This Dog Won't Run

Lame Excuses

After all the brouhaha last week, the charges against Dr Haneef were not only dropped, the case against him seems to have crumbled completely. If the Federal Government was looking for some kind of electoral boost out of hounding out another 'terrorist', it has backfired badly - and rightfully so.

As yesterday's extraordinary events unravelled:

■The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, Damien Bugg, could not explain how a prosecutor falsely told a court that Dr Haneef's SIM card was found in a burnt Jeep Cherokee at Glasgow Airport.

■Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said police had done their job professionally and vowed that the investigation into any Australian connection with the British terror attacks would continue. He would not rule out further charges against Dr Haneef.

■Mr Andrews said Dr Haneef could leave prison and live in "residential detention" at his apartment on the Gold Coast or another place of his choosing.

■Mr Andrews said he would seek advice from the Commonwealth Solicitor-General on whether the decision to drop the charge against Dr Haneef had any bearing on his earlier decision to revoke his 457 work visa and deport him.

Dr Haneef's wife, Firdous Arshiya, said last night she had thanked God when she learned the charge against her husband had been dropped. "Now I want him to come home as quickly as possible," she said.

As immigration lawyers expressed fury about the way Dr Haneef's case had been handled and minor-party politicians demanded that Mr Andrews resign, the Labor Opposition, which until yesterday had supported the Commonwealth's stance, called for an independent inquiry into the affair.

Prime Minister John Howard last night sought to distance his Government from the debacle. "The detention of the man was undertaken by the police and not at the request or direction or encouragement of the Government," he said.

The latest twists in the saga came after Mr Bugg ordered that a charge of recklessly supplying a mobile SIM card to a terrorist organisation be withdrawn, and that no evidence be offered.

Mr Bugg admitted that his office had made a mistake in advising police to charge Dr Haneef and that one of his prosecutors had given a Brisbane court incorrect evidence, possibly because he had been pressed for time. "On my view of the matter, a mistake has been made," Mr Bugg said. "I will now take further steps to inquire as to how that mistake occurred."

As I keep saying, we have idiots running the government.
Kevin Andrews is culpable in trying to circumvent a man's rights in the name of the powers invested in him as minister. If he needs to ask the Solicitor-General, he's clearly a sub-literate moron when it comes to ethics. Mr Andrews, you hoisted him to hang, you'd better be willing to take the wrap for hoisting an innocent man, without trial.

Clearly Kevin Andrews is an incredibly stupid man if he thinks his own ill-advised decision to revoke the 457 visa just to keep Dr. Haneef locked up without charge, wouldn't come back to remove him from his office. It's just the kind of scalp the Federal Government deserves to surrender, but the amazing thing is he didn't see it coming. So the question that begs to be answered is, what exactly did he see? A free kick for the Government? Is that the kind of minister we want?

For a bunch of conservatives with privileged backgrounds, half of them with law degrees, it's astounding they can't see how fundamentally un-conservative their leap to justifying the 'Anti-Terror' laws have been. Don't any of them remember from their Law School days, Habeus Corpus?
This fiasco has been due for a while since the Federal Government introduced their idiotic, anti-civil, so called 'Anti-Terror' Laws. At some point somebody was going to try and hoist an innocent man up the post and only to get found out that the system (comprised of equally stupid men and women) threw up a glitch and the government would end up with egg on their face. Which is why Habeus Corpus has existed in law for a long time.

What's worse is that the Labor Opposition played along with this fiasco until it became clear that there was no reasonable case against Dr. Haneef, but that too is another rant that I'll leave for another day.
I keep telling you, idiots are running our government and clearly, we're worse off for it.