Your OP is in custody
-Phil Ruddock
No Australian government has ever been in the habit of removing OPs from their threads, and in any case when they did so it was with the best of intentions. We refuse to have a “black armband” view of the SDMB
-John Howard
I have a screen cap of the OP. It clearly shows samboy really hitting the flavour.
Jesus, after all that the hampsters are LIBERAL!
Sorry everyone, I saved the OP at work so Ill have to post it tomorrow.
But it was bitin’ I tells ya!!
Wow, you mean the the Labor controlled Senate-select committee, who conducted the inquiry in to the Children Overboard affair, actually found Howard and Reith guilty of a cover up?
Well I’ll be jiggered!
http://asia.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=topnews&StoryID=1618277
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,5348498%5E2702,00.html
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/23/1034561545857.html
Wow. That’s, like, an awesome scandal, all you Down Under Dopers. What are they gonna do to him? What CAN they do to him?
Being an ex member of Parliament, there ain’t much that can be done, apart from ritual chanting of “we wuzz robbed”.
As Beastal noted, being an opposition magority committee, there was never much doubt as to what the magority report was going to conclude.
Unfortunately realpolitik doesn’t play by the Queensbury rules. 85% of the population supported the government moves on border control at the time and that support is rock solid now, especially amongst the Labor supporters. So the more they push the issue, the more they shoot themselves in the foot.
I think the logic runs along the lines of “Well even if they didn’t throw their children over board then, they are the sort of people who would.”
This one would might just about beat the Pretrov Affair as an election winning beat-up.
Woolly, one of the 15% of Aussies self classified as bleeding heart liberals on this issue.
I believe Beastal, that the enquiry could not link the cover up the Howard, since his staff were not permitted to appear. And that’s what the majority report said.
DDG, you say it’s an awesome scandal, but that’s not quite how it is. All this was pretty much known before the last election, and it made no difference (which, as I’ve said previously on this matter, is fairly depressing). Indeed there are those who claim that evidence that the government knew about the photos and lied helped the government in the last week of the campaign because the majority of Australians saw this as evidence that the government was prepared to be very tough with asylum seekers. I dunno about this, but I wouldn’t discount it.
Nothing will happen to Reith (who is now a defence industry lobbyist). He is no longer in Parliament, so he can’t be brought before the Privileges Committee. He has committed no crime. Perhaps his reputation will suffer, but most people had already made up their minds one way or another and this won’t change them. He knew this, of course.
There remains a festering outrage amongst the educated about this and related matters. But, due partly to the skill of the current government, partly to the wrong-footing of the major opposition parties and partly due to entirely unrelated but politically fortuitious events (9/11 etc) nobody else gives a fat rat’s clacker.
But down the track, they will fucking pay.
Sorry moderators, that last bit’s WAY too rambunctious for GD. Please delete it if you wish. Sorry.
I should have said: Whilst there are no immediate consequences for the government, no doubt there will be serious difficulties for the ruling faction of the Liberal Party due to the alienation of those whose views - whilst safely ignored now - are bound to be influentual in the longer term.
Well, even though most of this has been explained, it seems a shame not to post the OP.
On the 7th of October 2001 a boat carrying about 200 odd asylum seekers (refugees) entered Australian waters en route to Christmas Island. They were detected and stopped by the Australian Navy Vessel HMAS Adelaide and turned around and lead toward Indonesia. Later after the boat’s condition deteriorated (Mainly due to sabotage by the occupants) HMAS Adelaide started towing the boat toward the island again until it began sinking and the passengers were evacuated to the ship.
During and after the evacuation (in which some people jumped into the water) there were reports that one or more children were thrown overboard by the passengers in an effort to force the Navy to give them asylum. These reports then circulated through Navy channels and eventually reached the Defence Minister Peter Reith and subsequently the Prime Minister John Howard. In the following days both ministers confirmed in the media that children were indeed thrown overboard.
There was a bad quality video that was supposed to confirm the incident but it was later shown that it did not. There were also a series of photographs taken the day after the incident that were misrepresented in the media as showing children being thrown overboard.
Ordinarily this issue would not have been of much importance, simply a combination of misunderstandings and possibly incompetence. However this happened a month before the general election where the main issue was asylum seekers and border protection. It is almost unanimously regarded that the Howard Government’s tough stance on these issues won them the election. The problem is that the misunderstanding about the ‘children overboard’ affair was apparent almost immediately yet Howard and Reith continued to use the example of asylum seekers throwing their children overboard as political tools until after the election.
The Chief of the Defence Force knew that the allegations were false as early as the 11th of October, a full month before the election. And the results of a recent Senate Inquiry indicate that Mr Reith also knew quite early on. Yet he continued to assert that the allegations were true and allowed his Prime Minister to do the same.
Mr Reith and Mr Howard claim that they were never told that the allegations of children being thrown overboard were most probably untrue until after the election, despite the fact that the head of the defence force knew and many of their senior ministerial advisers knew. The inquiry has since found that Mr Reith mislead the Australian people.
So that is the situation. A Government used an incident they (or at the very least EVERYONE around them) knew to be untrue to reinforce their tough stance on Refugees and Border Protection and consequently win an election. Where does this leave us? I for one am outraged that a government can get away with this. The unfortunate thing is that there is really very little we can do about it. Mr Reith has since retired from politics. We can’t very well re-hold the election. A full year has past and we now have a different opposition leader.
So the lies and wilful ignorance of the Government perverted a democratic election, and there is seemingly nothing we can do about it. I for one am angry.
Where does this leave democracy? Has it failed here?
I’ve always believed the concept of misleading Parliament was more of a game of oneupmanship and ego wanking rather than any real attempt to to be fair, objective and responsive to the electorate and greater good of society.
BTW, what legal methods are there in Australia for the electorate to remove a Member of Parliament, other than at the next election?
Pretty much none. The Privileges Committee can in principle get the House to fine, imprison or expel members (or anyone elso for that matter). Members convicted of serious criminal offences are no longer eligble to serve. But there is AFAIK no procedure for removing an elected member, even if they’ve done the dirty on the electorate (for example the Speaker of samboy’s State Parliament who within a week of the election did a deal he had solomly promised he would never do). In practice naughty people are disendorsed by their party or are persuaded to resign in order to prevent further political damage to the wider party.
To address samboy’s somewhat belated OP:
I don’t think this says anything particularly new about democracy, but it certainly emphasises once again that voting is not the only feature of democracy as a legitimate decision-making mechanism. The public service has been almost entirely cowed by the government an its advisors (not that the current government started that process). The standing of the armed forces has been compromised. Intelligent thought in the media has been swamped by the brayings of Alan Jones and his ilk.
But I think it is important to recognise that much of the general public doesn’t really care about things like due process or refugees. The current government may have manipulated the agenda to exaggerate the boat people problem and they may have demonised the refugees, but people were ready to embrace their view. If anything, I suspect that the current government is a pretty good reflection of what ordinary Australians actually think. The difference is that - unlike any previous Federal government I can think of - the government was quite prepared to indulge the baser instincts of the electorate to remain in office.
All I can recommend, samboy, is to wait until the tide turns and the major political parties once again offer leadership rather than whatever it takes to win. It’s probably going to be a while.