What assurances is John Howard going to give that no more Australians will be detained or deported?

We have seen in recent years Australian citizens being detained in immigration detention, one was even deported. What assurances is John Howard going to give or better still what laws will he put in place to prevent this ever happening again. Out of the 200+ people who in just the last couple of years that have been detained most were either mentally ill, foreign looking or children. I think John Howard would agree that this has many in the community worried that they or their loved ones could disappear only to be found years later in an immigration detention centre. How is John Howard going put our minds at rest?

John Howard is not going to give any assurances about anything, and even if he did he would disregard them as soon as it suited him. He is a liar and a cheat. I will be dancing in the streets when the people of Australia finally wake up to this pathetic excuse of a Prime Minister and all his cronies and vote them all into oblivion. At the moment they are like rats caught in a barrel and the end is very near.

He and his associates have disgraced Australia and shamed us not only here but in the international arena with the way he has desecrated our legal system and changed the very nature of this country's core. Australia's reputation needs to be rebuilt regarding our treatment of asylum seekers and our handling of suspected terrorists as well.

And when will compensation be paid to those already detained?

I have no time for Howard and his little band of liars but frankly I don't think any government can guarantee that deportation of, or detention of some citizens will not happen again. There have been two cases. In one, the person detained was too batty to know who she was, in the deportation case she appeared to be too clueless. I don't know much about the second but I do know something about the first.

I live and work in Canberra and I know a couple of immigration department old hands, neither of whom are working there any more. But they can tell a few stories. Their files are chock-a-block with ratbags not only home grown but legal and illegal residents. Keeping track of them is humanly impossible.

I work in a completely different area and though I'm in the public service we mainly interface with professionals in private practice, they tend to screen out most of the idiots. There are plenty, according to the former president of the professional association. Some do get through and the amount of work they generate is just awesome as they have to be treated as if they knew what they were doing and had valid applications by Australian and overseas law. Most haven't got a clue and have to be told everything three times and then still manage to mess things up. I could go on but I won't.

As for long term detention of asylum seekers, until 2003 it was one of the major crimes of the Howard administration. It now pales beside the entry into Iraq which objectively is little different from the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939.