Trust Me…I’m From the Feds…

Nov 14, 2007 | Australian Values, Citizenship, Corruption, Cultural Values, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Immigration, Legal, Media Values, OzPol Values, Racism, Terrorism, Values

Trust Me…I’m From the Feds…

 

Wha..!? I woun’t not of never of dun nuffink so bad like wot you say!

 

Federal agent Bruce Pegg, who interviewed Mr Ul-Haque in prison, told NSW Supreme Court judge Michael Adams he had done nothing improper by questioning Mr Ul-Haque without a caution.

” Why didn’t you caution him when you were going to ask him questions which were capable of exposing him to a criminal charge?” Justice Adams asked him.

 

“There was no intention in my mind of using that conversation in any proceedings against Mr Ul-Haque,” Agent Pegg said.

 

Justice Adams: “It would rather depend on what he told you, wouldn’t it?”

Thank christ for judges like Adams.

Supposedly Ul-Haque declined the kind offer to wear a wire to attempt to incriminate another person. He had an opinion about that, he told an AFP officer, who allegedly said:

“Well you know what they say about opinions: opinions are like arseholes; everyone’s got one.”

And you know what they say about arseholes: Mick Keelty’s got thousands of them. That’s how he shits on Australia. 

Justice Adams said ASIO officers

“committed the criminal offences of false imprisonment and kidnapping.”

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 AFP with the same vigour and determination that it showed against…oh, I don’t know…Mohamed Haneef, say?

Dear Bob Correll

Nov 13, 2007 | Australian Values, Border Security, Citizenship, Corruption, Cultural Values, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Immigration, Legal, Media Values, OzPol Values, Racism, Values

Dear Bob Correll

 

To: Mr Bob Correll,
Deputy Secretary
Department of Immigration and Censorship

 

Dear Bob,

Bob, you aren’t replying to any of my messages. Is everything all right? I thought we had something really special for a while.

Bob, you wrote to me earlier this year, explaining to me all about “Australia’s reputation overseas”, of which you were clearly most protective. You talked about “the important business managed by the Department, including the processing of visa applications”.

But now, Bob, this shocking news; I’m having trouble working out how it all fits with what you have said.

Bob apparently, according to the scurrilous Mainstream Media , in 1999 your department detained a certain Tony Tran in a breach of the necessary procedure which requires your department to notify a person that their bridging visa has been cancelled, before, in fact, locking them up.

Now, I know that you are the go-to guy about visas and their clever use as a tool of government policy, so I know that you will have been appalled — appalled !— at this oversight when you found out about it. And you will have been terribly upset that the said Tony Tran was bashed by another inmate while enduring his five years of illegal detention at the hands of your important department.

Of course, we can all understand that your department can’t be held to blame – or to account – for Tran’s broken marriage, or his separation from his baby son for … how long? Just because Tran says,

“I never got to say goodbye and I never got to kiss my son”,

I mean, we need a sense of perspective, don’t we?

After all, your department has lots of really “important business” to manage which takes precedence over the human concerns of mere “people”; important business such as making stirring speeches at expensively-catered conferences for the high-flying and influential; speeches with impressive titles like 

‘Managing our shared future: the use of the visa as a whole-of-government policy tool’[!], or

‘Enhancing ethics and governance while transforming the business[!]’.

“The business”, Bob?

It’s “a business“?

Does the Department consider what it does to unfortunate, desperate refugees as “giving them the business”, perhaps?

Ah, yes. Now we remember!

It was you yourself who was able to turn unemployment into just such a “business“.

A business is not about people, is it.

It’s about “Outcomes” and “”, “Deliverables” and perhaps your favourite, “Compliance”.

A business has the wonderful ability to remove those pesky “human beings” from the equation almost entirely.

Well done!

No wonder John Howard and Kevo Andrews love you!

Bob, I understand now what you meant about ‘the important business managed by the Department’.

And, look, I know it may not look so generous in hindsight, that thing about changing Tony’s baby’s name to a more Korean-sounding one so he could be deported to Korea. It might look somewhat … I don’t know … callous? … cruel and heartless? … unbelievably inhumane? … to some.

But I’m sure that in some way which, in our ignorance, mere people like myself can’t grasp, “Australia’s reputation overseas” has been immeasurably enhanced by this episode.

By the way, I have discovered your website. I like its design very much and would really like one just like it for my very own one day.

Anyway, I came across a page called “Success Stories of Australian Migration”. And I searched and searched but I couldn’t find anything there about Tony Tran! Nor could I discover anything about Vivian Solon or Cornelia Rau, or about Robert Jovocic.

Nothing at all.

Odd, I thought, when they were all examples of success stories of your Department’s important business.

On a personal note, Bob, I just noticed you have five kids! Geez, mate, bit of a stud, eh! Eh? How do you fit them all in the Volvo?

