Will "Better To Be Safe Than Sorry" Be The Liberals Election Campaign Mantra?

The only line about the Dr Mohamed Haneef fiasco dumber than John Howard's "better to be safe than sorry" dismisser, was Alexander Downer's pathetically sooky "Get real" whine.

But was Howard actually giving the Liberals federal election campaign slogan a bit of an early airing?

Howard claimed that when it comes to terror, "It's better to be safe than sorry". A line that, if it actually held water, could be used for virtually any injustice, false detention or personal smear campaign by the Howard government that had even the barest of linkages to the 'War on Terror' or national security. It's a disturbing precedent.

Some Muslim bloke gets shot dead for wearing a backpack that looks a bit suspicious?

Better to be safe than sorry.

An innocent man gets detained and held without charge for a few weeks or a few months, or in the case of David Hicks, a few years?

Better to be safe than sorry.

Billions of taxpayers' money pulled out of education and health and re-directed to unjustified foreign wars and completely invasive homeland security?

Better to be safe than sorry.


Michelle Grattan lays out the facts of John Howard's involvement in the Dr Haneef fiasco, under a headline that asks if the 'War on Terror' really does mean that anything goes now :

By yesterday, however, Howard was circling the wagons, as was Alexander Downer, who bluntly told sceptics to "get real". Howard said there'd be no apology, and mistakes happen.

The message is, if you are dealing with allegations to do with terrorism, forget highfalutin notions of accountability.

Here's the embarrassing Alexander Downer sookfest quotes in full, after being asked if Dr Haneef was owed an apology from the Australian Federal Police or ministers in the Howard government :

A request for an apology seemed to offend Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

"What do you expect them to do, fall on the ground and grovel - eat dirt - I mean, get real. This is a quite common situation," he said.

Mr Downer shrugged off the critics of the bungled case as political operatives with an axe to grind.

"[It is] an attempt here by Howard-haters to try to paint the Government as having conducted the investigations unsuccessfully and this was all some political stunt - I think that's pretty reprehensible," he said.

What's wrong with Downer? Is he mentally or emotionally unstable? Why does he get so easily wound up and unfurl such patently ridiculous answers to simple questions from reporters? It's clear Downer is losing it. He should be drip-fed valium during the APEC summit in September so he doesn't embarrass himself, and the country, in front of world leaders.

The only thing more laughable than Downer's whining is his government's repeated use of the Andrew Bolt line that anybody who dares to question the motives of the prime minister is automatically a "Howard hater".

That Downer has been reduced to viewing any criticism or finding of faults in the actions of the Howard government as being part of some broad conspiracy, or proof of hatred, is another sign of the crippling paranoia infecting the government right now. They are beset with The Fear, and it shows every time someone like Downer has a hissy-fit.

What Downer is actually saying when he calls millions of Australians "Howard Haters" is that he thinks the government should not be held to account, and should not have to tolerate genuine, and well deserved, criticism.

Absolutely pathetic.

The Howard government could try and cling to its hold on power with a $100 million advertising blitz in the weeks before election day ringing out its "Vote Liberal. Better To Be Safe Than Sorry" message.

But the polls clearly show, in the huge numbers of former Howard voters now backing Rudd, that plenty of Australians are already sorry about the choice they made back in 2004.

It's unlikely Howard can say, or do, much now to win them back.

And trying to fear up the electorate, when more than half already clearly trust Kevin Rudd, is not going to work.

If Howard & Friends go for The Fear this time, it will show just how far out of touch they really are with the Australian people.

Dr Haneef Back Home In India

Keelty : The Brits Blew It

Claim : $200,000 For Haneef's First Interview

UPDATE : Contrary to earlier reports, presumably leaked by the police involved, and that we based the last lines in the below story on, Dr Haneef said in his first public statement that he was victimised by the authorities during his time in their custody.


Dr Mohamed Haneef has arrived back in India after three weeks in Australian custody, leaving behind a storm of controversy assaulting the Howard government and the Australian Federal Police.

Howard sent Tony "The Cleaner" Abbott and Malcolm "Mr Nice Guy" Turnbull onto Sunday morning talk shows to try and undo some of the political damage the Haneef fiasco has caused. Abbott and Turnbull's main line of parry and defence was to claim the Rudd opposition supported the government over what happened to Dr Haneef. Disingenuous at best.

Australian Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty, is pushing the main blame for the Haneef fiasco back onto the British authorities, who he claims first told them that a SIM card once owned by Dr Haneef was found in the burning vehicle that crashed into glass doors at an airport in Scotland earlier this month. It was later revealed the SIM card was found hundreds of miles away.

Stories this morning claim that Dr Haneef was paid between $100,000 and $200,000 for an exclusive interview with the 60 Minutes television program.

The interview was said to have been conducted in the hours at the airport before Dr Haneef boarded the plane that took him back home, and back to his family.

