Mate, You Are Uzzy!

If you want to see an example of extreme wogginess and why the word “wog” is used in the derogatory context it often is, look no further than this clip of Usman Ahmed (Uzzy) fighting Ashley Sexton in Jan 2010.

It’s 3.36 of non-stop, derisive laughter, unless you’re a wog.

First comes Uzzy’s ring entrance, dancing around and beating his chest to some hip-hop like a cross between a monkey and a peacock. This goes on for about 1.30.

Next, he ponces about in the ring by himself until Ashley Sexton tries to get through the ropes. The terrifying Uzzy goes over and gets right in his opponent’s face, puffing out his bantam chest and eyeballing him all the way to the centre of the ring.

Ashley Sexton doesn’t seem too concerned. You can see him laughing to his corner prior to the touch of gloves.

Unfortunately for Uzzy, like most yappy little dogs, his bark is a lot worse than his bite. Ashley Sexton delivers a one punch knockout about 1.55 into the fight.

It’s a superb punch and Uzzy takes more than a minute to get back to his feet, even with his corner holding him up.

Uzzy fights at flyweight (112 lbs), so he’s smaller than an average sized woman. Here’s his professional boxing record. As of October 2011, he had 6 wins from 12 bouts, 4 of those against fighters who haven’t won a bout and the other 2 against guys with 1 and 3 professional fights. Additionally, none of Uzzy’s 6 wins have come by KO, so he couldn’t knock a pea off a chop.

Uzzy was 6 from 9 when he fought Ashley Sexton, who was 8 from 8, with 4 KOs. It was for the vacant British flyweight title, so worth stepping up in class, but even so I suspect Uzzy’s manager should have worked out he was well overmatched. All the posing in the world isn’t going to worry someone who can knock you out with a single punch.

Remember those Boppo the Clown air filled punching toys? They stood about four feet tall on a curved base, so when kids punched them, they bounced right back up for more.

Fingerton Corp will market Uzzy Boppos, except if you punch them hard enough to keel over, they will stay down until you help them back up.

Uzzy has also been immortalized in the lexicon via the phrase: “Mate, you are Uzzy”, delivered in a Lebanese accent. It is an order of magnitude up from the more widely used: “You are shit, mate”, also delivered in a Lebanese accent.

More Well Thought Out Economic Policy From The Greens

Bob Brown and the Greens have made yet another ill thought out venture into the economic policy debate, this time suggesting lowering the corporate tax rate for small and medium enterprises (SME).

All sounds quite reasonable at first: help small businesses invest in capital expenditure and staff by cutting their taxes, while making big corporations pay more … until you think through how the policy could actually be implemented.

We can and should have progressive tax rates for individuals. This works because each person has (legally) one tax file number.

However, the relationship between companies and individuals is many to many. Companies can and usually do have multiple shareholders and directors. Many people are shareholders and directors of multiple companies.

Suppose company tax rates are structured so that the first $100,000 or $1,000,000 of profit attracts a 25% tax rate, with 30% tax on all profit after that. The tax minimization strategy available to many is to split into multiple incorporations, each qualifying for SME tax status. A company earning 5 times the profit threshold could split into 5 ACNs and reduce its tax rate from 29% to 25%. Sophisticated accounting could probably reduce this further.

This is clearly against the spirit of the proposed tax changes, but not actually illegal. How do you make it illegal in practice?

Outlaw people being directors or shareholders of more than one company in the same industry subgroup? Outlaw it if the companies had the same registered or business address?

Either would be an outrageous violation of economic liberty. Why should a citizen not be allowed to own shares in or be a director of more than one travel or real estate agent or clothes shop?

Oh well, if they really were separate business on separate premises, that would be OK. Allright then, I’ll just register my 5 companies at separate addresses. How would the tax office know the difference?

If more sophisticated manoeuvering were required, a company with 5 directors and shareholders could split into 5 entities, each with one director and shareholder and a (secret) side agreement. This is illegal because it is a conspiracy to defraud the ATO, but how would it be proven, particularly if the shareholders were family members?

