are you suggesting that it is not possible for a person to disagree with those who represent him?
Re the Law council, what you see is a simple demarkation dispute – they want a heap of Silks involved, reams of Solicitors and hundreds of Law Clerks, the money
would be fantastic, god forbid that the man receive justice when he can receive law.
The Law Council is nothing more than the Lawyers trade union, of course they want to drum up jobs for the boys.
Kev, you need just a little bit of scepticism towards the state. I really find it hard to believe that someone with the worldly knowledge that you must posssess from your years is so willing to give the government increasing control over the people in the name of more efficient law enforcement. So you’ve got nothing to hide? This reminds me of Harry Trumans statement “Wherever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship”. Kev, history has shown that if you give the government too much control having certain thoughts and beliefs can become an offence. Under the wrong government I wouldn’t want to have a reputation like you of being a bit of hard-core conservative / right wing death beast!! You’ll be the first against the wall when the revelation comes!
Seriously though, I think good law is law that doesn’t hinder those that are law abiding. Along those lines, I find it hard to justify an Australia card. It’s a big administrative, intrusive and costly burden to bear for the law abiding and as Plato said “Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.” I personally don’t have the same level of faith that John from Newcastle has in developing an uncorruptable card. Criminals will certainly find away around it. There are better ways of handling this problem.
Michael
There are better ways of handling this problem.
Like what?
I think identity is important in a modern society and currently in Australia ID is too loose. We already have huge computer systems, such as Medicard, that could be used as a base-(maybe)
I’m slightly uneasy about crims as if man can invent it crims can circumvent it but as time progresses it is getting more difficult.
Plato’s wisdom doesn’t mean we don’t try.
Plato’s wisdom means that burdening people with excessive law will achieve nothing in terms of security or crime prevention.
1. Properly legislate a citizens right to liberty, privacy, private property, a fair trail etc into law. Not the poorly written volumes of conflicting laws we have now. We need a small amount of well written law, not endless volumes of poorly written law.
2. Properly acknowledge the responsibilities of free citizens, and provide for severe penalties for those that break the law or would participate in terrorism. Get over the ‘try to understand their point of view and be more tolerant’ and the ‘let’s rehabilitate the poor darlings to re-enter society’ and the ‘they don’t understand our ways’. Proper penalties to fit the crimes. Execution is probably not unreasonable in some cases, though tough jail sentences would do.
3. Increase the strength and resources of our intelligence and security agencies. This offers the best value for your security dollar, and as they must operate within the laws of point 1, they don’t interfere with ability of law of abiding free people to go about their lives. Which is kind of the point of it all really, isn’t it?
4. Prosecute the guilty without mercy!
The expense and social overheads of something like an identity card will be massive over the longer term, and once we’ve got, it’s never going away. Intelligence agencies operate in the background and their size and resources can be varied over time as needed. My solution offers the most security for the minimum cost, and will have the additional benefits of remaining a free country (increased happiness and prosperity). Your solution offers less security for substantially more cost and has the added burden of being a stepping stone to a police state.
No good citing Plato, Michael Sutcliffe, his `philosophy’ is totalitarian. I put phil. in the inverst becuase, it is pseudo-philosophy. It is worthwhile noting, Plato repented of it in his old age, but, too late, he had done the damage by his influence.
Psuedo-phil – it is pseudo-ratinonal; it reacts against, as did his exmplar, Socrates, against the real progressin science and philosophy made before they and other mystics emerged. Plato’s phil. is, in short, a return to a primitive barbaric set of beliefs, but presented in quasi-rational form.
On Law, the notion of law is in fact the same as the European notion of law generated by such as Fi,mer Hobvbes, Comtes,in sum, it is a specioous justification of absolutism which, effectively reduces
everyone to chattels of politicians and bureaucrats. `Govt.’ is a French word, not surprising.