Here's the Mick Keelty 'Blames The Brits' story from the Sydney Morning Herald:

Mr Keelty said British police initially told AFP investigators that Dr Haneef's mobile phone SIM card had been found inside a Jeep allegedly used by his second cousin, Kafeel Ahmed, in a failed car bombing in Glasgow on June30.

Instead, the SIM card had been found in the home of Kafeel's brother, Sabeel, in Liverpool...

But Mr Keelty said: "Whatever else you may think of Haneef, the fact remains his SIM card was found in the possession of the person labelled as a [suspect]" in the failed Glasgow attack.

Mr Keelty said the case had been "poorly handled by some sections of the media".

"There is a lot of confusion at the beginning of any complex investigation...errors in the investigation came to us from the UK...we're all under time pressures," he said.

On (Immigration Minister Kevin) Andrews's intervention in the case, Mr Keelty said: "You can't blame Andrews. He acted on our information."

A report here claims that one of the conditions of Dr Haneef's immediate release from 'home detention' yesterday was that he would not give a media conference at the airport before flying back to India :

Immigration authorities had also made it a condition of Dr Haneef's return to India that he did not speak to the media or allow his picture to be taken.

Mr Russo said he had tried to organise for Dr Haneef to speak to the media before his departure but was not able to.

Mr Russo said Dr Haneef could speak about his ordeal once he left Australia but he would rather he did not speak publicly before his visa appeal on August 8.

Mr Russo said Dr Haneef's legal team was disappointed that he was prevented from publicly thanking Australians who supported him during his detention.

"This has been a severely traumatic time for him, made worse by the fact that his wife has just had their first child, a baby Dr Haneef has not even seen yet. His mother is also ill and he wants to be there with her."

Dr Haneef's wife is obviously very happy that she is getting her husband back, after three weeks of intense pressure and damaging media speculation.

The Indian Government wants Australia to restore Dr Haneef's visa, but Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews says, for now, that is not going to happen.

This editorial from Arab News is a good example of the slamming tone much international media, particularly in Arab and Muslim states, and across India, are now taking on "the appalling treatment metted out to the doctor."

Dr Haneef is widely portrayed as a victim of a vindictive and racist Australian government, who went after Dr Haneef for being a Muslim first and above all, with his family connection to a British terror suspect as merely a grounds for suspicion.

The line taken by Howard government ministers that this fiasco has not damaged Australia's international reputation, or the credibility of its fight against terror, is laughable.

If there is any good news from this fiasco, it is that Dr Haneef appears to have been sympathetic to the police during their interrogations of him, understanding the pressure they were under, and that he was treated with a certain level of decency by those who detained him. In short, he wasn't tortured, unlike terror suspects detained in the United States, Afghanistan, Iraq and across the Middle East.

The Haneef Fiasco : An International Embarrassment

Haneef's Wife Thanks Supporters

Haneef Free But Fallout Rages

Immigration Still "Suspicious" Of Haneef As He Flies Home

Farewell From The Land Of The "Fair Go"

"Disgraceful Treatment" Of Mohamed Haneef Part Of Howard's Political Games

Haneef Contacts Lawyer To Free Police Of Allegation They Wrote 'Incriminating' Names In His Diary

UPDATE : AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty now claims police did not write anything in Dr Mohamed Haneef's diary. It was a duplicate diary, or something...wait, it now appears that Dr Haneef himself contacted his lawyer to tell him that the story of the police writing names in his diary was not true. The police wrote names on a piece of paper and showed them to him, according to this story.

Keelty says, wait for the case to go before the courts. And then what? Find out the entire case against Haneef was worthless? The most likely scenario now appears to be that the charge of "supporting a terrorist group", a group that doesn't appear to actually exist in the UK, will be dropped and he'll be deported. Or he willingly flee Australia.

The Haneef fiasco is receiving blanket media coverage in India, soaking up front pages, editorials and letters to the editor. A friend writes from India that Australia, its police and the Howard government are disparaged nightly on the news and current affairs shows. The Greens, apparently, are being seen as the action makers in trying to get Haneef released.

An international 'Free Haneef' campaign also appears to be gathering steam.

All in all a very poor outing for first major use of the updated 2004 anti-terror laws. While talk back radio and online public comment has a few "deport the terrorist" types, the vast majority of Australians contributing their opinions to the public debate seem pretty annoyed, disgusted and ashamed at how Dr Haneef has been treated, how the AFP have conducted their investigation and how some in the media have frenzied in their coverage.

PREVIOUSLY : Is the case against Dr Haneef really so pissweak that federal police officers have to try and fake evidence?

...investigating AFP officers wrote the names of overseas terror suspects in Dr Haneef's personal diary, only to later grill him during an interrogation over whether he had written the potentially incriminating notes.

Apparently, it was all just "a mistake".

Thank God for that. Otherwise you might be led to believe that something absolutely dodgy has been going on, what with all the 'leaks' claiming that Haneef was more evil than previously speculated and was somehow, once more allegedly, involved in plotting terror attacks in Queensland.

