The federal government has created another secret database where people merely "suspected" of arson will be tagged and flagged, to be hounded throughout summer if as much as a match strikes in their suburb. CLA is concerned that 'mates' will put mates' names down as a prank, neighbours in dispute will add the name of someone they don't like to the database: the traditional right of "innocent until proven guilty" is being trashed by governments in Australia.

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The Ombudsman should not have had to resign: as many questions hang over the behaviour of Ministers and their minders as over that of Allan Asher. The Executive has effectively de-fanged the Ombudsman's office 'it is in the interests of the Australian people, whom that office represents, that parliament moves to 'rebuild confidence with a suite of genuine reforms', Robin Brown and Professor John Braithwaite say.

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To tell fibs in government, everyone needs a good memory...and to stick to the same tall tales. Here's an example of how the Attorney-General's Department and ASIO got their fishing lines crossed, and the Greens' Senator Penny Wright reeled them in hook, line and sinker during Estimates hearings in Canberra.

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How much is Australia’s policy on internet censorship, copyright enforcement, surveillance and terrorism driven by the USA? In Sweden, similar questions, have been partly answered by recently-released WikiLeaks cables, as explained in this article by Rick Falvinge, founder of the Pirate Party.

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The Attorney-General's criticism of WikiLeaks is classical double standards: apparently, it was OK for the government of the day to leak against whistleblower Andrew Wilkie, but anyone leaking against the then-or-now Australian Government commits a heinous crime. When governments hide behind purposeless secrecy, leaking is about the only way ordinary people get to exercise their right to know.

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CHOGM in Perth in October 2011 will create a new 'Commission for Good' to concentrate on human rights, governance, the rule of law and democracy across the 54 Commonwealth nations around the globe. The move is recommended by an eminent persons group which has spent the past year analysing how to try to boost the moral and ethical credentials of the Commonwealth, and give the largely symbolic body a semblance of international muscle.

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Is COAG, the Council Of Australian Governments, a legitimate cog in the wheel of the nation's federated system, or just an ultra-Constitutional marionette of the Kitchen Cabinet, playing States and Territories on strings? Two legal academics, Paul Kildea and Andrew Lynch, say COAG's situation needs resolving formally, sooner rather than later. "More worrying still is the diminished scope of parliamentary oversight and accountability to the people...," they say.

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A withering Ombudsman's report tabled in the NT Parliament is scathing about the recent failures of the Child Protection Agency and its master department to protect the Territory's vulnerable children. The report calls into question whether the NT public service is capable of managing its own child safeguards, or of competently delivering federal intervention programs. On the evidence of the report, the human rights of little children are much less than sacred in one-eighth of Australia.

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