Imagine the tortuous set of rules and the Byzantine bureaucracy which would be required to ensure compliance with the intentions of such a system. But then, tying everyone up with countless rules, creating enormous bureaucracies and then berating those who fight against them as selfish, redneck, buccaneer capitalists is standard practice for the left.

The Greens' response to the above would probably be to say: "Oh yes, but people shouldn't do that and would be prosecuted if they did."

Yeah, OK ... We'll just make policy on the basis of how people should behave in the leftists' fairytale world of "moral, socially aware" people (or their definition thereof). Let's not worry about the costs and logistical nightmare of enforcement in the real world. We'll change people's behaviour with propaganda directed at their children.

This is typical of the Greens, particularly when they hold forth on economic issues. All touchy feely and would be nice if people and the world were different, but totally infeasible to implement in practice. They have not even given the logistical issues one iota of meaningful consideration, perhaps because their grasp of economics is so limited, they simply were not aware of them. They even make Wayne Swan look halfway competent.

There is nothing wrong with singling out very large corporations from particular industries, such as banking and mining and making them pay higher tax rates to support the security of the environment which allows them to post record profits.

There already exists a Petroleum Resources Rent Tax, levied on the principle that the oil companies are lessees of the land from which they are extracting a finite resource, which is still owned by the Commonwealth of Australia (as it is the lessor).

We could already have a mining rent tax along the same principles, had it not been so poorly handled by this government.

Extra taxes on the big banks (which most citizens support) are possible, via a range of measures: increasing the tax rate just for them, increasing banking licence fees, increasing compulsory funding of the prudential regulator, or requiring a minimum percentage of bank capital to be invested in low interest, Federal government bonds.

This last provision could be quite lucrative in terms of tax revenue: if 10% of bank capital was required to be held in government bonds which paid 1% less than the government's normal cost of funds, CBA and Westpac would effectively each be paying $40M extra in tax per year.

That doesn’t sound like much, but a 1% increase in the tax rate for banks would only translate into approximately the same amount of extra revenue. Additionally, it allows the government to borrow cheaply and forces a certain percentage of bank capital to be invested securely.

Measures such as increasing the insurance premium for government guarantees of bank deposits are bad policy because this ends up being a tax on all of us, as costs are passed through via lower deposit or higher lending interest rates.

The compulsory investment of bank capital in government bonds does not increase banks’ cost of funds, but does decrease revenue, although so does an increase in tax rates. Both will have a tendency to increase lending interest rates in the absence of regulation.

Of course, if the Howard government had kept 51% of the CBA, it would add a lever with which to control fees, deposit and lending interest rates via competition, as well as earning a nice dividend each year and we probably would not be having the conversation about exorbitant bank profits.

So, good work Bob! More quality economic policy from the Greens.

If you want to talk about economic issues, stick to advocating government investment in green technologies which will create revenue and jobs. There is no reason why governments should not attempt to pick winners by taking equity stakes in local solar panel manufacturers or geothermal power start ups like Geodynamics.

Tilt the playing field by adding a tariff proportional to the gap in efficiency between locally made cells and imported ones, or on the cost of CO₂ involved in transporting them here. Allow a higher renewable energy certificate multiplier on locally manufactured solar systems. Maybe then Silex wouldn’t have had to close its solar panel plant, costing 100 jobs.

Keeping Sex Offenders In Prison

Over the past few years, there has been considerable debate on whether serious sex offenders should be kept in prison after their sentence has expired if their reoffending post release is believed to be a significant risk.

Debate in Victoria as far back as 2004, prompted by the release of Brian Keith Jones, dubbed Mr. Baldy because he abducted boys, shaved their heads and raped them, eventually led to the Serious Sex Offenders Monitoring Act, which allows strict conditions to be placed on released offenders well past the end of the parole period.

