Howard's very foreign policies

The case of David Hicks is a national disgrace which has now been taken up by Amnesty International, which used to have to lobby for the freedom of people like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who spent years in Soviet gulags. Whatever Hicks has done, it is clear (on the government’s own admission) that he has broken no Australian law. Yet he has been held without trial on a US base in (at least) questionable conditions for nearly five years with no prospect of anything better than a military tribunal where normal standards of proof and rules of evidence do not apply.

I thought such things happened in Saddam’s Iraq, China or the ex-USSR, not in the democratic US with the full support of our own government. No wonder they don’t criticise the Chinese anymore. Even Tony Blair had the gumption to get his citizens out of the Guantanamo gulag.

Nor is Hicks’ case the only Australian departure from civilised international human rights standards. Our post-Tampa immigration policies have been condemned by a wide range of national and international legal authorities, and have led to such excesses as the illegal detention of Australian citizens by our own immigration authorities and, incredibly, the forcible deportation of a citizen to the Philippines. And of course John Howard’s mantra, “we decide who comes to Australia and how,” sounds hollow indeed after he allowed the Indonesians to dictate revised asylum-seeker entry procedures.

We are fortunate that - alarmist breast beatings from a security establishment on the lookout for more funds notwithstanding - we are one of the most secure countries in the world. We are threatened principally by terrorists, and for the foreseeable future need not fear military attack, invasion or attempted conquest. But though our immediate region holds few threats other than terror cells, it does present many problems.

Until an Australian government recognises that adventures like Iraq, as with Vietnam, are lethal quagmires, and that - with the exception of wider co-operation against terrorism - our security priorities lie mainly in our region, we play our regional role with one hand tied behind our backs.