The contrary is common law, which is rooted in the basolute primacy of private property – and that includes the proprty which is the individual, thus extended out to freedom of contracts and so forth.
Yes, there are `conflicting laws’, but, those `laws’ are `govt’ `regulations’ which, externalises internal rules of administration of the administrative apparatus of cabinet and Parlaiment to capricious intervention, prescription and control of actions, in blunt,blatant contravention of the rule of common law.
That is the `conflict’ so much in evidence today.
The fiction black letter, specifying, proscriptive and prescriptive `law’ is `real, true, sound
law’ as against the `muddiness’ of common law is not only a fiction, it is a lie used to
justify the imposition of the totalitarian conception.
The totalitarian conception of law does no work at all, as the west-european countries so well demonstrate , for it is those countries in which the central planners have adopted and developed and `perfected’
( as it were) the totalitarian notions of law and govt., back to the prior reality of ,
absolutism, from Monarchy to,as of France, Republicanism. Those countries are collapsing economically, yes they are, they are heading for one hell of a depression, and as for general civility, well, their is much now in those cooutnries which are wrose than merely unpleasant.
It is pointed,the British socialist politicians, inlcuding of the Tory Party are hard at it, have been for rathe r a long time, tearing down common law for the rule of tyrants, and it shows in very many and
appalling ways. Law abiding, decent Brits are watching their freedoms stripped away by the
central planners,while savages run riot, reflected in, policing in Britain is a complete joke,
much like the `policing’ in Sydney Priest condemned in his Quadrant but worse than what sound
men such as Priest had to endure at the dictate of the N.S.W. polticians and bureaucrats.
In Britain, sound men who do their jobs in upholding the rule of the all but overthrown
common law are themselves tried as criminals, having committed some crime according to some proscriptive regulation, some black letter `law’.
At the stroke of a pen, bureaucrats and politicians turn so many decent men and women into criminals and strip them of their freedoms and their property, even it is just each himself and herself. That is
exactly what the Bracks’ Cabinet is doing explicitly, day by day, blatantly, doing in Victoria, and has been doing since their first year of their first Cabinet. It is no longer entrepeneurs who ae, in effect, criminals uinder ther Stalinist oh so perfect black letter laws of the Bracks Govt. The many `Acts’ now ensnare
many others. It is no accident thta this year the Bracks Cabinet will ram through a `Bill of Rights’ through Plarliament:
All judges have to arrive, under the terms of the Bill, at decisions which conform to the `rights’ set out in the Bill. That is the final overthrow of Common Law, of property rights, of liberty (but real, savage criminals will ,as they do now continue to run riot.)
It is no accident the law schools no longer ground undegraduates in common law, many, including increasing numbers of the judiciary are now committed to the totalitarian notion of law which is nothing but the rul of dictators.
It is shocking the sheer number of graudates not only ignorarnt of the common law but, no less
than politicans and bureaucrats sneer at.They walk out beleiving it is some proimitive anachronism which should be done away. They, in fact, use the same specious claims to justify the overthrow of common law the central planners of Europe did, and, in Germany, such specious garbage was as central to the rise of the Nazi regime as other psuedo-philosophical and pseudo -scientific notions.
Funny isn’t it, as in Gemrany 1870’s-1930’s, so too in Oz today, we see the profliferation of
pseudo-science and pseudo-philosophy in Oz, much due to each `tier of govt’, and with that, the rise of charlatanism purveyed as science. And the same sneering at things which are the grounds of freedom.
Bye the bye, I oppose the ID card, for exactly the above reasons: it has nothing to do with
stopping violent crimnals and terrorists, that is a specious argument mountet by politicians.
Noting , even in the Liberal Party senior figures have argued for ID cards since certainly the 1970’s. Keating in fact did it , he converted the ATO number into an ID card, a crime committed by the National Socialist trio of Hawke Cabinet.
Stopping terrorists is one thing, using it as an excuse to overthrowing common law and liberty is another.