The unfolding mass human tragedy that is the Burmese cyclone (the specifics of which I don’t have anything except that a) I hope that the junta stops putting up barriers to international assistance, and b) that it’s going to make the global food crunch worse) reminds us of the awesome power of nature to inflict death and destruction. While we have great capacity for inflicting misery on our fellow humans, nature has similar capacities and inflicts them far more randomly and far more often. Particularly when compared small groups of discontents sitting in caves in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
But how is Australia prepared for such disasters? Not very well, according to a just-published report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. For instance, while everybody expects the ABC to handle emergency services broadcasting, ABC Local Radio doesn’t have redundant communications links to all its stations. We may have invested money in tsunami sensors, but there’s no centralized telephone warning system (something that could be done very cheaply, according to the report). Our hospitals aren’t really set up for a surge capacity in the case of even rather modest incidents.
This kind of stuff is often cheap, mostly relatively easy, and could potentially spare a lot of heartache when the unthinkable happens, be it through accident or malevolence. But why don’t we do it? Because it has the unique combination of being both scary and boring, earns governments no credit until the crap hits the fan, and we don’t have a historical precedent of a mass-casualty incident. And, over the past few years, we’ve had the distraction of the horribly overblown War on Terrah - something, incidentally, the ASPI has helped in its own small way to fan here.
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that the Rudd government has a bit more of a focus on the boring bits of government than its predecessor. This is one boring bit that I hope gets more attention.
Former Howard Government minister Kevin Andrews and AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty seem to be continuing their attempts to blame each other for the Haneef debacle. You’ll recall a couple of days ago that a “source”, most probably Keelty or somebody close to him, claimed that Andrews had cancelled Haneef’s visa without bothering to tell the AFP. Now we have the bite back from Andrews. From the Oz:
FORMER immigration minister Kevin Andrews had no idea of powerful evidence of Mohamed Haneef’s innocence when he controversially revoked the visa of the then terrorism suspect last year. Mr Andrews will tell the Rudd government-ordered inquiry into the bungled case, which opens today, that Australian Federal Police did not inform him of evidence debunking allegations against Dr Haneef’s second-cousin Sabeel Ahmed - allegations that had led to the subsequent terrorism charge against the Gold Coast doctor.
These guys were supposed to be in charge of protecting us from Scary Terryrists - one, of course, still is. Thank your favourite deity that there seems to be so few actual Scary Terryrists in Australia, or we’d really be in trouble…
It’s well known that the AFP harboured, and still harbour, strong suspicions about Mohammed Haneef. However, even if you make that assumption, the investigation and subsequent prosecution seems to have been stuffed up on several levels. Aside from the courtroom blunder that saw the criminal case against him collapse, I’ve been told by people who should know about these things that the AFP would have been much better off keeping him under surveillance - including in India, with the cooperation of Indian police - to see if they could turn up actual evidence that he’s anything other than a doctor with the misfortune to have the wrong relatives.
Today, a “source” is telling The Age that Kevin Andrews’ office prevented this from happening by revoking his visa, without even telling the AFP:
Senior public servants in a number of agencies in Canberra, including the police, were caught unawares when Mr Andrews suddenly announced that he was cancelling Dr Haneef’s visa.
“That spoiled it for the police,” the source said.
“It was done without any warning. The police knew that was an option but not that it was to be used so quickly or in such a cavalier fashion,” the source said.
One might be tempted to think this “source” is Keelty, or somebody close to him, making yet another attempt to blame somebody else. But, if accurate, the inescapable conclusion is that Kevin Andrews preferred political grandstanding in the leadup to an election over actually catching and convicting somebody who was genuinely thought to be a for-real terrorist.
Well, we’re still going to buy the Super Hornet fighter planes, the ones whose rushed procurement process has heavily criticised by me and others in the blogosphere.
This isn’t any great surprise, to be honest. As the Minister’s press release notes, the process of mothballing the F-111 had already begun, and even ignoring the financial penalties, there’s no way that the government could have cancelled the order and replaced it with anything else in the timeframe required. So the only other choice was to simply not replace the F-111’s at all, and rely exclusively on the “classic” Hornets for the period 2010-2015 or so.
So where does this leave us? Did Nelson get it right - even if he is off the hook for now? We’ll likely not know until the relevant Cabinet material enters the public domain or we get involved in an actual shooting war. That said, whatever the merits or otherwise of the Super Hornets, the process and the haste by which the acquisition happened remain horribly, horribly odd.
Continue reading ‘Nelson breathes a little easier’
In July 2006 I struck a small blow for freedom at Brisbane Airport.
