Janet and Michael

Jihadists owe Kirby a thank you | The Australian

Janet Albrechtsen swings out a Justice Michael Kirby in a very satisfying way in her column today.

Kirby seems to have become the new Lionel Murphy, in that he seems continually to be in the minority in High Court, at least in cases that attract a high profile. The difference is that (from memory) Murphy's judgements used to be pretty short and along the lines of "This is unjust and its about time the Court recognised the injustice in these cases, and so I find for the [insert appropriate party]."

Kirby spends a lot of time on how he explains his decisions, but they still seem to come down to exercises in justifying a gut reaction.

(Of course, some people would argue that is how all judges really work, but I am not so sure.)

His need to see everything through the prism of a gay perspective is getting very tiring with Kirby, though. His comments in court about HIV killing more people than terrorism were justly criticised by Gerard Henderson in the articles I posted about yesterday. (Oh, and I know it's not a "gay disease" for most of the world.)