A man of his time...

ACT Chief Minister - Haneef 'shows need' for Bill of Rights

The Canberra Times reports: "Former terror suspect Mohamed Haneef would not have been treated so "shabbily" if Australia had an ACT-style Bill of Human Rights, according to Chief Minister Jon Stanhope.

The ACT introduced the country's first Bill of Rights the ACT Human Rights Act in 2004.

Mr Stanhope said such a Bill would have given better protection to Dr Haneef were it enacted nationally. A Bill of Rights upheld the rule of law, human rights and the separation of government and the judiciary, he said.

Mr Stanhope said his main concern about the "regrettable" Haneef affair was the interference of the Federal Government in the judicial process, through the cancellation of Dr Haneef's visa."

Australia is the only western country without a national human rights act or equivalent. In 2006 New Matilda launched a campaign to promote a Private Member's Bill to bring forward draft legislation (a draft bill can be read at the New Matilda site).

Rohingyas Win Right to Seek Asylum in Australia

The Irrawaddy reports "Seven Rohingya refugees from Burma held in a camp o­n a Pacific island have won a precedent-setting legal battle to have their applications for refugee status in Australia considered by the Canberra government.

The Australian government dropped its opposition to the Rohingyas’ case for recognition as asylum seekers in a ground-breaking decision at the Australian High Court o­n Thursday.

The Rohingyas’ lawyer, David Manne, of Australia’s Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre, said in a phone interview with The Irrawaddy: “Our clients have got what they wanted and what they're entitled to under Australian law”.

The seven Rohingya refugees, he said, now had “the right to have their visa assessed according to long established Australian visa rules. So they've been vindicated and the government has conceded their case”.

The Rohingyas have been held in an offshore detention center in Nauru since last October, after beaching their boat o­n Ashmore Reef, off the northwest Australian coast two months earlier.

Under a widely criticised Australian policy called the “Pacific Solution,” asylum seekers who are caught attempting to enter Australia illegally by boat are detained at offshore detention centers such as Nauru. According to Amnesty International, Australia's offshore detention centers “severely restrict and in some cases prohibit asylum seekers from access to basic needs and rights”.

The Rohingyas o­n Nauru applied o­n October 15, 2006 for refugee status visas, but Australian authorities refused to accept their applications.

Manne said immigration officials tried to persuade them to make for Malaysia, where they “are not granted any form of status and are treated as illegal immigrants by Malaysian police and local militia, and are repeatedly arrested, detained and deported, as well as being subjected to physical and psychological abuse and mistreatment of a serious nature.”

Manne said the Australian government had tried to “dodge its legal obligations by seeking to impose a refugee assessment process o­n them that was fundamentally inferior, had no legal basis, no legal accountability or safeguards at all under any legal system, let alone the Australian o­ne”.

Manne said he was seriously concerned about the well-being of asylum seekers detained in Nauru. “Everyday in Nauru is another day of damage to them. They remain in an extremely precarious situation lessening their ability to rebuild their shattered lives.

“[Living in] limbo in Nauru has been taking a serous toll o­n their health, causes profound damage and compounds their trauma. It is absolutely fundamental that there is a prompt processing of their case.”

As yet more victims of the Pacific Solution establish their bona fides as refugees the Australian Government continues its callous disregard for the human rights of people caught up in this appalling processing system.

The PM’s war on everything - Tim Dunlop looks at the Howard phenomenon.

This article caught my eye. Tim has a studied eye for the peculiarities of our leader. The politician's politician. It helps explain why the mainstream media have been largely in thrall to Howard's leadership, too often sacrificing objective analysis for access to the political club, a self possessed elite that do not necessarily reflect the broad sweep of informed views on the performance of the government.

An excerpt of Tim Dunlop's article follows:

"Peter Hartcher gets it about right in his piece this morning about the prime minister's anti-state strategy". Noting that Mr Howard has recently pursued a strategy of attacking the states at every available opportunity, Hartcher conlcudes:

Howard sees clashing noisily with the states as a winning strategy, whether he wins the individual arguments or not. If he wins, he gets his way and prevails. He is seen as a strong, effective leader. If he does not win, he is still seen as energetic and full of fight, which is very handy for a Prime Minister whose opponents are portraying him as old and stale.

But it gets better. By being seen to stand up to the states, he helps frame one of the big questions looming for voters in the federal election - are you prepared to put every government in the land into the hands of the Labor Party?

It’s a terrific way to run the country, isn’t it? Pursue divisive policy options, refuse to negotiate on important matters, blame the states for anything you can think of, from housing affordability to interest rates, all in the name of looking “tough” and scaring people about the prospect of state and federal Labor governments. Throw in the government’s ongoing demonisation of unions and its exploitation of terrorism (bring a few hundred troops home from Iraq and you hand victory to al Qaeda) and what emerges is a picture of a government willing to do anything to stay in power.

It simply underlines the most telling ongoing criticism of the prime minister, that politics trumps policy whenever necessary. Thus, in the name of looking decisive, or imaginative, or full of ideas, we are, in the run up to an election, suddenly subjected to potentially worthwhile ideas—a water scheme, Aboriginal intervention, and, most recently, public housing (after denying there was a problem)—all hatched with a lack of proper planning and investigation, without “Ts” crossed or “Is” dotted."