New South Wales had the notorious Dennis Ferguson, who consistently reoffended and made no attempt at rehabilitation while in prison. The problem brought to public attention by his case in particular was that if someone like him serves their full sentence, they are released into the community with no parole period and hence nothing other than informal supervision by police, who may end up being the subject of a harassment complaint if the pervert in question finds a sympathetic bleeding heart to assist him. Absurdly, Ferguson was going to be allowed to stay on his release with a family with an eight year old daughter.

I can see three issues which require not just debate, but prompt and clear resolution (so often the inevitable disagreements in public debate are used by weak governments to avoid action).

Firstly, are there circumstances in which a sex offender is deemed such a risk of reoffending that they are detained indefinitely after the end of their original sentence and if so, is separate legislation necessary?

I think there are definitely such circumstances (Dennis Ferguson being a possible example). Further, I believe most of the community would agree with me. There are many cases in which child molesters or serial rapists have made no meaningful attempt at rehabilitation while in prison and have been deemed a high risk of reoffending by prison psychiatrists. Their civil right to be given a chance to reintegrate into the community at the end of their prescribed sentence is exceeded by the rights of others to be kept safe from their likely predatory behaviour.

I’m not in general a supporter of utilitarianism, but I think its principles usefully apply here: the probability of the person committing more crimes, combined with the severity of the consequences for their victims far outweighs the detriment to their own civil liberties.

We use the same argument when forcibly detaining people under the Mental Health Act. In fact, it is precisely this law which should be used to detain unacceptably high risk sex offenders indefinitely. There is no need for an entirely new act of parliament: if necessary, amend the Mental Health Act. Anyone who cannot control their urges to molest children or rape people should be considered criminally insane by any reasonable, operational definition.

In 2010, the US Supreme Court ruled that the US Federal Government had precisely this right. There are many elements of the US legal system which we should eschew, however I believe this is an example we should follow.

My second question is: If serious sex offenders are to be released back into the community, but close monitoring of a strict behavioural regime is deemed necessary for a long period ie. several years, is specific legislation such as Victoria’s Serious Sex Offenders Monitoring Act necessary or desirable?

Such legislation is currently necessary because offenders did not have strict conditions built into their parole when originally sentenced, sometimes many years ago. In the case of Dennis Ferguson, no strict, formal supervision on parole would have been possible because he served his full sentence.

I suggest it will remain necessary, as it is less open to abuse than its alternatives.

Suppose society attempted to instead handle the supervision problem via the Crimes Act, whereby sentencing guidelines were changed so that serious sex offenders or even other violent criminals were given, for example 25 years with a 10 year non-parole period instead of the current 15 and 10 and the judge had the ability to a priori impose parole monitoring conditions. Note that the Sex Offenders Monitoring Act only allows for a maximum 15 year supervision order. If someone had not reoffended within 15 years of strict supervision and behavioural control, it is highly unlikely another supervision order would be granted, so in this aspect, altering sentencing guidelines to allow much longer parole periods has the same effect as the provisions of the Sex Offenders Monitoring Act.

The difficulty with the proposed alternative is that judges would need to impose such long parole periods and strict conditions as a matter of course for a given range of offences, with only extraordinary reasons allowing any deviation. It would therefore cause effectively all people committing these types of offences to receive very long sentences. Release from prison at the end of the current “normal” sentence would thus be at the discretion of the parole board, informed by medical advice and the prisoner’s behavioural record. However, there would be no formal discretion as to the conditions and period of any post release monitoring; only in the rigour with which monitoring was performed. Sentences passed many years ago cannot take into account any genuine rehabilitation (if that is possible) and would therefore always err on the side of caution.

Some may hold the view that this conservative approach is desirable when it comes to sex offenders, however it is possible subsequent changes in community attitudes, unsupported by evidence, may lead to political pressure on parole boards to keep offenders incarcerated for the majority of their parole period, regardless of behaviour while in prison. In the absence of separate monitoring legislation, they would eventually be released into the community, angry and resentful at their long sentence, with little or no supervisory parole period, in complete contradiction to the original intent of the sentence.

Additionally, such long parole period sentencing conditions can be inappropriately extended to a host of other crimes in law and order auctions during election campaigns. There tends more public scrutiny and debate if a government seeks to amend separate legislation such as the Sex Offenders Monitoring Act to cover a significantly wider range of crimes than if it seeks to amend sentences and guidelines for existing offences.

