The whole Report, Tony, reaching a crescendo at pp.175-177 (watch the activities of Mr White as he bounces around between the OPM&C and DIAC, not that it isn’t fascinating to read that Mr Howard absolutely relies on an unverified self-account of a morning meeting which apparently discussed nothing important, and if it did discuss anything it was that Andrews was sole decision-maker and Mr Howard was just having a nice chat to reinforce that, while Mr Ruddock independently denies ever having attended any such meeting, although it seems well-accepted that he was there, but he undoubtedly remained very silent on legal matters, not that he was there, according to him…if there’s an answer to the mystifying and puzzling behaviour of Andrews, it is most suggestive on that occasion, and it’s pretty evident to this trained eye, and no doubt anyone who reads the Report, that forgetful Phil and Honest John, who wouldn’t release his staff member to aver to the veracity of Mr Howard’s recollections, lumbered Andrews with the hatchet job on Haneef so that Phil didn’t get his hands dirty as the A-G responsible for signing off on the flawed anti-terror charges and now irrelevant criminal justice stay certificate, which would have been the natural course of things; and given that the whole debacle, otherwise, was in Phil’s lap, and he had read both the AFP and ASIO briefings and couldn’t possibly have feigned ignorance of discrepancies without it coming back to bite him on the ass). From pre-prepared talking points and teleconferences, to cherry-picked and purpose-solicited information collections from agencies as bases for ‘contingencies’ and advices for ministerial advisors and decision-makers, the whole thing was an orchestrated campaign to avoid administering ‘natural justice’ and to ‘get’ their man, one way or another.

TB is always much more succinct: it’s about equity, not law; and, ultimately, it’s about justice.

I guess it all depends on whether or not one considers an orchestrated campaign by the State to rely on crafty laws, specifically drafted to avoid judicial checks and balances, and to avoid delivering natural justice outcomes as a specific end, is an acceptable standard of either Law or behaviour by elected and unelected officialdom at the level of Australian political, public service, and legal cultures.

Having said all that, though, I really did enjoy Clarke’s consistent tongue-in-cheek style…particularly the bit where he suggested that the next time an Australian Government chooses to go down the characterisations and associations path to enliven natural justice avoidance, to get a real lawyer to coordinate the crossing of T’s and dotting of I’s on what is handed up to a Minister…I guess all of the tricky legal scheming was for nought when the thing had to be done both at arm’s length and within the Chinese walls of a whole-of-government approach; or, maybe, schemes cooked up on the fly to impress the Australian public, err, actions taken with a view to a perception of what some putative Australian public might want to see happen (a motive referenced in the Report, and clearly attributed to Andrews, the deeply reflective and independent thinker whose decision-making processes wouldn’t have changed no matter what information he was shown in briefings or of which he was otherwise generally aware, but studiously avoided enquiring into) simply aren’t half as smart as they first appeared when gone over with a fine-tooth comb after the event. Just mystifying. Absolutely, completely, unfathomably, astoundingly, mind-bogglingly mystifying. But non sequitur faux pas and ellipsis are like that; there must be a gap somewhere in the accounts; and, if it were a puzzle, one just might have a perfect fix on what the shape of that missing piece of the jigsaw is, if not its exact content, simply from manifest and well-evidenced surroundings: res ipsa loquitur. No recommendations.

Hey TB, have a good one.

Truth, justice and the Aussie Way!

I was just mesmerised that someone could use so many big words in one paragraph…

Hey, whose side are you on anyway, TB?

Oh, that’s right, the other side.

I stand by what I said. Evidence that mistakes were made is not in any way “evidence that all responsible decision-makers defaulted to an ideology at variance with reality and operated in an uncritically prejudicial and harmful manner, and that they were all very comfortable doing so”.

However, if you can quote the Clarke enquiry criticising the motives of any of those involved, I may reconsider my position.

Go, Legion!

Now you are just being obtuse, Tony. Having clearly prefaced that no conspiracy is necessary when there is a flawed culture, you then go on to address and vanquish a strawman argument I didn’t make? Onya! Meanwhile, back in an objective reality, Clarke QC’s Report is replete with observations that those many, many ‘mistakes’ are the direct consequences of the subjective mindsets of the involved parties, amounting to an ideology or ideologies at distinct variance with any facts, then or since. That somebody drafted themselves up a set of anti-terror laws which allows subjective mindsets, and decisions flowing from them, to effectively go unchecked, regardless of actual knowledges or constructive knowledges which differ from their preferred subjective reality and operative, if critically unexamined ideology, really is the crux of the issue. The Clarke Report is nothing but a catalog of concatenating ideological lapses. How that escapes your awareness is beyond my comprehension.

Ya just did…!

Must go back and check The Howard Years – if I recall there was a couple of odd remarks made about The Haneef Affair…

…and I do reckon their was a conspiracy to “make the laws work” – I grew up during the Joh Bjelke Peterson era!