David Hicks will finally be able to get on with his life. The AFP has stated that there will be no new control order sought when the current one expires on December. Finally, Hicks’ abuse at the hands of two legal systems appears to be over. Here’s hoping that he can make a go of it.
Meanwhile, the Clarke Inquiry’s report has been handed over to the government. Hopefully an unclassified version will be publicly released in the near future. The upshot is likely to be that Mick Keelty’s time as AFP head will end; perhaps other senior AFP officers may follow him.
The bigger question is whether some of the more outrageous bits of legal machinery that made Haneef’s treatment possible will end. Frankly, I doubt it. The one example where Labor has acted on a perversion of justice - mandatory detention - they were at pains to pretend that they weren’t doing so. I think a similar thing will happen here. At best, a new AFP head will be appointed, new guidelines will be written so that the more outrageous “anti-terrorist” powers are no longer used, and maybe they’ll quietly get squashed as part of a broader review in a decade’s time. Maybe the sedition laws might go, but with this government’s commitment to censoring the interwebs demonstrating a pretty casual attitude to free speech, maybe not.

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