My third question is: How do we safeguard against cynical or ideologically motivated governments extending specific monitoring or indefinite incarceration legislation to a much larger range of crimes, in the absence of any evidence it will work?

This last point is no theoretical discussion: there have already been calls to keep non-sex offenders in prison beyond their sentence.

My view is that indefinite incarceration should only be via the Mental Health Act. We should not allow any specific legislation which gives governments and their agents the power to keep sane citizens in prison past their sentence: it is too easily abused. It is effectively detention without the right to a trial.

Specific legislation to provide for strict behavioural controls and monitoring on release is a different matter. The person has been released as per their sentence. Imprisonment only occurs if parole conditions are breached.

It is more difficult to abuse the intent of the legislation by extending it to other offences because the law must then be changed and those amendments passed by both houses of parliament.

It would not be unreasonable for society to consider legislation which requires a minimum parole period (either some fixed time or proportion of sentence) for all custodial sentences. This is to counter situations where, for example a violent criminal is given 10 years with a non-parole period of 7, but does the full 10.

Model prisoners do not do their full sentence. Those who do are probably the highest risk of reoffending. It is reasonable to apply a utilitarian argument here and require strict monitoring for a year or two.

Adjunct to such legislation needs to be a strong Ombudsman’s office to support released prisoners in cases of abuse of the parole system via harassment and the right to a judicial hearing to assess the evidence if accusations of a breach of parole are made.

Chuck A Brown Eye At Corporate Greed

Smash the capitalist system by chucking brown eyes!

Liam Warriner was arrested for mooning the Queen as her motorcade drove by. He was also part of the Occupy (insert city) protests.

What’s the point of just sitting in Martin Place or Federation Square chanting dopey slogans? Why don’t all of you go and stand outside the head office of a big bank or miner and brown eye its staff as they arrive for work and then again as they leave?

Shout: “You’ve licked enough of these to get where you are! Give ours a clean! Rimming is not just for the rich!”

How are the police going to arrest 1,000 or more people for chucking brown eyes? Organise flash mobs to descend on a different target each day in a game of cat and mouse with the authorities.

Those corporate fat cats would soon think twice about stealing from the shareholders via exorbitant and unearned remuneration packages if they had to run a gauntlet of brown eyes from the great unwashed each morning!

On a more serious note, I notice that Liam Warriner was also charged with willful exposure under the Summary Offences Act 2005.

The problem is that this charge specifically relates to exposing one's genitalia, which is not the same as mooning. It is laid against genuine pervs who derive sexual gratification from flashing at people. The conviction doesn’t have in brackets (only mooning) on your criminal record, so he’ll always be on a police database of pervs. Even if he’s found not guilty, the police will still maintain the charge record on a database somewhere.

Later in this guy’s life, if there is ever a rapist in the area, or some dirty old man flashing at kids or trying to photograph them, he’ll be on the police shortlist of people to speak to. It could possibly even count against him if he ever wants to teach or otherwise work with children.

Does he really deserve this? Surely a Section 6 public nuisance charge is sufficient. He’s only going to get a fine anyway.

This is where the police need to act with some restraint. Even if you do think he’s a dickhead, mouthing off with his wannabe left wing hero slogans, don’t be even bigger dickheads and potentially cause him problems for the rest of his life by charging him with an offence which most would interpret as having a sexual undertone and is usually intended for low level perverts.

Additionally, mooning the queen’s motorcade from a distance is not much of an effort. Surely at least a pressed ham with smallgoods on her window would have been a more appropriate protest against elitism.

If the paparazzi had caught a snap of her maj from the right angle, her shocked face would have been framed in a bumprint on the window, perhaps with some ghostly smallgoods on her chin.

On Scrums

During the 2011 NRL grand final, justly won by Manly, there was an incident where Anthony Watmough played the ball facing more in the direction of the sideline than the goal posts. It didn’t advantage Manly or alter the flow of the game, but assorted paid and unpaid clowns started going on about “Why weren’t Manly penalized?”, as if the referee had just missed a deliberate forward pass.

