David Hicks will finally be able to get on with his life. The AFP has stated that there will be no new control order sought when the current one expires on December. Finally, Hicks’ abuse at the hands of two legal systems appears to be over. Here’s hoping that he can make a go of it.
Meanwhile, the Clarke Inquiry’s report has been handed over to the government. Hopefully an unclassified version will be publicly released in the near future. The upshot is likely to be that Mick Keelty’s time as AFP head will end; perhaps other senior AFP officers may follow him.
The bigger question is whether some of the more outrageous bits of legal machinery that made Haneef’s treatment possible will end. Frankly, I doubt it. The one example where Labor has acted on a perversion of justice – mandatory detention – they were at pains to pretend that they weren’t doing so. I think a similar thing will happen here. At best, a new AFP head will be appointed, new guidelines will be written so that the more outrageous “anti-terrorist” powers are no longer used, and maybe they’ll quietly get squashed as part of a broader review in a decade’s time. Maybe the sedition laws might go, but with this government’s commitment to censoring the interwebs demonstrating a pretty casual attitude to free speech, maybe not.
And hopefully a shameful episode in Australia’s history will come to a close. The Howard government ministers (I am looking at you Ruddock) should be ashamed and continually reminded of what they did to both Hicks and Haneef.
Shamefull.
It does seem to be a bit like that, Robert. The ugliest parts of immigration detention and the terrorist laws are being wound back quietly. There has been no attempt to proclaim these changes even to the usual politician trait of patting themselves on the back.
It’s almost as if there is a fear of a backlash from hardline Howardistas. What they’re trying to do with net censorship hardly bears thinking about. Luckily, it will probably prove to be unworkable.
Let us hope it is not what many of us fear: that we might have replaced one obsessive control freak with another.
I’d feel a bit better with an approach like Obama’s, where he’s already announced Guantanamo will go.
So, to summarize the gist of this thread so far:
LUCKY: The public works… of Puncher and Wattman… the tennis… the tennis… abode of stones… tennis…
Well that certainly woke me up. I wonder what time it is.
Whoops, wrong thread. Sorry, this comment was intended for the post-modernism thread.
What a very post-modern mistake! How apropos. Waiter, bring me a glass of pinot grigio, two umbrellas, and a sewing machine.
Don Wigan wrote:
There’s only one solution to the net censorship thing: civil disobedience. Although I fear that it will be politically ineffective against a crew so clueless with technology they don’t really understand why what they are attempting is futile.
It’s pretty clear that the immigration scare stuff won’t work so far out from 9/11, unless the media decide they need another story besides the financial crisis. Rudd needs to start living up to all that pre-election stuff about Bonhoeffer (or somebody needs to remind him damn quickly).
Not just Hicks and Haneef. The Bali Nine could and should have been arrested in Australia. The AFP tipped off the Indonesians and so they were arrested under Indonesian law. Some of them will be executed. How come the AFP had the authority to make this sort of life-or-death decision? And why did the choose to let Australians die?
I’m paranoid enough to think there was some deal between the AFP and the Indonesians: You let us make an example of some of these Australian drug couriers coming to Bali, and we’ll execute the main perpetrators of the Bali bombing. Is it mere coincidence there are 3 in each case?
Go on – tell me I’m mad – the Armidale mistral currently blowing certainly makes you feel that way. And, btw, I usually do NOT believe in conspiracy theories – quite the opposite – unless I’m teasing the more gullible, I hold them in the highest contempt.
Methinks it’s a stretch too far Paul lad. While I agree with JC that it was an awful thing for the AFP to do, I don’t think they’ve got the nous to conspire, presumeably with those close to President Susilio Bhang Bhang…for such an outcome. That’s on the basis that a clemency bid to the latter would fail for both ‘threesomes’. So far it has for the Bali bombers.
Apparently, the test for people wanting to take Australian citizenship will concentrate on our democratic beliefs etc, rather than obscure sporting and general knowledge questions.
This is encouraging when coupled with the news that David Hicks will be allowed to quietly get on with his life.
Now if they’d do something about the bully-boy legislation used against Dr Haneef, it would be a great treble.
Robert Merkel says:
Hicks was a terrorist camp follower and a traitor to his nation. He assisted Al Queda which is an outlaw terrorist gang. And he was captured in the theatre of conflict, when the Commonwealth, through the invocation of ANZUS, was at war with the Taliban govt.
Treason is a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treason#Australia“>serious crime:
Terrorism is a serious crime. Penalties range depending on the gravity of the offence. Hicks was no novice. He had a long record of terrorist affiliations.
A fair and reasonable sentence for terrorist EPoWs should be “confined for the duration”. And the Australian federal criminal code prescribes life imprisonment for traitors.
Fortunately for Hicks, in these more merciful times, he was not tied to a post and shot after summary proceedings. He got off lightly with a few years behind bars.
His elevation to the status of secular sainthood is an episode of black farce which adds to the general disgrace of Left-liberalism.
Robert Merkel says:
Mandatory detention is not an infringement of civil liberties. Unauthorised arrivals do not have automatic access to the rights of full citizens. Their detention is therefore not a perversion of justice. It is a prudential measure which sometimes is taken a bit far. But it has the support of the populace and in a democracy it is they who decide what is just.
The bigger question is why anyone made a fuss over Haneef’s treatment. It was a “dog bites man” story. The AFP did their duty in arresting him. The minister was within his proper powers to detain him until questions surrounding his behaviour (disposition of his SIM card, suspicious flight, jihadist literature) were sorted out. He was released after a short period cooling his heels, with the mandatory hymns written singing his praises.
More generally, if I were a Left-liberal Wet I would not hold my breath waiting for the jackboots to be hung up. After 911 and Bali most people dont want the authorities to take any chances just to appease a bunch of bleeding heart liberals. There will be no liberalising trend of anything anywhere anytime soon in Australia. WIth the departure of Georgiou the Wets have lost their lone parliamentary spokesman.
That is because the anthropological conditions for terrorism are still prevalent. Terrorism seems to be an expression of underlying mental health disorder amongst young male NESBs suffering culture shock.
The current govt has an obsessive need for more importing masses of cheap labour, never mind ecology or equity. So now we now have more multiculturally diverse people squashed into the country with more sub-culturally perverse temptations on offer than ever before. A better recipe for ratbaggery one could not imagine.
The reaction of the native born and established populace to this development is not difficult to guess. They will support constant surveillance and legal constraints on anything that threatens the ambience and amenity of pricier neighbourhoods, schools etc. And we now have the technology to do that what with GPS and CCTV etc.
This is tough luck for civil libertarians and genuine refugees. But the Left-liberals will get no sympathy from me since they were the ones who made this bed.
Jacques – I think they were trying to use the Bali nine to catch the sellers at the other end. This was both vicious and hopeless.
If the ABC is to be believed, the only gap in the surveillance is the pick-up of the heroin from the Indonesian supplier. The Bali nine were used as bait. The problem is that there was no way the Indonesians were going to pick up anyone but the foreigners.
The fallacy of ignoring the existence of the death penalty until the person is charged and acting as if it doesn’t exist needs to be extinguished. The AFP arranged the death of these adolescents for a crime that would attract a few years in jail from an Australian court.
Vile.