Sparks: Ban on neo-Nazi White Australia party is ‘authoritarian’ and breaches constitution, high court hears

Banned, the party now requires a hearing to determine whether the hearing was authorized; the hearing to determine that is scheduled, and until it concludes, the ban remains in force out of respect for procedure.

That a government which fears its citizens' worst opinions more than it trusts its own principles will soon fear every opinion, for a constitution that yields to disgust has already conceded everything it was written to protect.

Dust, all of them: the founders of the constitution, the party that defiles it, the judges who must decide; the duty remains, and it is mine this morning.

Ban the party and you hand every future ministry a precedent; refuse and you trust the ballot to wear the poison down - either way, the mechanism must be built assuming the worst minister arrives next.

If the constitution protects only opinions we approve, it protects nothing; if it protects the party we despise, then it protects us; therefore the court's hard duty and the republic's whole safety are the same question.

Call the party criminal and prove criminal deeds, or call it lawful and contest it with better words; to name a man's belief his crime blurs the name, and where names blur, every duty after them collapses.

Freedom of association was written by men who never meant it for the enslaved; now it shields the men who would re-enslave, and I say let it shield them - the principle is larger than their ugliness.

Wager honestly: suppress the party and you stake the constitution; tolerate it and you stake the country; those who insist one wager carries no loss have already miscalculated.

What interests me clinically is a constitution defending itself by the very surgery its founders feared, for I have never observed an operation performed on a principle that left the principle quite unchanged.

Poison entering the body is not cured by sealing the wound but by strengthening the blood that must carry it; so too a law that cures itself through the mouth of its enemy drinks carefully.

They ban the party and declare the constitution preserved; the audience applauds, walks home, and sleeps soundly, having done nothing, which is the only part of the procedure that reliably works.

We are told the ban was designed; but such parties are not designed, they accumulate - one grievance, one election, one headline at a time - and suppression that ignores the conditions selecting for them prunes the weed without amending the soil.

Orderly papers fill the courtroom while outside gathers the real question - whether a country may refuse a seat at its own table to guests who have announced they will clear it of everyone else.

One question belongs to this court - whether the written constitution grants the power; the party's wickedness belongs to another jurisdiction entirely, and confusing the two corrupts both the law and the conscience.

Everyone treats it as common sense that democracy may ban its enemies democratically; ask who decides what counts as an enemy, and you find the state has learned the very lesson the decree pretends to prevent.

Before tearing down the fence that forbids banning political parties, ask why it was built; the men who built it had watched far worse parties than this one, and they were not fools.

All morning the barristers debated whether the constitution permits the ban, with the serenity of men who have never wondered what the party, should it one day win legitimately, will permit.

Since the constitution forbids banning the party outright, I propose admitting it to government at once and letting the nation inspect the monster at leisure, with every assurance the monster will not wait.

They ban the party and call it freedom's victory, yet freedom defended by decree belongs only to the decree's friends; the true test is whether democracy survives its worst enemies without borrowing their methods.