Who gives a fuck? The point is simply to roll the ball behind you to the dummy half and let the attacking side get on with the job. Since 1995, the defending side can’t even contest the play the ball anymore.

Have you ever seen a rugby league scrum? The props are usually standing upright, with the attacking hooker hanging across the scrum. The props cock their leg and try to piss on the halfback as he feeds the ball under the second row’s feet. I rarely see a penalty awarded for not feeding the ball in straight or not packing properly. When one is given, it appears to be at random.

Again, the point only seems to be to give the ball to the team feeding the scrum while half the players are concentrated in a small section of the field. How often do you see a rugby league scrum won against the feed?

When league scrums are such an obvious farce, why would anyone care about the play the ball in an ordinary tackle? Just pass it between your legs and get on with it.

I know a rugby union scrum is made more stable by the two extra players on each side, but that is no reason why league scrums should be such a joke. Forwards used to pack down properly, push and hookers contest the ball. Why can’t they still do it?

There are occasionally mealy mouthed suggestions of doing away with scrums in rugby league because of the farce they have become. Instead, why don’t the people who run rugby league, who allowed this situation to occur in the first place, rectify it? Set proper scrums and fans might be interested.

Rugby union scrums on the other hand are so technical that they are often reset two or three times before the ball comes out. Often, the result is a penalty instead, particularly with a northern hemisphere ref.

Scrums in rugby union are a serious business: wins against the feed, wheeling through 90 degrees, pushover tries. They are often where the battle of the forwards is won and lost.

The problems with them are too many boring, time wasting resets and far too many penalties for dubious, technical infringements which result in 3 points to boring (mostly northern hemisphere) teams who play for scrum and ruck penalties instead of running the ball.

So often, one sees the front row collapse with the ball won and at the number eight’s feet, then the referee blows it up for a reset. How does this increase safety? There is no need for another scrum in this situation. Just get the ball out and run with it.

The ref should shout: “Use it or lose it!” If the team who has won the ball doesn’t get it out within 3 seconds, the scrum is reset and they lose the feed.

The front row will not be on the ground any longer in this scenario and there will be no need for another scrum, another possible collapse, or a stupid penalty which just pisses fans off, unless they are British and think 12-9 all in penalties is a good game.

Obviously if the ball hasn’t reached the second row by the time the front row collapses, then the scrum needs to be reset, but the above rule change would improve the flow of the game immensely.

The principal bad outcome of far too many scrums are highly dubious penalties awarded against the defending team for collapsing, which then result in 3 points to the opposition. How can the referee tell who is at fault for collapsing a scrum in most cases? What front row would deliberately collapse in their own 22?

I asked this question of a first grade front rower who played for the Australian Schoolboys. His answer: “Of course you wouldn’t. It’s the other bloke pulling or pushing you down. Sometimes a weaker front row will just collapse under the pressure, but it’s not intentional.”

Someone else made the observation that since the referee can’t tell in the majority of cases who is at fault when a scrum collapses, if you’re in doubt just penalize the attacking team so at least no-one can score any points as a result.

The suggestion was partly facetious, but illustrates an important issue: points are being scored and often games won and lost as a result of unfair scrum penalties.

Obviously there need to be penalties for foul play, such as deliberately pulling the front row down, feeding the ball under your own hooker’s feet or packing down at an angle so you’re spearing in. However, there are many breaches of the rules which are unintentional, such as a front rower briefly putting their hand on the ground to avoid falling down, or even a front row collapsing because they are not strong enough to hold the scrum up.

There is a school of thought that a dominant front row proves its case by breaking up the opposition, causing them to collapse or splinter and lose their bind under the pressure, thus receiving a penalty as a reward. I agree with everything except the penalty part. There is nothing wrong with receiving a free kick, or ten metres and a free kick or another scrum, but not 3 points.

