Peter Faris on Dr Haneef:

Peter Murray writes: Re. “Peter Faris: Haneef has been correctly and lawfully treated” (yesterday, item 8). Faris says this: “This morning, The Australian details allegations of more evidence against Dr Haneef: He had pre-existing knowledge of the UK conspiracy yet he did not go to the police; He had “prolific” contact with the UK terrorists; He supplied a SIM card to his cousin knowing that it may be used in an act of terror; The SIM card was found in the Glasgow airport jeep in which his cousin sustained fatal burns.” These are just criminally libelous assertions from a so-called member of the bar who knows better. But don’t let the facts get in the way of one’s pro-government bias, eh Peter? Or question Faris’ pro-government bias, eh Crikey? It was reported on the ABC tonight that Dr Haneef’s second cousin has been charged because he received a message on that same SIM card the day of the Glasgow attack. If that was the case, it couldn’t have been in the jeep. The charge of pre-existing knowledge is actually the charge the English Police have alleged against the second cousin, who by the way is not charged with being a “UK Terrorist”. The other second cousin was “allegedly” the critically burned man in the jeep, by the way. The cousin of one of Haneef’s parents. I am astounded that you could be so cavalier as to post these allegations, clearly illegally leaked from somewhere, without any qualifiers. None of this has been alleged in court. None of it was offered as argument against bail. Yet you guys join the feeding frenzy. “Independent media?” Not evidenced by this example! “Innocent until proven guilty?” Not at Crikey.com.au – We’ll just republish any old sh-t from a regular contributor. After all, Haneef’s just a coloured Muslim foreigner. Why should Crikey apply any analysis to Peter Faris? He’s a rich white barrister: he must be right. Have a good look at the definition of racism, Crikey Eds. It exists in the omission as strongly as it exists in the commission.

Fletcher O’Leary writes: I don’t pretend to be an expert on the intricacies of the legal system, specifically the (anti-) terror laws. The closest thing to expertise I have is a semester of Law at Adelaide Uni, but I feel that I must stand up to the blatant misrepresentations of Peter Faris QC. Quite frankly, the claims that Faris made about Dr. Haneef would have found him in contempt in any court of the country. Mr. Faris (QC and regular arch conservative legal interpreter for Crikey) attempted to answer a very complex question yesterday when he asked “Why is Dr. Haneef detained?” Being the respected member of the legal fraternity he is, I would have expected a much more thorough answer from Faris. The truth is that these charges are as thin as a communion wafer, and nothing but the AFP covering their respective arses over actions that were nothing short of a hysterical wild goose chase. The only victim of the UK terrorist attack, it seems, is Haneef. It would be a completely different narrative that would be told if Crown was alleging that Haneef was aware of the terror plot or any proposed actions by his erstwhile companions, but the fact is that there is no allegation of this sort other than in the mind of our dear friend, Peter.

Gil Lambert writes: If Peter Faris supports the deportation of Dr Mohamed Haneef, it must be illegal.

Politics, terror, justice and Dr Haneef:

Bill Bariamis writes: Re. “Andrew Bartlett: our values have never been so threatened” (yesterday, item 6). I would totally concur with Senator Bartlett and a number of other writers today (eg. Greg Barns and Jeff Sparrow) on the Dr Haneef case. I am totally aghast at the attacks and incursions on our freedoms, the rule of law and the political interference with our judicial processes. This is yet another politically expedient action from the Howard Government. I wonder if Kevin Andrews will also seek to intervene in Justice Bongiorno’s decision yesterday afternoon, to grant bail to Mr Vinayagamoorthy and Mr Yathavan in Melbourne? People may view such “small incursions” into our basic rights and freedoms as acceptable, given the “terror threat”. Over time however, these things accumulate to alter our way of life and to make our society a more sinister and malevolent place – less open, less trusting, less caring and less inclusive. Going down this path is extremely dangerous – in my view much more dangerous in the long term than the “terror threat”. I hope for Kevin Andrew’s and the Government’s sake, that they have a lot more than a SIM card in the Haneef case, and that this all comes out well before the election! The election is not very far away, and they have a great deal to answer for this time: The now obvious lies about Iraq and WMD, the sycophantic relationship with the US, the AWB scandal, inaction on global warming, unaffordable housing, workplace relations, Cornelia Rau, Amanda Vanstone and the Rome appointment, Vivienne Solon and Dr Haneef ! I suspect that Bennelong (as well as a lot of other electorates) may have a new member before the end of the year!

