If the cap fits wear it

Other callers elicited the information, from a different source, that the Minister would have a full brief on the Lombok refugees before his plane landed in Jakarta.

Pathetic. If the Minister was going to have substantive talks with his Indonesian counterpart, why wasn’t he briefed on this most important bilateral refugee issue?

Unless of course nothing of substance was going to be discussed and the purpose of the visit was to spin him in and snow him under. After all it is a politicised Federal public service operating under a Howard dominated PM&C (Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet) that has run government for the past five or six years.

To cap off a bad day, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Stephen Smith, said on ABC, AM that the AFP (Australian Federal Police) was looking into the legal aspects of people jumping onto Japanese whaling vessels while at sea.

Now when I was in Foreign Affairs legal issues relating to the Law of the Sea were handled by lawyers in Foreign Affairs or the Attorney-General’s Department, not by the AFP. I put this point to Smith’s office where someone undertook to pass it along. I put the same point to the Attorney-General’s office and received a combative and negative response.

The AG’s office claimed the AFP had the responsibility and power to advise on the issue. In hindsight I should have asked what other powers they believed the AFP to possess.

What this illustrates for me is the extent to which the AFP, under Howard, insinuated itself into the processes of government under the guise of fighting the war on terror. They became a powerful tool in Howard’s consolidation of power and in the process appear to have intimidated and bluffed ministers and public servants if Hicks, Haneef and other harrowing tales of terrorism are anything to go by.