There is a better solution: the rules already distinguish between intentional and unintentional forward passes, so why shouldn’t they distinguish other unintentional infringements?

Extend the range of infringements which result in a free kick instead of a penalty. There could be an intermediate category of infringements which result in a ten metre loss as well as a free kick. If a front row loses their bind, puts their hand on the ground or unintentionally collapses, march them ten metres and give the opposition a choice of a free kick or another scrum.

What if they did it within 10 metres of the goal line? March them half the distance, even allowing the minimum 5 metre rule to be waived in that case. You can’t give a penalty because it’s still the same infringement. If the attacking team really wants a shot at goal, let them put the five eight behind the scrum and go for a drop goal. Only a gutless side would do this from a 5 metre scrum anyway.

Would these rule changes ever get passed? Not with the IRB controlled by the northern hemisphere. How would their teams ever win a game?

We need to get more representatives from the Pacific Island nations on the IRB and increase the southern hemisphere’s voting power. Then we can get rid of all these stupid penalties that make you cry out: “What the fuck was that for? You’re a fucking clown, ref!” and actually have some properly flowing rugby games, which of course would always be won by Australia, New Zealand or South Africa.

A Victory For Common Sense ... Topeka Decriminalises Domestic Violence

Topeka, the capital of Kansas has just voted to decriminalize domestic violence, along with a list of other misdemenour crimes.

Domestic battery is still a crime under Kansas state law and offences occurring in Topeka would normally be prosecuted by the Shawnee County DA. However, the DA’s office has not been prosecuting misdemeanours for some weeks, due to lack of budget.

The DA’s move was seen as an attempt to force the city of Topeka to prosecute the domestic battery cases, however they apparently do not have the resources either. Instead, they responded with their own political tactic: decriminalize domestic battery and other offences so the county will have to find the budget to handle the prosecutions under state law.

Unfortunately, Topeka City Council’s tactic does not yet appear to have succeeded, meaning any people arrested for domestic violence are held for 72 hours, then released.

Given that city councils’ responsibilities are mostly things like urban planning, garbage collection and issuing parking tickets, one might ask why they would still have the responsibility of prosecuting assaults. This should have been made the clear responsibility of the county under state law, obviating the motivation for this farcical situation.

There are ways communities could free up funds to prosecute assaults:

• Stop prosecuting people for possessing small amounts of drugs for personal use. If you don’t want to legalize personal use of some drugs, at least make the penalty for possession a fine. How driving 30km/h over the speed limit on a suburban street is just a fine but puffing on a joint gets you a criminal record is beyond me.
Stop jailing people for personal use of drugs. Steer them into treatment instead.

Shoot A Police Officer ... Get Away With It Because Of Anti Muslim Climate

This is absolutely insane! An admitted terrorist who shot at police has been acquitted. How could this possibly happen?

The accused, known as BUSB during the trial, but now identified as Bradley Umar Baladjam was carrying two concealed, loaded pistols, which he subsequently admitted was “to prepare for a terrorist act … motivated by his religious beliefs”.

When approached by uniformed police, one with his gun drawn, the accused pulled out one of the pistols and started shooting, wounding one of the officers. He was charged with, among other things “attempting to murder or cause grievous bodily harm to police Sergeant Adam Wolsey and shooting at him with intent to resist apprehension”.

At a judge only trial, Judge Leonie Flannery acquitted BUSB of these charges on the grounds that intent to shoot at the officer could not be proven beyond reasonable doubt.

The fact that the incident occurred on November 8, 2005 and the accused could still not be publicly identified during the trial suggests he was still awaiting trial on other charges. In fact, the acquittal in this case was handed down on June 10, 2011, but has not been allowed to be publicized until recently.

One can only hope this arsehole is currently in prison after having been sentenced on other matters. A response by the NSW police minister to a question without notice from Fred Nile shows the matter has been through multiple trials and retrials. Even so, five years is far too long for charges to be decided.

BUSB’s defence was that he had only intended to fire a warning shot.

Excuse me? Since when do you get to fire a warning shot at the police? You don’t get to do that in this country, Judge Flannery.

