How much time should one spend on the slug? We don’t even feel like woo-hoo. Just “at last” and “good riddance” and “what took you so long”.

One of the things we really dislike about (not exclusively-) [tag]Australian culture[/tag] is the way we rail against awful people and the moment they die or resign we politely say ever such nice things about them. It’s hypocritical and weak and cowardly. We think.

We have no such qualms.

[tag]Keelty[/tag] in our view was a bad man, morally weak, a disastrous [tag]Commissioner[/tag] who willingly ran over the basics of [tag]human rights[/tag] and [tag]legal traditions[/tag] like [tag]habeas corpus[/tag] in order to pursue a flawed and misguided agenda. He was a willing and irretrievably politicised [tag]Liberal Party[/tag] stooge, and concerned more with appearance than with the truth. His most egregious failures are well-known – the obscene treatment of [tag]young Australians[/tag] in the [tag]Bali Nine[/tag] affair, [tag]Haneef[/tag], the [tag]onanist[/tag]ic display of muscle at [tag]APEC[/tag], and the [tag]Ul-Haque[/tag] farce.

Speaking of Ul-Haque we once asked, “[tag]Justice Adams[/tag] said [tag]ASIO[/tag] officers ‘committed the criminal offences of false [tag]imprisonment[/tag] and [tag]kidnapping[/tag].’ When do they go to prison? Have they been arrested and charged yet? Where are they being detained? Are they being pursued and prosecuted by the [tag]AFP[/tag] with the same vigour and determination that it showed against…oh, I don’t know…[tag]Mohamed Haneef[/tag], say?” Good question still.

Elsewhere we said:

It’s time for [tag]Mick Keelty[/tag] to resign. Or be sacked. Keelty has to go because of how he thinks about the [tag]law[/tag]. He has to go because everything points to his being utterly politicised and his making decisions on political, not legal, grounds as directed by his [then] masters, the Howard ministry. 

Keelty made, cleverly he probably thought, a Faustian pact with the [tag]Devil[/tag] of [tag]Realpolitik[/tag]. Now he’s been caught out yet again and so we say, yet again:

Do the decent thing at long last, Mick.

And we said this:

Sack [him] for [tag]misfeasance[/tag]. [tag]Malfeasance[/tag]. [tag]Non-feasance[/tag]. [tag]Abuse of power[/tag] by a [tag]public official[/tag]. Criminal stupidity. Any of those will do.

[tag]Federal Police[/tag] yesterday released a statement saying the former [tag]Gold Coast[/tag] doctor [Haneef] is no longer a person of interest to them, and they have found there are no grounds to proceed against him. [[tag]SBS[/tag] News]

Well fuck me dead – I’m [tag]Foreskin Fred[/tag]! Yes, after all this time. After all the waste. After all the harm. After all the stupidity and incompetence. After [tag]Scotland Yard[/tag] laughed at the AFP; months after the [tag]Queensland Police Service[/tag] and ASIO both said there were no grounds. After all the subversion of [tag]democracy[/tag], the courts and the rule of law.

Sack them.

Everything about the carriage of the Haneef affair by the AFP and the government suggests that it never was about public safety; that it always was a [tag]political stunt[/tag]; that it was in fact a considered and calculated decision by the AFP to use the Haneef matter for political ends. As we know from another case, the AFP sought every possible opportunity to test the envelope of the [tag]terrorism[/tag] laws. Keelty, in particular, clearly operates a political agenda, having capitulated under pressure from [tag]John Howard[/tag] years ago. He learned his lesson well and in the [tag]Haneef case[/tag] hung his hat on the re-election of the Howard government. This means that he has lost sight of his actual role, his constitutional – and certainly his moral – obligation to the people of Australia and the democracy they own.

Nothing has happened to cause us to resile from these opinions. Keelty appalls us because he respects neither democracy nor the [tag]rule of law[/tag], the law being not a tool for [tag]repression[/tag] and control but a safeguard of a vibrant [tag]civil society[/tag]. Keelty cheerfully acquiesced in the subversion of such safeguards.

We can offer you this in closing off the Book of Mick. Our TV Interview with the Secretary of DSS, [tag]Moe Vimes[/tag].

By way of explanation to the unread, “Sam” [tag]Vimes[/tag] is a fictional policeman from [tag]Terry Pratchett[/tag]‘s [tag]Discworld[/tag] series. His full name and title is His Grace, The [tag]Duke of Ankh[/tag], [tag]Commander Sir Samuel Vimes[/tag], as well as [tag]Blackboard Monitor[/tag] Vimes. Vimes is the Commander of the [tag]City Watch[/tag], the burgeoning police force of the Discworld’s largest city, [tag]Ankh-Morpork[/tag]. [tag]Moe Howard[/tag] was the one of the [tag]Three Stooges[/tag] whom, coincidentally, Keelty closely resembles.

[tag]Values Australia[/tag]: Mr Vimes, Thanks for coming in. Firstly, what does DSS stand for?

Moe Vimes: [tag]Defence Security Squadron[/tag], but some people joke that it means Department for Scaring people Shitless.

VA: The PM is big on mateship.

MV: That’s right. That’s what we are charged with defending.

VA: What’s [tag]mateship[/tag]?

MV: Mateship means you don’t dob in your mates. It’s one of Australia’s strongest values – a mate is someone who doesn’t want your job. A mate is someone who you wouldn’t fuck his de facto without telling him first.

VA: Then why did Australia dob in the Bali Nine? They didn’t root your wife without telling you, did they?

MV: Well, you know, there are thousands of young Australian kids who are alive right now.

VA: And so explain to me. The Australian kids are on death row because we dobbed them in?

MV: But there are thousands of Australian kids alive right now.

VA: Yes but the [tag]Indonesians[/tag] condemned Australian kids to die in front of a firing squad. Don’t you think that’s barbaric?

MV: [tag]Indonesia[/tag] is very strong on drugs – they don’t want their Indonesian kids dying from drugs and there are thousands of Indonesian kids alive right now.

VA: But they were taking the drugs away from Indonesia, away from Indonesian kids.

MV: Yes but there are thousands of Australian kids alive right now.

VA: We dobbed them in – supposedly they were mates because they presumably didn’t want our jobs – knowing they could face the death penalty and knowing Australia doesn’t support the [tag]death penalty[/tag].

MV: Well, yes, but some people are a bit how’s-your-father about the death penalty for the [tag]Bali bombers[/tag] – some people don’t sort of un-support it.

VA: But what was to stop us working with the Indonesians to catch the Bali Nine when they returned to Australia. Fewer drugs in Indonesia, and the perpetrators are still brought to justice – Australian justice. Australian jails. No death penalties.

MV: We have to work with the Indonesians.

VA: That would still have been working with the Indonesians.

MV: But there are thousands of Australian kids alive right now.

VA: Except, soon enough there could be a few less. And those thousands of Australian kids would still be alive if you’d waited to catch them here.

MV: But there are thousands of [tag]Australian kids[/tag] alive right now. And we have to work with the Indonesians.

VA: Moe, do you ever feel like a bit of a stooge?

MV: We have to work with the Indonesians.

VA: Thank you.

Thank you.

[tags]values, cultural values, Australian cultural values, Australian police values, Australian Federal Police, Australian legal values, legal values, ethics, morals, standards, principles[/tags]