verging_on_random

Pretentious. Pompous. Wanker.

July 28, 2007 on 9:40 pm | In Uncategorized |

I don’t like Kevin Andrews. In fact he gives me the creeps. I can just imagine him reading the lesson in church on Sunday before he drops into the office to sign a few execution warrants for undesirables.

But until we saw the way he handled the case of Dr Haneef and the Invisible Misdemeanour, I hadn’t realised what a pathetic, miserable excuse for a human being Kevin Andrews actually is.

His careless trashing of the principles of habeas corpus have been discussed in numerous other places. Likewise his laughably self-important media preening that his function as the minister was way more important than a mere magistrate’s. So also his transparent efforts to prejudice the community against Dr Haneef while pretending that his sole concern was to protect us all from being blown up in our beds.

But in the last 48 hours, we’ve seen what a petty, vindictive, small-minded little functionary he really is. He missed his true vocation: he should be employed as the building approvals clerk by a small shire council. He’d be deliriously happy telling people why their applications didn’t meet the requirements of clause 32, paragraph (iv) of the regulations.

If the man had any decency at all, he would have made a public apology to Dr Haneef yesterday, restored his visa, and implored the media to leave the man alone while he tried to pick up the pieces of his life. But no, that would have taken a man with some integrity and heart.

What did we get instead from this gutless petit-bourgeois administrator? First, a grudging concession that Dr Haneef need not be transported to the Villawood Concentration Camp. However, upon release he was to be grilled by members of Andrews’ department until almost midnight. About what, for Chrissake? Or was this a sustained exercise in impressing upon Dr Haneef that he fuckin’ well better not even think of talking to the media or saying anything mean about the government, because the government has long arms you know, they can make life very difficult for anyone who wants to travel beyond India any time in the next 50 years …

Meanwhile Andrews did his usual church warden impersonation to tell the nation that he’d asked for ‘further advice’ as to whether he should reconsider his decision to revoke Dr Haneef’s visa … just to reaffirm to even the slowest members of the community that he was acting on advice from public servants doncha know, and that in no way shape or form could he be held personally responsible for anything that he’d done.

This on the same day as the ignorant smartarse had announced that Dr Haneef was free to go back and live ‘in his Gold Coast unit’ … the unit that anyone who read the newspapers knew was no longer available to the doctor because the landlord had terminated the lease and the AFP had made it unliveable anyway. Still you can’t expect Andrews to know what 15 million ordinary Australians know can you? He’s too busy getting advice about how to cover his pale flabby arse to inquire about the living arrangements of someone whose life he’s screwed.

Now today, in the latest act of this shameful saga, Andrews announces that hey, guess what? After a mere 24 hours thinking about it the AFP have advised him that it’s OK to let the doctor go after all … jeez these guys can finish their investigations quickly when they have to, eh … and so Dr Haneef gets his passport back. But not his visa, needless to say, because … because … well because issuing a new visa would imply that Andrews had made a mistake to cancel it in the first place. And like any small-minded petty official anywhere, Andrews cannot admit that he made a mistake.

Nobody was surprised that as part of the deal to let Dr Haneef return to India, he was apparently required to agree not to speak to the media. I’m not aware of any statute that would allow Andrews to impose such a condition … it’s just another exercise of executive bullying to let ministers make whatever gross errors of judgement they want without ever being held to account.

Andrews continues to defend his actions, transparently trying to allocate blame to others by saying he’d asked for yet more advice which confirmed that “it was still open to me to come to the conclusion which I did.” Well of course it was ‘open’ to you dipshit, the Act gives you unfettered discretion to do whatever you bloody well want.

Let’s conclude with a comment from the DPP, made in explanation of why he decided to withdraw the charges against Dr Haneef:

“While there are inferences that are available from the material I have, I am of the view that they are not sufficiently strong to exclude reasonable hypotheses consistent with innocence,” he said in Canberra.

It would be hard to come up with a more revealing insight into the way these soulless bastards’ minds work.

CODA:

As Stu says in comments, Andrews is still suspicious of Haneef and his suspicions were ‘heightened’ because Haneef was so eager to leave Australia.

So just to recap:

• Dr Haneef was arrested as he was about to leave Australia to visit his wife and new baby;
• He has no home any more, thanks to the AFP;
• His possessions are apparently in plastic bags;
• He can’t set foot outside the door of his temporary accommodation without being mauled by a media pack;
• At any time some lunatic in Andrews’ office might think up a new way to get him back in detention.

And Andrews thinks it’s suspicious that the doctor is keen to get out of the place.

The man is beyond a joke and there must be a reasonable presumption that he’s seriously unbalanced.

And every day, he exercises ministerial discretion on matters affecting people’s lives.

But at least Teh Economy is going brilliantly.