Just, you know, Bob mate, keep your eye on them. Please. You wouldn’t want them being renamed and packed off to some strange country before you’ve had a chance to kiss them goodbye. Would you?

P.S. How’s the job-hunting going? You’ve only got a couple of weeks.

… Oh, Bob, I’ve just been informed that Tran’s case was only one of more than 200 others in which the Ombudsman has determined people have been unlawfully detained, just like Tony Tran. That really is some success story for your department and its important work.

Don’t you agree all these cases really ought to be shown on your beaut website? It seems you might be required to front a Royal Commission if Labor succeeds in a few days. That would be exciting for you, wouldn’t it!

Who is DIC’s Grima Wormtongue?

Nov 2, 2007 | Australian Values, Border Security, Corruption, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Immigration, OzPol Values, Religious Values, Values

Who is DIC’s Grima Wormtongue?

Polishing your arse on a public service seat

 

A leading defence lawyer and close follower of the Haneef case, barrister Greg Barns, last night said the emails showed that “the AFP in conjunction with the Government were essentially completely undermining the judicial process”.
“They were ripping up the doctrine of the separation of powers,” Mr Barns said.

“What you are seeing here is the politicisation of an investigation and the AFP working hand-in-glove to formulate that.

“It shows there was a pre-judgment by Minister Andrews and the Government, prior to the magistrate’s decision being taken, and this decision was politically stage-managed rather than being done according to law.”

What a disappointment for poor Gollum Andrews! Brimming with christian belief, though of limited intellect, and a desire to do good in the world (at least as defined by his christian beliefs) he is now reduced to being the bumboy for a frail, doomed old man. Instead of doing good he has apparently been breaking the law, or at least his oath to serve the Australian people ‘well and truly’. Is it treason or a high crime in Australia to betray a sworn oath? Forced to blow the racist dog-whistle last month. Forced to rip up the separation of powers over Haneef. Forced to ignore habeas corpus. Forced to sell his soul to the devil (tough gig for a christian boy).

Frankly, we don’t care any more about Kevi Andrews. He’s a goner politically. He’s been converted from an idealist to a party hack. He should just go.

We’re far more interested in who gave him the advice. Why, wouldn’t the best man for the job be the owner of a Public Service Medal – rumoured to be obtainable by polishing your arse on a public service seat for enough years?

Wouldn’t the perfect person for the job be someone who would be responsible for, say, borders, compliance, and detention? Someone with a special interest, perhaps, in visas and the use of the visa as a tool for enforcing whole of government policy?

Wouldn’t the ideal person be someone who, having made a glorious career out of devising exciting new ways to punish the unemployed for being unemployed, had then turned his obvious talents to the continuing and fascinating problem of devising innovative ways to punish refugees for being desperate?

Why, stap me bollocks!

Could it be our own Grima Wormtongue, our old friend Bob Correll?

Surely not?

Surely Bob could not conceivably have been involved in any way in helping to devise a special contingency plan to entertain Mohamed Haneef for just a little bit longer in Australia? Naah. But if he had, might he have broken the law in doing so?  Don’t know.

Look, sorry, would you mind if Bob and I just have a private conversation over here? Just talk amongst yourself for a moment……

Yeah, look, Bob, it seems as though your political masters are going to be turfed in a couple of weeks and that might land you in a bit of a spot, you know? I mean, you’re a bit too…politicised?…don’t you agree? Just a little bit too…tainted?…with the extremist brush, do you think, to be really acceptable to the new regime? You probably should see if you can’t find something to “fall back on”, if you know what I mean.

Well, it just so happens that apparently there are any number of really effective job agencies, federally funded as it turns out, who could have you come in for several hours a week and read the job ads in their free newspapers, or trawl through the internet CareerOne ads for warehouse general hands and jobs like that. Some of those jobs pay up to $15 an hour! Several of them may even be within 90 minutes travelling distance of your home! And to keep you going for the time being there’s this truly excellent and efficient and caring organisation called Centrelink where you can stand in a queue for a few hours each fortnight to help pass the time. And in return they’ll begrudgingly give you enough money to pay about half of your essential living expenses each fortnight, so that’s something to look forward to, Bob, eh? What do you think? Bob?

Bob?

G’day again. Sorry. Bob’s just gone off. Don’t know why he was upset. Hope he finds a job that suits his talents. Maybe he could have a chat to Blackwater – they’re pretty big on “compliance”. Maybe with his experience in remote detention policy he could be a consultant to Guantánamo. Maybe he could sell off a couple of basic Australian values for a few pieces of silver…

Freedom of Speech and APEC

Sep 29, 2007 | Australian Values, Freedom of Speech, OzPol Values, Values

Freedom of Speech and APEC

Do Australians have freedom of speech?

