The human rights issues of Saddam's overthrow are lost amid inane politics

Post-war, it has failed to confront the challenge that Iraq presents in its transition to a secular democracy and to assist the Iraqi people to put Hussein and 30 years of bloody dictatorship behind them.

Instead, it has seized on the WMD issue, ignoring the Kay report which showed unambiguously that Saddam had not taken seriously his disarmament obligations since he first signed up to them in 1991. Once again human rights issues run the risk of being overlooked. The English leftist journalist Johann Hari nailed the real challenge for his anti-war colleagues last week in The Independent as the turmoil in Iraq is faced: "All decent people – including those who opposed the war – must now work to establish a consensus in Britain and the US behind the path that Iraqis, in every single poll of their opinion, are begging us to take: stay for a few years to ensure a transition to democracy, resist the fascistic bombers attacking those who have come to help, and gradually accord more and more power to the Governing Council in advance of elections."

This challenge should be at the forefront of all Australian politicians' concerns and all should be measured by it. But Brown, for one, has not been put to the test on this thanks to Brandis's ineptitude.

Brandis could easily have retracted his stupid comments and returned to his richly deserved obscurity, but he chose to make matters worse on ABC's Lateline on Friday. Far from recant, he created further collateral damage by his repeated refusal to say whether he had discussed his proposed "green nazi" speech with any senior member of the Government prior to last week's outburst. Brown could say that senior Liberals are deliberately vilifying him and his colleagues. The argument will be all about them, and the debate about Iraqi human rights will be the loser again.

It seems that the coincidence with Ashcroft is not just limited to inane and politically inept "moral equivalences". Brandis, remember, was the successor conservative senator to the political stumblebum Warwick Parer who was eased out of office mid-term by John Howard. It now turns out that this mid-term impost upon the taxpayer seems simply to have replaced one political liability with another. Could it be that just as there is a US cabinet position reserved by convention for a favourite of the republican Right, there is a conservative Senate seat from our deep north reserved for the spectacularly politically inept?