Kim Beazley’s Tampa?

This audience was overwhelmingly establishment - including various QCs, the late former Liberal Victorian premier Rupert Hamer and former Fraser Government minister Jim Carleton. But the audacity of the ambassador’s frankness induced a kind of shock.

As it was with the boat people, Australians could go either way on David Hicks - it all depends on the way the street theatre of politics plays out. Because of the Opposition's timidity - or is it lack of conviction? - the feelings that ran so deep that night have gone unexpressed within the political mainstream.

So here’s another kind of “Tampa incident”. Some street theatre for the Opposition. Not enough to win an election but enough to revive Kim Beazley’s flagging fortunes. Beazley gets a group of eminent and respected Australians together - Malcolm Fraser comes most readily to mind, among others. They travel as far as they can towards Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay with a simple message to the first US official who stops them.

We’re Australian. You’re holding our fellow citizen David Hicks. He may be guilty of very serious crimes and we’re not trying to make a hero of him. But like everyone else, and even in a military context, he has the right to due process and a trial before an independent magistrate - the same rights you’ve accorded the citizens of every other Western country with the courage and decency to demand it. Right now your own military prosecutors believe your trial of Hicks is a “fraud”. We’re here to insist on Australians’ basic rights and we’ll be back each month until we’ve secured them.

No doubt such a venture would fail in the short term. It would take perseverance. And conviction. And the courage of that conviction. But it would tap into a powerful part of the Australian psyche. It would be just like the street theatre of the Tampa incident. Only the values and emotions with which it associated Australian nationalism would be those of light rather than darkness, of respect for the rule of law rather than power, and of engagement rather than looking away.