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The Rule of Law loses twice: in Iraq and at the Cole Royal Commission

By Peter Lewis - posted Wednesday, 2 April 2003


At an international level, the United States has rendered this network of global laws impotent by defying the UN Security Council to declare war on Iraq. It follows hot on the heels of Bush's refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases.

Ironically, as the US acts with the sole authority of the force of its Coalition of the Willing, it is still happy to cite the Geneva Convention to complain about the totally unjustified treatment of its invading forces.

Through its actions and the selective appeal to international conventions the US is writing a new legal doctrine of convenience: the Law as Rhetoric.

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Alongside strategies like embedding journalists, continuous polling and selective release of information, the Rule of Law has become just another tool in the battle for the hearts and minds of the people.

This approach takes legal relativism to a new level, with the authority of Law directly linked to one's power to ignore it or invoke it as one sees fit.

And what does this have to do with this week's Cole Royal Commission? Well, behind the headlines of widespread illegality by building unions are two underlying truths.

First, the overwhelming bulk of illegal acts were breaches of the Howard government's industrial laws, specifically designed to prevent industry-wide bargaining. The illegality Abbott flays at the CFMEU is illegality entirely of his own making.

Second, the findings are a direct product of a process that set out to catch union officials, discount evidence against employers and sideline the genuine concerns with safety and employer rorts. Sixty million dollars to fulfil a specific, political, brief.

My point? There is nothing absolute about the findings against the CFMEU; rather they are the expected outcome of a process based not on law, but on raw political power.

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And the outcome is yet another law-enforcement agency, protecting the Monk's political friends and harassing his enemies.

The righteousness of Bush and of Abbott have a common flavour, it is the certainty of the powerful. Any notion of 'The Law' is an ass in their hands. Maybe the Anarchists have won after all.

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This article was first published as the editorial in Workers Online, published by Labornet, which is a member of The National Forum.



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About the Author

Peter Lewis is the director of Essential Media Communications, a company that runs strategic campaigns for unions, environmental groups and other “progressive” organisations.

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