Mike Martin writes: Re. Yesterday’s editorial. Crikey wrote: “… anti-terror laws are not worth the paper they’re printed on”. Naah! Nothing wrong with the barrel. It was just a dodgy apple. The Times of India helpfully explains, “‘Magistrate who granted bail to Haneef has anti-police image’: For Queensland Magistrate Jacqui Payne, it is not the first time she has found herself out of step with the police when she granted bail to Indian doctor Mohammed Haneef… Police Union president Gary Wilkinson said Payne’s decision was ‘a disgrace’… Payne, 46, is married to well-known defence lawyer Andrew Boe, who came to national prominence when he defended murderer Ivan Milat in 1996…” If magistrates simply followed their instructions from the Crown, the anti-terror laws would work perfectly. A magistrate who supports a suspected terrorist is obviously suspect herself, especially one who associates with someone associated with a serial killer. She should be immediately relieved of her post and placed in indefinite detention.

Libby Amiel writes: Can you get Julian Burnside or Lex Lasry to talk about how the terrorist magistrate hearing is not a “court hearing” in the normal sense. A case is not taken to the magistrate of the day like any other case but it goes in camera to one of the magistrates on a special list (ie. had a special security vetting). So already there is a presumption of bias because if the magistrate doesn’t do what the Government expects they are likely to get bumped off the special list and there may be career repercussions. And we can see the difference between those on the special list and the rest of the magistrates. The special list person – still unnamed – kept allowing them to keep the doctor but when bail came to the duty magistrate (because it is a part of the normal law) that named magistrate applied the usual rules and released him. Then got overridden by the Minister. So there is a real legal question as to whether the Federal Court is operating as an independent court on these matters or as an administrative tribunal – a body appointed and controlled by the Executive. The lawyers call it a “Chapter 3 court” meaning the Constitution in Chapter 3 says there will be an independent court system with judges appointed for life and not subject to interference from the Executive or the parliament. So Haneef has been to an administrative tribunal then finally to a real magistrate, who let him out under conditions, and then the Minister overrode the magistrate and put him back in another administrative system. Looked at like that, it’s a put up job by 2 Ministers, Rudd and Andrews. Talk about destroying democracy to save it.

Ange Kenos writes: One issue that has yet to be raised about Dr Haneef and his detention is the attitude of the British government. Haneef has committed no offense within Australian jurisdiction. Allegedly his actions occurred elsewhere. Yet has the UK put in a request for extradition? Not so apparently since he will now go to immigration detention where some poor souls have stayed for up to five years without trial, without lawyers and with almost no human rights. And we call this a civilized nation?

Ray Moore writes: Some time ago I served for five years with the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Gaza. I worked with many Palestinians and I had been a guest in many of their homes. I understand that a brother of one of the guys I knew very well (and I knew all his family well too) died fighting on the Golan Heights for Al Fatah against Israel. Should I turn myself in to Mr Ruddock (my local member) as I have probably associated with a “terrorist”?

Bob Hawksley writes: Dr Mohamed Haneef has sailed into the government’s sight as another Tampa and David Hicks all rolled into one.

Gary Irish writes: Is it possible we have an Indian overboard issue here?

Housing affordability:

Catherine Raffaele writes: Re. “Housing affordability: too many immigrants, not enough houses” (yesterday, item 28). I think blaming immigration ignores the fact that Australians changed their view of real estate in the 90s. It became an investment and many existing homeowners realised they were in the position to purchase additional properties using their equity and negative gearing. Immigration just continued the demand when that trend had run its course. While Adam Schwab is correct to link house affordability with increasing supply not ability to pay more, his simple solution to ease the crisis by “Releasing the clamps on development in fashionable suburbs” is just more short term thinking. High rise city living might be fine for singles or empty nesters, but I doubt it’s the choice of most Australians for their families seeing so many people move out of the inner city as they start having kids. You can’t have a labrador in an apartment (or you shouldn’t anyway). Sprawl is happening like it or not. We need the infrastructure and the planning to embrace it – as some other successful international cities have – so Australian families can have their cake (house) and eat it too (easily access work/school/etc).