Do Australians have freedom of speech? And, if so, was that freedom of speech illegally curtailed by the Howard government and the NSW government during APEC?

IANAL but it seems so.

Freedom of speech is not a stated right in the Constitution but laws restricting freedom to discuss, debate and publish communications concerning politics, political parties and individual politicians are disallowed in the Constitution, by implication, as inimical to the nature of the representative political system which was intended to be created by the Constitution.

In political matters there is “an area of immunity from legal control, particularly from legislative control.”

You might think that the APEC demonstration on Saturday 8 September was a political statement. You might think that the size and intended path of that demonstration was part of the statement itself. You might think that any legal action which attempted to curtail and restrict the size and place of that statement was improper and contrary to the Constitution (e.g. ss 7 and 24 and the related sections).

You might think that a state and federal police presence which by its size was intended to and/or in fact did intimidate people so that they might have feared fully to express [publish] their views, or which actually prevented people from communicating their views — either before or during the expression of those views — was in contravention of the Commonwealth Constitution.

You might even believe it arguable that a wall, erected pursuant to a legal process, which protected certain political leaders from receiving communications from electors, was in contravention of the Constitution.

You might even think that the Howard government does not particularly care for the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia and that they act despite it and in contravention of it and, where necessary to their agenda, work around it.

We might think, and you might agree, that the letter which Values Australia received in March from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship

  • which held a variety of laws and acts to our head, and
  • which attempted to intimidate Values Australia by calling Values Australia “misleading and offensive”, and
  • claimed that it “may seriously damage Australia’s reputation overseas”, and
  • claimed that it “may also create confusion regarding the important business managed by the Department”

was acting illegally in this attempt to use the law to intimidate, and to restrict the expression of political opinion.

You might think that it is time the Howard government was removed from office.

You might think that the Iemma government in NSW is a total joke and that you wished there were a credible alternative.

The full text of a High Court case — Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation — which discussed the issue of freedom of speech is here:

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/1997/25.html

And here are some of the relevant excerpts:

” There is implied in the Commonwealth Constitution a freedom to publish material:

(a) discussing government and political matters;

(b) of and concerning members of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia which relates to the performance by such members of their duties as members of the Parliament or parliamentary committees;

(c) in relation to the suitability of persons for office as members of the Parliament.”

[ … ]

Freedom of communication

Freedom of communication on matters of government and politics is an indispensable incident of that system of representative government which the Constitution creates

[ … ]

Communications concerning political or government matters between the electors and the elected representatives, between the electors and the candidates for election and between the electors themselves were central to the system of representative government, as it was understood at federation[43]. While the system of representative government for which the Constitution provides does not expressly mention freedom of communication, it can hardly be doubted, given the history of representative government and the holding of elections under that system in Australia prior to federation, that the elections for which the Constitution provides were intended to be free elections in the sense explained by Birch. Furthermore, because the choice given by ss 7 and 24 must be a true choice with “an opportunity to gain an appreciation of the available alternatives”, as Dawson J pointed out in Australian Capital Television Pty Ltd v The Commonwealth[44], legislative power cannot support an absolute denial of access by the people to relevant information about the functioning of government in Australia and about the policies of political parties and candidates for election.

That being so, ss 7 and 24 and the related sections of the Constitution necessarily protect that freedom of communication between the people concerning political or government matters which enables the people to exercise a free and informed choice as electors. Those sections do not confer personal rights on individuals. Rather they preclude the curtailment of the protected freedom by the exercise of legislative or executive power. As Deane J said in Theophanous[45], they are “a limitation or confinement of laws and powers [which] gives rise to a pro tanto immunity on the part of the citizen from being adversely affected by those laws or by the exercise of those powers rather than to a ‘right’ in the strict sense”. In Cunliffe v The Commonwealth[46], Brennan J pointed out that the freedom confers no rights on individuals and, to the extent that the freedom rests upon implication, that implication defines the nature and extent of the freedom. His Honour said[47]:

“The implication is negative in nature: it invalidates laws and consequently creates an area of immunity from legal control, particularly from legislative control.”

 

[our emphases]

hat-tip to Club Troppo

The Courtier’s Reply

Sep 18, 2007 | Australian Values, Cultural Values, Freedom of Speech, Religious Values, Values

The Courtier’s Reply

The Emperor’s New Clothes

 

The King is in the altogether,
The altogether, the altogether,
He’s altogether as naked as the day that he was born.
~ Danny Kaye/HC Andersen

One of the constant “arguments” – actually not so much an argument as a condescending whinge – made against Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion is Dawkins’ failure deeply to consider the omnitude of historical religious discourse – what Sam Harris in Letters to a Christian Nation describes as “bookish men parsing a collective delusion” – and in fact this “oversight” is often used to insinuate an intellectual inferiority.