The judge found that BUSB:

“… put the pistol in his pants because he was concerned for his safety, and in the state he was in, brought about by his illness, his concern that he was going to be arrested, and the climate of anti-Muslim feeling in the community at the time, he believed that he might be harmed by police".

Umm … he was carrying a pistol because he was concerned he might be arrested and might be harmed by police. So, one might draw the conclusion that he was carrying the pistol with the intent of using it to defend himself against police. But of course, he always intended to just fire in the air if confronted.

If so, how did he fire a horizontal “warning shot”?

In an absurd piece of what one might describe as PC judicial activism, Judge Flannery stated:

''I am not satisfied that he put the Browning [firearm] in his pants because he was planning to shoot his arresting officers”

Well, he didn’t have to intend to when he left home. The question is whether the intent was formed at any time right up to his arrest and existed at the time he fired the weapon. A warning shot is fired into the air. To wound one of the arresting officers, he must have fired at an angle equal to or below horizontal. How is there reasonable doubt as to intent?

And what is this bullshit about the climate of anti-Muslim feeling somehow casting doubt as to his intent? That is a non sequitur.

The accused’s statement above, that he put the pistol in his pants because “he was concerned he may be arrested” is surely evidence supporting the claim of intent.

This is not a case where a judge should be assisting the accused by trying to find ways in which he could possibly have not meant to fire at the police. Baladjam is a militant Muslim. His actions and views are diametrically opposite to the fundamental precepts of our society. He does not deserve assistance via judicial activism.

This is an absurd verdict. Worse, it opens the possibility of others attempting to use the judgement as a precedent and proffer a defence of fear.

The judge should have her appointment reviewed on the grounds of competence.

Equally as disturbing is the abject bungling of this matter from the outset by both the terrorism squad and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

Why were inexperienced officers from the local police station asked to arrest a terrorism suspect?

The description of the attempted arrest reads like a storyline of the Keystone Cops (except for the speaking part, obviously):

"The two junior officers had trouble getting out of the car: one could not open her car door because of a child safety lock, another struggled with her seat belt. None of the officers was wearing body armour and only one appeared to have his firearm drawn. He later said he approached the man, saying: 'Mate, hang on a minute. Can we have a word?'"

They were given a description of the suspect by the terrorism squad over a mobile phone while they were driving down the street looking for him.

These officers should never have been placed in this situation. They were clearly inadequately prepared and that is clearly the fault of their superiors and the terrorism squad.

According to the NSW police minister, Baladjam was acquitted of three indictable offences (apparently the most serious ones) and convicted of two, related firearms offences.

This greasy prick should have been taken by the terrorism squad and charged with everything available. How could someone admit to carrying concealed firearms with intent “to prepare for a terrorist act” and because “he was concerned he may be arrested”, shoot a police officer and not end up being found guilty of at least several serious offences?

Surely there are a string of other charges available in such a matter. I'm not a fan of the trifecta (resist arrest, assault police, hinder police) as it is regularly abused, but surely it was appropriate here. Why was Baladjam not charged with every offence the police and DPP could think of in case some of the main charges did not succeed? All he ended up with were two firearms convictions.

Additionally, the public might well ask how a competent prosecutor could not secure a conviction on ANY of the three most serious charges, even in the face of an activist judge.

Perhaps it may have been better had the police just blown his head off.

No wonder militant Muslims are acting with such confidence in Western countries. When they see things like this, they must be laughing at us. This is precisely the time we need to go in as hard as possible against these people, not manufacture reasons to acquit them.

I suppose we should be thankful we're not in the UK: he might have sued the police for infringing his human right to pursue jihad ... and won.

The police are often justifiably criticized for their performance and their attitude toward the public. This is because we need and expect an honest, competent police service who see themselves as part of the community.

The quid pro quo is that police should expect that if they are shot at when making a legitimate arrest, they will be backed with the full support of their superiors, the DPP, the judiciary and the general public. Most certainly, they should expect the full range of charges to be laid and a judge who does not search for reasonable doubt via spurious logic.