Mitchell Holmes writes: A quote from Adam Schwab’s article: “The reason for the ‘affordability crisis’ in Australia is simple: there are more people moving to Australia than there are dwellings being constructed. The Department of Immigration noted that in 2005-2006, more than 131,000 people arrived in Australia (of which around 75% are deemed to be ‘highly skilled’). At the same time, the ABS reports that around 4,500 new dwellings are constructed each month – or about 55,000 per year. That means there are far more people moving to Australian than there are houses being built.” These statistics are not the problem. Rarely will new immigrants live by themselves – many will live within a family of several members. In 2005-2006 the ratio of new immigrants to new dwellings is 131/55 or 2.38 people per dwelling – quite a reasonable ratio and not a shortage of housing as represented.

Naltrexone and clinical trials:

Nick Evans, editor of BioTechnologyNews.net, writes: Brian Seymour (yesterday, comments) should go out and find out what a clinical trial is, before he starts telling everyone else what safety and efficacy means – as any Australian biomedical company could tell him, a 40 to 70 person trial isn’t nearly enough to establish safety and efficacy in a new drug, even when it’s conducted in a proper clinical setting. As Hulse himself admits, in evidence to the Standing Committee on Family and Human Services earlier this year, the device needs a larger, blinded multisite trial – while earlier trials of oral naltrexone have established its safety, there doesn’t appear to be any late stage clinical data on the safety and efficacy of naltrexone implants. If Glaxo, or Merck, or one of the other big pharma companies started using an experimental drug in a clinical setting “because there was a need”, without testing the safety properly there’d be an outcry, and justifiably so. But George O’Neill seems to think that good intentions are a substitute for good data, and has implanted a couple of thousand people with the device without any real idea of what the long term effects could be. If the naltrexone implants work, I think they could be a fantastic tool to help opiate addicts get off drugs. I don’t know whether it’s a safe and effective product or not, however – and, on the evidence that’s available, neither does anyone else. And as for Brian’s comment that he has met and interviewed many of the (still living) clients – there’s a reason we don’t allow anecdotal evidence in the drug approval process. The fact that this person or that person think they benefited doesn’t mean a damn thing, in clinical terms – there’s a whole bunch of people out there who think they’ve benefited from laetrille, or from Benny Hinn laying on the hands. Their belief doesn’t make it so.

Wayne Hall writes: Today Tonight has a distinguished record in promoting spurious heroin cures. 10 years ago it uncritically promoted the Israeli miracle cure for heroin addiction. This involved detoxifying heroin addicts under a general anaesthetic and prescribing oral naltrexone. Its “inventor” claimed to have cured “1000s of patients” and the sole evidence for the extraordinary claim of a 100% success rate was the testimonial one patient who claimed that the Dr had “saved her life”. Extraordinary claims of cures for heroin addiction require better evidence than this. Lesson 101 in drug regulation is that you do the controlled clinical trials to assess safety and efficacy before you experiment on 3000 patients. This was my simple point: how does a Minister who claimed that his sole concern in banning RU486 was patient safety happily countenance this practice? Dr O’Neill has used the TGA provision back in the late 1990s to prescribe oral naltrexone to “thousands” of heroin addicts whom he claimed to cure. He did not publish any results from controlled trials in peer reviewed journal. Nor did he publish data on the overdose death rate among his patients. Other researchers who did the necessary controlled research into oral naltrexone found it neither safe nor effective. There was no mention of any of this history in Today Tonight‘s story. Instead we get a tabloid human interest story on the sanctity and workaholism of Dr O’Neill and a request for donations. There was no recognition in the story (or in Brian Seymour’s response) that those who are most determined to do good are often blind to the harm that they cause. As Samuel Johnson reminded us, the road to hell is often paved with good intentions.