Of course it is nothing of the sort.

The worst, or at least most voluble, of these – really, mendacious – detractors is H. Allen Orr who wrote

” You will find no serious examination of Christian or Jewish theology in Dawkins’s book (does he know Augustine rejected biblical literalism in the early fifth century?), no attempt to follow philosophical debates about the nature of religious propositions (are they like ordinary claims about everyday matters?), no effort to appreciate the complex history of interaction between the Church and science (does he know the Church had an important part in the rise of non-Aristotelian science?), and no attempt to understand even the simplest of religious attitudes (does Dawkins really believe, as he says, that Christians should be thrilled to learn they’re terminally ill?).

Breathtakingly illogical, as you can see, since Dawkins’ point is not the finer subtleties of religious credos but lack of any gods at all.

Dawkins has attempted to answer these critics and criticisms, but it is difficult to hope that your answer might make sense to someone who so obviously cannot, or refuses to, understand the question.

Dawkins wrote to The Independent to answer two other such detractors, Messrs Cornwell and Stanford:

” Cornwell’s slighting of my reading list is singled out for special praise by Stanford. This is a stock criticism. It assumes that there is a serious subject called Theology, which one must study in depth before one can disbelieve in God. My own stock reply (Would you need to read learned volumes on Leprechology before disbelieving in leprechauns?) is now superseded by P Z Myers’ brilliant satire on the Emperor’s New Clothes…

Stanford’s trump card is his observation that “religion is not primarily about belief, as we understand the word today, but faith.” Religion, as he sums it up, “simply isn’t about facts.”

Exactly. I couldn’t have put it better myself.

So here is the meat of The Courtier’s Reply by PZ Myers.

” I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor’s boots, nor does he give a moment’s consideration to Bellini’s masterwork, “On the Luminescence of the Emperor’s Feathered Hat”. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor’s raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion; Dawkins cavalierly dismisses them all.
[….]
Dawkins arrogantly ignores all these deep philosophical ponderings to crudely accuse the Emperor of nudity.

How dare he. The impertinence!

Grey Cardigans at 20 Paces

Aug 15, 2007 | Arts, Australian Values, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Freedom of Speech, Media Values, OzPol Values, Religious Values, Science Values, Values

Grey Cardigans at 20 Paces

 

The greater triumphs and achievements

 

Today in 3QuarksDaily Abbas Raza quotes Nehru:

“   We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us.

Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

This is precisely the opportunity, we thought, that Australia faces right now and seems, world-wearily, to be about to decline.

Thirty-five years ago Australians were excited at the prospect of throwing off the shackles of 25 years of boring, po-faced, arrogantly self-righteous, calvinoid/augustinoid coalition rule. And how we did throw them off!

Australia experienced a cultural excitement and energy and a social flowering unseen in decades. If ever. And brief though it was it changed our social landscape and our cultural and creative self-confidence for decades to come.

It took a man who was a visionary – an arrogant visionary, for sure (a justifiably arrogant visionary, perhaps) – with almost unlimited willingness to nurture his vision, to release us from the shackles of a most unpopular war and to have the confidence in Australians to encourage us to be ourselves, and to grow into whoever we would turn out to be.

And then before too long the lights dimmed.

The grey sludge of coalition rule crept up over our boots and then our hearts and we were once again forced by lies into the ugly, unpopular, insane, illegal horror of another war we didn’t want and didn’t understand.

And we have once again learnt obediently

to trudge daily to the foundry to collect our stale daily crumbs,

knowing that it is more than we deserve,

tugging our forelocks at the mill owners who have never had it so good,

being pathetically grateful for our good fortune,

and being expected to vote loyally yet again for our masters and betters

and the yoke of an only-mildly-despotic regime.

So now here we are again, just as we were in ’72 with the opportunity to overthrow the tyrants, to end our part in a horrible war and to flourish enthusiastically again as a nation of creators and experimenters and revellers in Life.

And we know, or we feel in our bones, that it is about to happen.

But where is the excitement?

Where is our sense of “the greater triumphs and achievements that await us”? What has happened to our courage and wisdom “to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future”?

There is none.

We are resigned.

We have on the one side the hand of living death and on the other a candidate who promises to be no different.

There is no vision, no promise.

No brave new morality,

no freshly-polished values,

no curtains opened to let the sunshine into our souls,

no outraged insistence on our birthright as free, imaginative and resourceful Australians.

Just more of the boring, left-brain, repetitive, cardiganed, conventional, calvinistic, po-faced, minutely-regulated, micro-managed, soup-kitchen-slop, soul-destroying same.

Two leaders: both of whom will send you into an instant coma, if they breathe on you,.

We do not deserve such alternatives.

We are better than that.

We ought not accept such a choice.

We are better than both of them.