At the security gate, after depositing the contents of my pockets on the conveyor belt, I was asked to remove my beret for a security check. This was the first time such a request had been made, and no such procedure had been in place on the previous occasions post 9-11 when I had flown from or to Brisbane.
I stood my ground and refused. The security staff eventually allowed me through and one of them applied the metal detector wand to the beret, even as it remained securely on my head. I then proceeded to the departure lounge, boarded the plane to Melbourne and completed the remainder of the journey without incident.
This episode satisfied me that it is not necessary for Brisbane Airport security to require all passengers to remove hats or headwear, because the wand can be used. Nonetheless, the company responsible for Brisbane Airport security continues to obsess about passengers’ headwear. According to the Courier-Mail:
Continue reading ‘Hatassery in Brisbane’
For those that haven’t seen the news, ABC news is reporting that Jose Ramos-Horta is in surgery in the Australian military hospital in Dili after an armed attack on his house by renegade soldier Alfredo Reinado. Reinado was apparently killed in the gun battle.
No idea what to make of it, other than it’s obviously bad news and let’s hope the injuries to Ramos-Horta aren’t too serious.
UPDATE: Apparently, Ramos Horta’s condition is “stable”. There was also an attack on Xanana Gusmao’s home; Xanana is uninjured.
Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon is likely to kill off one of Australia’s most troubled defence procurement projects - the Kaman Seasprite anti-submarine helicopters. And, according to a speech he gave recently, there’s many more projects in trouble:
In front of an audience of top military brass in Sydney yesterday Joel Fitzgibbon told some home truths about shortcomings in Australia’s defence. There was a lack of “analytical rigour” in defence because it did not have an up-to-date white paper to guide it, the 46-year-old minister said. This had caused a “drift and disconnect” between strategy, capability and force structure planning.
Warming to his theme, Fitzgibbon then turned his guns on the litany of bungled multi-billion-dollar defence equipment purchases. “The delays, cost blowouts and failure to deliver we’ve experienced in defence procurement in recent years cannot be allowed to continue.”
Identifying the problems, of course, is the easy part. Fixing them - particularly defence procurement implementation, which is reknowned for cost blowouts and delays everywhere - will be much harder.
As Senator Andrew Bartlett reminds us, it’s kind of amazing how the fact that Australia has a bunch of combat troops in Afghanistan has disappeared off into bipartisan never-land, despite what appears to be at the very least a severe lack of progress in…well, whatever it is the West’s troops are supposed to be doing. According to Seamus Milne at The Guardian, the Taliban - whomever they are - are increasing their attacks:
For all the insistence by Britain’s defence secretary, Des Browne, and others that this is a “commitment which could last decades”, there is no doubt that armed resistance to foreign occupation is growing and spreading. Nato forces’ own figures show that attacks on western and Afghan troops were up by almost a third last year, to more than 9,000 “significant actions”. And while Nato claims that 70% of incidents took place in the southern Taliban heartlands, the independent Senlis Council thinktank recently estimated that the Taliban now has a permanent presence in 54% of Afghanistan, arguing that “the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when”. Meanwhile, US-led coalition air attacks reached 3,572 last year, 20 times the level two years earlier, as more civilians are killed by Nato forces than by the Taliban and suicide bombings climbed to a record 140. The Kabul press last week predicted a major Taliban offensive in the spring.
The intensity of this armed campaign reflects a significant broadening of the Taliban’s base, as it has increasingly become the umbrella for a revived Pashtun nationalism on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border, as well as for jihadists and others committed to fighting foreign occupation.
Continue reading ‘The other quagmire - Afghanistan’
Two tidbits of information suggesting the worst aspects of the former government’s treatment of asylum-seekers is coming to an end. Firstly, the detention center on Nauru is closing, with the people detained there, such as a group of Sri Lankans, to be resettled in Australia. The second is that the high-security section of Villawood Detention Center is going to be either fixed or closed.
Why the qualification? While the practice of sending asylum-seekers to foreign countries for detention will end, the replacement isn’t exactly ideal either. Ones picked up outside Australia’s migration zone will now be taken to the new detention center on Christmas Island, which may technically be Australian territory but is a very, very long way from convenient scrutiny. The design of that facility also raises some concerns, to say the least.
All in all, steps towards improvement, but as has been noted before, the new government haven’t exactly demonstrated themselves to be a progressive’s dream on Laura Norder issues. It’ll be something to continue watching closely.
On my holiday, I discovered a fascinating dimension of the Australian government’s war on boat people. I wonder whether all those voters who salivated at the prospect of enhanced customs and immigration powers to keep out terrrsts realise what their taxes are actually paying for?
