Talk:Al-Kateb v Godwin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Al-Kateb v Godwin is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do.

Al-Kateb v Godwin appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on October 18, 2006.

Al-Kateb v Godwin has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

	Al-Kateb v Godwin is part of WikiProject Australia, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Australia and Australia-related topics. If you would like to participate, visit the project page.
FA	This article has been rated as FA-class on the quality scale.
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale.
Article Grading: The article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.
	This article has been selected for the featured article queue of the Australia Portal.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Australian law.
WikiProject Australia To-do: edit  Here are some tasks you can do to help with WikiProject Australia: The current Australian collaboration of the fortnight article is Torres Strait Islanders. Requests: Bicentennial Heritage Trail, Daintree Reef, George Adams, Insurance in Australia, Poppy Industries, Sports Rorts affair, State Orchestra of Victoria, Yarmirr v Northern Territory Attention: Aboriginal Protection Act, Australian Payments Clearing Association, Coral Sea Islands, Qantas, Peter Foster, Reg Ansett Expand: Barossa Valley, Coorong, South Australia, List of Australian military memorials, Palm Island, Queensland, Rossiter Bay Juanita Coco Stubs: Australian Racing Museum Australian women's cricket team, Barry McKenzie, Calgardup Bay, Western Australia, Mortein, Prospect Creek, Russian Jack, Yabbying, Younghusband, South Australia Images: Darwin beer-can regatta, Darwin International Airport, Dingo Fence, Driza-Bone, Eucalyptus coolabah, Esky, Four'N Twenty Pie Quality watch: 37 FA-Class Australia articles - 21 GA-Class Australia articles.

Contents 1 Vandalism 2 Who's Al-Katep? 3 Who's Godwin? 4 What happened next? 5 Why is he stateless? 6 so he's still detained? 7 Literalist or purposive 8 Explaining edit 9 Name in Arabic

[edit] Vandalism

There's been some petty vandalism going on. Please lock the page to anonymous edits. --RevWaldo 20:43, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Who's Al-Katep?

Does this man not have a first name? And what is the deal with giving NO background information on him until one of the last paragraphs (ie, implying that he would be from Palestine, should such a country exist).- Laikalynx 02:19, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Added info on background (though no first name). Janet13 02:48, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Who's Godwin?

Can't work out who Godwin is. Anybody know? Clappingsimon talk 05:59, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Phillippa Godwin, a department secretary, but I see you've already found that and added it in! I didn't include it originally because she wasn't a party personally, only on behalf of the department. --bainer (talk) 02:46, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What happened next?

After reading this article, I wanted to know what happened to Al-Kateb - is he still in detention? Can someone write an article on him giving more information?

Also, has Australian immigration law been amended to clarify its application to stateless persons? If so, a mention of this should be added to this article.

Rodparkes 01:43, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Typically, indefinitely means forever. Presumably, he is a prisoner of Australia for the rest of his existence. Like a slave. Hope I'm wrong.-Laikalynx 02:13, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

See the "consequences" section. Al-Kateb and eight other people were granted special bridging visas from the government in late 2004, following public pressure. This means he was no longer in detention. The last available information on him, that I am aware of, is from mid 2005. --bainer (talk) 13:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why is he stateless?

I think that should be explained promptly. :) Xiner 02:29, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Added info on background. Janet13 02:48, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Am I missing something? I can't find an explanation, though I infer from the judge's comments that it has something to do with him being of Palestinian extraction? Unmake 02:57, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I just skimmed a couple of lines of the article and I understood why he was stateless, though the article doesn't explain his Kuwaiti status; I don't get how it became featured while lacking such important information. To sum it up, most countries (including Australia) do not recognize Gaza/Palestine as an independant state -- it is regarded as "occupied by Israel."