Contractors in Iraq:

David Lenihan writes: So Noel Courtis (yesterday, comments) takes exception to John Howard being blamed for the regretful deaths of the two contractors in Iraq. Why? Australia is a partner in the Coalition of the willing. Following Bush and his troops and the Brits and a few other minor contributors into a war, uninvited. It is obvious if Howard and his mates were not in Iraq, there would be no need for a contractor from Australia being there, chasing big money. Surely Mr Courtis is not about to excuse Howard and his Government for being directly responsible, along with Bush etc for the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraq’s? If so it presents us with the familiar refrain being sung by Alexander Downer, to attempt to justify this countries disastrous involvement in an unwinnable conflict. The Foreign Affairs Minister harps on tirelessly, if we weren’t killing them Saddam would still be. Quite frankly this debacle sits fairly on the shoulders of PM Howard. He is the reason Australians are in Iraq, be they defence force or contractors. He is collectively the reason people are dead, wounded and homeless and 60% of the electorate do not like it. All the cuddling up to Bush and the disgraced Vice President is fair indication of this reckless policy. Man of steel? Easy said from a lounge chair in the West Wing.

Alex Can writes: The use of Australians as contractors, read mercenaries, was, I thought, illegal under Australian law. Changing one’s job title in no way changes one’s culpability under the law, nor should it. Just ’cause we don’t prosecute Australians fighting for Israel or US companies, as opposed to Al Qaeda or Karin freedom fighters, doesn’t mean it can’t change.

The Swindle revisited:

Richard McGuire writes: After watching the responses to The Great Global Warming Swindle, in “comments” since Friday last week, one can only despair on behalf of future generations. The climate change debate is not simply about “us,” but the kind of world we bequeath to our grandchildren, and great grandchildren. First let’s go to John Goldsworthy’s effort in comments yesterday. “CO2 levels 7000 to 10000 years ago were 340 parts per million” I don’t know where John pulled those figures from. It is known however that CO2 levels pre industrial revolution were around 280 ppm. Due to human activity that level is now 380ppm and on track to reach 600ppm by the end of this century, unless urgent measures are taken to reduce greenhouse pollution. Since the airing of The Swindle some correspondents have criticised Tony Jones for his rigorous interviewing of Martin Durkin. Given the serious accusations that were made in Durkin’s documentary, Jones was justified in looking at Durkin’s track record as a documentary maker. This was not a “personal attack,” as one correspondent suggested but good journalism. There was also a degree of whingeing about panel selection. For years past, and even now, the likes of Bob Carter and Ray Evans have enjoyed a dream run in the Murdoch papers. When forced to run their half baked theories past the likes of David Karoly and Robyn Williams they did not look too flash. The ABC and Tony Jones should be congratulated for their presentation of a documentary, which could have so easily amounted to little more, than a propaganda coup for the denial industry.

We need CO2, like we need selenium:

Ronald Watts writes: It’s hard to know where to start with John Goldsworthy’s non-sequiturs and irrelevant data (yesterday, comments), but here goes. Yes, we do need CO2, just like we need selenium. That doesn’t mean that taking, say, 30 mg selenium per day won’t kill you. His historical CO2 levels are wrong – ice cores show that they have been between 180 and 300 ppm for at least half a million years. It is true that sea level changes this century have been of the order of 1-2mm per year, but as the financial planners say, past performance is no guide. Thermal expansion isn’t the problem – melting ice sheets are. Dunking the Greenland ice sheet in would raise levels by about 6.5m. The man-made component of CO2 as a proportion of the total is irrelevant – what matters is the balance. Nature is not coping with the excess. Lastly, as Stern found, the cost of dealing with it is small relative to GDP over time. Does Goldsworthy have the model to contradict this?