Let me begin by saying that I admire the resolve and determination of the Australian Customs Service to ensure that every single boat arrival to Australia is duly authorised.
In fact, so dedicated are they to this cause that they are prepared to endure 4 hellish days on luxury cruise liners like the above, just to check all the passengers’ arrival cards.
Continue reading ‘War on boat people (no job too large!)’
If Joe Hockey - or his Labor successor - start talking about what a great idea the “not-an-ID-card” Access Card - is, here’s a tale from the UK about the hazards of giving governments too much personal data. The Guardian reports:
On October 18, a junior civil servant at the child benefit offices in Tyne and Wear set in train a series of events which put 25 million people at risk of fraud, forced the resignation of the government’s most senior tax collector, put in doubt the future of the government’s ID card scheme, and reinforced doubts as to the competence Gordon Brown’s administration.
It is understood (though not yet absolutely established) that on that Thursday, two CDs, password-protected but containing the government’s entire database of child benefit claimants, including the bank details of 7.25 million families, were sent from the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) offices in Waterview Park, Washington, to the National Audit Office on Buckingham Palace Road, London. The government and police believe they were sent by a civil servant with IT know-how, unregistered, via the HMRC’s internal postal system, operated by the private courier TNT. But they did not arrive.
Continue reading ‘25 million people’s personal data “lost in the mail” by UK government’
Please visit Jim’s blog Rage and Enthusiasm for a fully hyperlinked version should you wish to refer to any of the sources.
Immigration Minister, Kevin Andrews, is simply not to be trusted on serious matters relating to human and legal rights. Indeed, the collective effort of politicians and public officers in the Haneef case was to deny Dr Haneef his rights as an Australian resident. And the Australian public has every right to be cynical about the performance of all the federal players in this case.
Continue reading ‘Guest Post by Jim McDonald: The Haneef coverup’
From today’s Crikey:
There was a forerunner of things to come in the 2004 election campaign when John Howard announced a new quasi-system of “Australian technical colleges”, many of which still aren’t up and running (a major reason why Moreton MP Gary Hardgrave lost his Ministry gig, though his desire to spend more time with his electorate made sense in spades).
In truth, these colleges hardly matter. The symbolism is all. It goes to the same sort of backward looking, implicitly blokey theme that John Howard puzzlingly ended his debate final statement with - trades good, uni bad. 3Rs good, book learnin’ liable to lead to refugee lovin’.
As with another now forgotten election promise ($800 to apprentices for toolkits), it’s the novelty of the announcement and the message it sends that’s the thing, as Peter Martin astutely observes. Labor’s proposed integration of vocational education with senior schooling, pioneered in Queensland (where there’s often also a particular vocational tinge to senior colleges - though you’d wait in vain for Howard to announce funding for a creative arts high school), makes much more sense in terms of skills policy and labor supply.
So now we have a micro-system of two “Australian Defence Technical Colleges”. One’s to be in Ipswich. Why? According to the PM, because it’s a defence hub. Really?
Continue reading ‘Defending what exactly?’
The threat of terrorism dominates usual discussions and definitions of security. Today Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty reminded us that the idea of security is not a clinically defined concept.
Keelty, rightly, has stated that “climate change is going to be the security issue of the 21st century.”
The definition of security often seems to stop with idea of protecting a nation from internal or external threats that would do harm to the people, institutions and values of a society. The obvious implication of climate change would be the uprooting of millions of people.
And Commissioner Keelty warned that a mass displacement of people in the Asia-Pacific region would only create more social unrest.
“In their millions, people could begin to look for new land, and they’ll cross oceans and borders to do it,” he said.
“Existing cultural tensions may be exacerbated as large number of people undertake a forced migration
Keelty’s concerns regarding the security threat of climate change are welcome but the idea is not new. Back in 1989, Jessica Tuchman Mathews argued for a redefinition of security to include “resouce, environmental and demographic issues.”
Via Mathews, it can be argued that environmental issues can lead to conflict. A decline in a resource or sharing scarce resources can impact economic performance. This in turn decreases political stability. The increase in frustration and resentment can lead to unrest with severe political and social consequences. An internal conflict such as a civil war can easily threaten the security of other nations via inflaming preexisting tensions or creating a refugee crisis.
Keelty’s remarks are a welcome reminder that climate change is not simply the loss of habitat for polar bears nor a few South Pacific islands disappearing under the waves. The impact will be felt by every nation and presents grave concerns about security when so many people could be displaced and world economies falter causing further tension.
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