Australians All - David Hicks v the United States

Click here to read the summary of the Report of the Independent Observer on the David Hicks case for the Law Council of Australia. Victorian barrister Lex Lasry was appointed Queens Counsel in 1990. In the decade that followed, he was engaged in a number of significant criminal cases, including matters involving murder, manslaughter, tax and welfare fraud and drug trafficking. He has been the chairman of the Victorian Criminal Bar Association since 2002 and is a member of the Council of the International Criminal Bar for counsel practising before the International Criminal Court.

Lasry concludes:

"Ultimately, there has been no benefit from this process; only a corrosion of the rule of law.

No ground can be claimed to have been made in the so-called War on Terror. The Military Commission process at Guantanamo likewise has neither gained from it, nor shown any prospect of improvement.

Predictably, there has been no response from the Australian Government to the consistent and widespread criticism of the Military Commissions and Guantanamo Bay generally. Their support for this process has been shameful.

They have never put an argument to the Australian public as to why the Military Commission process is “full and fair”. Now that the Hicks case is over, no doubt the hope is that the issue will disappear – and, regrettably, perhaps it will.

However, Australia’s international standing and moral authority has been diminished by its support of a process so obviously at odds with the rule of law. Those with a concern for the protection of due process should be very concerned about the future of this process, particularly given its jurisdiction to impose death penalties."

Surya Deva, Lecturer at School of Law, City University of Hong Kong, has an interesting article in On Line Opinion.

A trail of lies, deception & secrecy - a view of the Haneef case from Britain.

The Guardian ran a piece on the Haneef case yesterday. The agencies involved appear to have mishandled this investigation across the board. If this is the new anti-terrorist strategy in action then questions need to be asked about the lack of application of key rule of law principles to accused terrorists. A serious miscarriage of justice is likely when the underpinnings of our justice system are disregarded.

The lack of transparency in the handling of the case and the action of the Immigration Minister in canceling Haneef's visa on obfuscated grounds that supposedly go to the question of 'character' are worrying. On the face of it these actions do not appear to serve our democracy well nor do they reflect well on the operation of our justice system. Presumed innocence and habeas corpus principles are abandoned in the name of national security. Now where have I heard of that happening before...?

The latest news is that a prominent QC has indicated the Haneef case will be dropped by the DPP.

Refugees in Australia - Q & A (xiii) - Why shouldn't Australia detain children seeking asylum?

Children are vulnerable - that's why international laws are designed to protect them.

Australia's ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) obliges it to maintain standards to protect children's rights and to provide them with humanitarian assistance.

Detaining children is strongly discouraged under the CRC. It provides that children should be detained only as a last resort, and then only for the shortest appropriate period of time. Any detention of children must be subject to periodic judicial review.

Australia's system of mandatory detention of undocumented asylum seekers is a serious breach of the CRC. Far from being used as a last resort, children are automatically detained - and for an indefinite period.

Children seeking asylum in Australia have no opportunity to challenge their deprivation of liberty in a fair hearing, nor are there periodic reviews of their detention as required by CRC.

Most Australian detention centres do not have the capacity to separate families from the general adult detainee group - a specification in international guidelines on refugees.

Boat victims remembered - SIEV X memorial approved

The Canberra Times reports "A CONTROVERSIAL "people's memorial" to the 353 asylum-seekers from the SIEV X, who drowned almost six years ago, has won official approval to be erected on the banks of Lake Burley Griffin.

Both the National Capital Authority and the ACT Government have given the go-ahead for the SIEV X memorial to be sited on the lakeshore at Weston Park.

It will comprise a snaking line of 300 painted timber poles, made by schools, churches and community groups around the country, to commemorate the SIEV X victims.

The 353 people, mostly Iraqi mothers and their children, drowned when their overcrowded refugee boat sank en-route to Christmas Island from Indonesia in October 2001.

The loss of the boat, code-named Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel X, or SIEV X, led to a furious political row over the extent of the Australian Navy's knowledge of the sinking and the Howard Government's policies on asylum-seekers.

Psychologist Steve Biddulph and artist Beth Gibbing, both of Tasmania, have been lobbying government bodies for four years to get approval for the memorial.

An attempt to erect a temporary memorial was scuppered last year by the authority amid accusations of political interference by the Federal Government.

Mr Biddulph told the Sunday Canberra Times that the memorial would be in place for six weeks.

"This memorial tells the world that Australia cares and is not just defined by fear and greed," he said.

NCA spokesman John Thistleton said the authority's opposition to the memorial had never been political but had been based on the lack of permission from the land owners, the ACT Government.

Mr Thistleton said the SIEV X memorial project, which was supported by Chief Minister Jon Stanhope, had received the territory's backing before applying to the authority.

For a permanent memorial to be erected the NCA had to agree the monument had cultural significance to Australia, and represented the nation's unique heritage and background.

But a cross-party committee of federal parliamentarians, chaired by the Prime Minister, would have the final say."

This last hurdle does not inspire confidence. There are unanswered questions about SIEV X that should be the subject of a forensic inquiry in the future.