Cam Smith writes: Re. John Goldsworthy’s comment of yesterday. Amidst all his calculations, Mr. Goldsworthy forgets to take into account the friction co-efficient in relation to the quantified volume of man made CO2 as per the concentration of reconstituted emergence. A rookie mistake. Re. Damian Skinner’s question (Monday, comments) as to how targeted the CEC spam his dept received was: as far as we (FightDemBack!) can tell, their spam is limited to depts. and folk with at least a vague connection to environmental issues. Their other promotional efforts have included slipping DVDs of the film under people’s doors and rocking up to Inconvenient Truth screenings to have a bit of a yell. Interestingly, the CEC claims the airing of Swindle as a major victory – one wonders how much of their extensive lobbying is responsible for it getting on the telly. And conspiracy theorists should wonder whether the ABC deliberately set them up in the audience to discredit the film! How far does the rabbit hole go?

An infantile attempt at salacious wit:

Jim Hart writes: Re. “Just call her “Chardonnay”” (yesterday, item 15). Just because the Adelaide Advertiser comes up with a tacky line about Nicole Cornes’s choice of evening wear, there’s no reason for Christian Kerr to applaud that infantile attempt at salacious wit, and no excuse for Crikey to give him the space to do so. Some days I truly wonder what passes for intelligence down there in the bunker.

Tampa:

Craig Cadby writes: Re. “The Coalition will always have Aston” (yesterday, item 15). Regarding this article and every other article ever written that mentions the 2001 Australian federal election… it was not “the Tampa wot won it”! The idea that a voter voted for the Howard government because of Tampa is absurd. That election was two months after the terrorist attacks in USA and a majority of Australians decided in the uncertain atmosphere that stability in the form of an unchanged government was desired.

Catholic communities:

Shirley Colless writes: Re. “Greg Barns: Andrews respects rule of law, Haneef to get fair trial, Elvis alive” (yesterday, item 7). A correction, please – Kevin Andrews is a prominent member of the Roman Catholic community. Sorry, second correction, only non-ROMAN Catholic Catholics are members of communities.

Mythbusting:

Steve Johnson writes: Re. “Tips and rumours” (yesterday, item 4). In relation to the electrocuted dog in Werribee the writer wondered how the workman wasn’t electrocuted while accidentally banging the star picket into an underground power cable. Assuming that most sledgehammers are wooden handled, and that the each strike is momentary, there would be no reason to think that, after the initial strokes to stabilise the star-picket in the ground that there would be any reason to further manhandle it. Further, those crazy guys on Mythbusters tried to electrocute their crash test dummy with a urine-like solution onto a live railway circuit in a pretty scientific manner. They failed miserably, myth busted. I wonder if this might be a sub-rural myth.

Shambo and Hindus:

Tony Clifton: Re. “Boris Johnson jollies up London mayoral race” (yesterday, item 18). Guy Rundle should read his own references for once, and discover that Shambo the bull was venerated by a community of Hindu monks, not Buddhists.

A masterpiece of negativity:

Penelope Nelson writes: Re. “PM’s poet cops it from the New Yorker” (Monday, item 22). What a masterpiece of negativity your piece on Les Murray was. More interesting questions include why the New Yorker would include such a hybrid piece, neither review nor author profile. But at least New Yorker readers would have read Murray’s poems from time to time. Can his local detractors say the same?

Don’t let them get their hands on Top Gear:

Richard Jones writes: Re. “Last night’s TV ratings” (yesterday, item 25). Oh God no. If Channel Nine gets Top Gear they will no doubt broadcast it on alternative Tuesdays, no wait, Thursdays or perhaps Saturdays… some time between 10.30 and 11.30pm. They butchered the motor racing, they butchered The Sopranos and they butchered Survivor. Don’t let them get their hands on Top Gear.

Oops:

Yesterday’s typos (house pedant Charles Richardson casts an eye over the howlers in the last edition of Crikey): Item 29: “Never your mobile phone number on your business card”. Looks like a missing “put” in there.

Send your comments, corrections, clarifications and c*ck-ups to boss@crikey.com.au. Preference will be given to comments that are short and succinct: maximum length is 200 words (we reserve the right to edit comments for length). Please include your full name – we won’t publish comments anonymously unless there is a very good reason.