Hope for the future?

My American friends seem to be hopeful about their new President. Certainly he has made some bold moves in his first few days in office. Closing Guantanamo Bay will be popular but a decision has to be made about what do with the inmates. I don't believe David Hicks should be pardoned as he was caught fighting against his own country men. It may not have been a crime under Australian law but it was under US law and, morally, he had lost any right to sympathy. He should be ignored by the media and any attempt to obtain profit or compensation should be quickly thrown out.
I have less difficulty with stem-cell research. Yes, there are moral and ethical dilemmas. There were other moral and ethical dilemmas in the past over such things as the use of human cadavers to study the workings of the body. What we need is to use any information gained in a moral and ethical way.
And I have put in a submission to the AHRC on Freedom of Information and Belief in the 21st C. I do have concerns about that, most of all that any legislation will limit rather than enhance freedoms. Could it be used to irrevocably alter sec 116 of the Constitution? I do not know but it seems possible that legislation and the section could be combined to limit freedoms we now have. Most Australians will remain unaware of that possibility - something I suspect the AHRC, the legal profession and those with fundamentalist ideals are relying on.