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Watch out - as Ruddock & Co follow Tony Blair

You can almost take a bet on it that either John Howard or Phillip Ruddock will make a speech in identical or similar vein to this:

"My view, as I have been saying for some time now, is that we cannot reform [the criminal justice system] unless we change radically the political even philosophical context in which it operates. I believe we require a profound re-balancing of the civil liberties debate. The issue is not whether we care about civil liberties but what that means in the early 21st Century. The demands of the majority law-abiding community have to take precedence. We should not have to fight continual legal battles to deport people who are committing serious crimes or inciting extremism. We cannot allow violent or drug-abusing offenders to be put back out on the street again without proper supervision and if necessary restraint. We cannot have bail requirements, probation orders and community sentences flouted without proper penalty. None of these things are new. What is new is, I hope, an emerging national and political consensus to tackle them. This should be a central part of the debate ahead."

Who said this? None other than Tony Blair - who seemed to be singing from a different hymn book when addressing the Federal Parliament recently:

"The struggle in our world today therefore is not just about security, it is a struggle about values and about modernity - whether to be at ease with it or in rage at it.To win, we have to win the battle of values, as much as arms. We have to show these are not western still less American or Anglo-Saxon values but values in the common ownership of humanity, universal values that should be the right of the global citizen."

Check out Jurist, Legal News & Research here for the context in which Blair made his statement.

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