RoLIA CEO, Kate Burns, wrote in the Australian today about the Queensland Government’s anti-bikie legislation and the worrying trend in criminal law to sacrifice fundamental rule of law principles in the name of “political toughness”.

From a rule-of-law standpoint there seems to be a lot of bluster by governments portraying themselves as crime fighters, frustrated by occasional n’er-do-wells and their lawyers complaining to the High Court that underlying common law rights have been wrongly denied them.

But behind the scenes, vulnerable people, who don’t have the resources to challenge, are paying the price for the executive’s increasingly unchecked powers.

See also RoLIA’s recent mash-up of good reads on mandatory sentencing across Australia, Dr Binoy Kampmark’s blog from last year about the temptations of demagoguery in Queensland, and Kate’s piece on the changes to the right to silence in NSW.