The article states that he's a "Palestinian man born in Kuwait," presumably meaning that he was born in Kuwait, but no longer has any valid citizenship or travel documents from there, as such the Kuwaiti government cannot accept him. So that leaves him with Palestine, which is unrecognized, as such he is stuck in Australia until he can somehow get any sort of country status. ♠ SG →Talk 07:44, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

This is explained in the section "background to the case", which somehow was deleted in the mass of editing that occurred today, but which I have just restored. Al-Kateb was born in Kuwait, but did not automatically acquire Kuwaiti citizenship because his parents were Palestinian. As such, he had no citizenship from birth. --bainer (talk) 13:37, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] so he's still detained?

lol (in a sad way) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.129.97.218 (talk • contribs) on 18 October 2006.

[edit] Literalist or purposive

Is it right to say that the majority-minority split was a split between literalist and purposive approaches to statutory interpretation.

The structure of the Amigration Act and it's legislative hsitory make it lcear that Parliament's intent when it ammended the Act in its current form was that there was to be a presumption in favour of detention of "illegal non-citizens". Detention is, as it were, the default position. On that basis, it would seem to me that it is the majority whose view is best characterised as purposive.

The issue in Al-Kateb was the meaning of the word "until" in the phrase in s196: "(1) An unlawful non-citizen detained under section 189 must be kept in immigration detention until he or she is: (a) removed from Australia under section 198 or 199; or (b) deported under section 200; or (c) granted a visa."

Section 198 provided: "(6) An officer must remove as soon as reasonably practicable an unlawful non-citizen if: (a) the non-citizen is a detainee; and (b) the non-citizen made a valid application for a substantive visa that can be granted when the applicant is in the migration zone; and (c) ... (i) the grant of the visa has been refused and the application has been finally determined; ... and (d) the non-citizen has not made another valid application ..."

Sections 199 and 200 were relevantly in simialr terms.

The question was, if it is not currently "reasonably practicable" to remove an unlawful non-citizen in detention (and its not forseeable that that will change), does the requirement in s196 to keep the person in detention until he is removed mean to keep him in detention until things change and failing that, until he dies. As the Commonwealth Solicitor-General put it, does "until" include "until Hell freezes over" - i.e. does a statement containing the condition "until" encompass the possibility that the condition will never occur and thus the time period nominated is in fact forever.

Given the fact that the purpose of the Migration Act is clearly that detention is to be the default position for unlawful non-citizens, I think teh interpretation of "until" that msot accords with the intention of PArliament is a construction that encompasses "until Hell freezes over".

Whether that is good or nice or right or desireable, is a moral or political question and is irrelevant to what teh statute means - except to the extent that one can make arguments that Parliament would never have intended to be so cruel. But I'm afraid all the evidence points to the fact that Parliament intended to be precisely that cruel.

The fact that McHugh J could uphold this result as legally correct while decrying it as a moral outrage is a good illustrateion of why he was such a great judge, in my view. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 221.133.201.98 (talk • contribs) on 18 October 2006.

[edit] Explaining edit

The edit summary only allow so much. http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/high_ct/219clr562.html is 404ing, so removing. Replacing bottom link for that with http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/2004/37.html which seems to have same info.

In wiki code, I removed (2004) 219 CLR 562 from the citations in the infobox, and replaced (2004) 219 CLR 562 with [2004] HCA 37 which accounts for many references. I checked 2 and both were in there, though one had an extra word in a quote I'll change in a minute.

I'm curious how a link can disappear so fast, though. Balsa10 10:24, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Name in Arabic

I've just changed the Arabic version of the defendant's name from كاتب أحمد (Kateb Ahmed), added by EamonnPKeane, to احمد الكاتب (Ahmed Al-Kateb) based on references in the article, but this isn't based on any direct knowledge of the case, the defendant, or the Arabic language. If anyone knows for sure what the name should be, please add it to the article. Also, if you know what you're about and you think that Ahmed looks better with a hamza on the alif, feel free to add it. Tesseran 03:28, 19 October 2006 (UTC)