The Courier Mail reported on Sunday :

Police are investigating whether detained doctor Mohamed Haneef was part of a planned terrorist attack on a landmark building at the Gold Coast.

Australian Federal Police are examining images of the building and its foundations found among documents and photographs seized in a police raid on the doctor's Southport unit three weeks ago.

The AFP inquiry is looking at documents referring to destroying structures discovered in the raid, law enforcement sources said.

Within hours the story had been exposed as complete twaddle, by none other than the head of the Australian Federal Police, Mick Keelty.

Still no word yet on where the Courier Mail got its information, or even if the source was valid, and the editor has published no apology for being involved in yet another smear campaign against Haneef.

Presumably the bullshit story came from the police, otherwise why would Mick Keelty decide he needed to all but apologise to Haneef's lawyers for such an allegation becoming public?

...Mr Keelty issued a statement describing as "inaccurate" reports police were investigating a local terror plot after discovering images of the Q1 building in Dr Haneef's Gold Coast unit.

"We will be taking the extraordinary step of contacting Dr Haneef's lawyer to correct the record," Mr Keelty said.

David Marr :

Crooks are not caught by backyard gossip and idiotic speculation but by bringing logic to bear on facts.

Was that tiny weapon of mass destruction - Haneef's SIM card - found at the scene of the crime in Glasgow? No. Perhaps the overcoat he left also with his cousin turned up in the blazing Jeep Cherokee driven into the airport terminal? Apparently not. Was he roaming Surfers Paradise looking for a target to destroy? Not according to the police.

It seems we're just where we were last Friday: the public case against Haneef has entirely collapsed.

Mick Keelty back on July 3, when talk radio and online news page comments were busy spreading the myth that Haneef may have tried to detonate the London car bombs by mobile phone calls from Queensland :

...we should be cautious here that Dr Haneef may have done nothing wrong and may, at the end of the day, be free to go.

Keelty was insisting on July 20 that the police case against Dr Haneef had not been damaged by the near endless stream of controversies, foul-ups, leaks and mismanagement of the investigations.

After another weekend of false stories and allegations being leaked to the media, by "law enforcement sources", and yet more mopping up by Mick Keelty, you have to wonder whether he still believes there is still a case worth pursuing against Dr Haneef at all.

British police still haven't named or even confirmed the existence of "the terrorist group" that Haneef is being accused of supporting.

The Haneef tale has become a major story across the world, particularly in India, the UK and across South East Asia, but not because of the charges against Haneef, but for the endless series of screw-ups and controversies surrounding the federal prosecution's increasingly hole-ridden case.

As the Calcutta Telegraph writes in this lead :

Critical information used to brand Mohammed Haneef a terrorist and condemn him to solitary confinement might not be true...

Somewhere in Pakistan, the leaders of Al Qaeda are laughing themselves stupid. They barely have to even try anymore to send a nation and its federal law enforcement officers into a state of confusion, panic and chaos. We are quite capable of doing all that to ourselves.

Lawyer : Government Is Trying Haneef By Media

Prosecution May Have Misled Court

No Comment From Ruddock On Haneef 'Plot'

Australian Federal Police Under Fire As Haneef Case Unravels

Australian Authorities Flayed For 'Sloppy' Investigations

Prime Minister John Howard is so spooked by his inability to get back in the favour of the majority of Australia's voters that he is refusing to commit to even running for prime minister again, and has taken to babbling like a loon in response to unremarkable questions :

...when asked if he would now guarantee he would lead the Government into what is expected to be an election as close as October, he refused.

"Look I know the games you fellas play," Mr Howard said.

"I have a position in relation to this and it, it, it applies for all time. For all time that's relevant. And I just don't intend, I just don't intend. I know you'll start saying: 'Oh Howard, you know, he's altered his formulation'. Come on, you know that, I know you. Situation normal. Situation usual. Response usual. Response normal."

What?

Maybe the medical reason Howard will cite as a reason to to bow out of running for re-election will be dementia.


If you get picked up by police in New South Wales for so minor an offence as jaywalking, they will soon have the power to take a DNA sample from you and store it in a database. Naturally, it's supposedly all part of the effort to fight terrorism. The new police powers are already being called part of "a police state by stealth." But where's the stealth?


John Howard's beloved "battlers" are abandoning the prime minister in droves. He is widely seen by former Liberal voters as "too old, desperate and sneaky." Not exactly the kind of descriptions you'd want blasted across Sunday newspapers in bold type, but there they are.

Howard is also suffering a "youth revolt", particularly over climate change and WorkChoices. One in four young voters are said to have switched to backing opposition leader Kevin Rudd.


The number of prominent religious leaders, lawyers and politicians demanding the Howard government get its shit together over the treatment of alleged terror suspect Mohamed Haneef grows by the day. At the same time, letters pages and online comments are, in the majority, faulting the government and AFP's handling of the case, and even usually pro-Howard media are raging against the spectacular abuses of civil and human rights now on show.

So what to do?

Slurry the waters even further by getting out rumours that Haneef was somehow possibly involved, or possibly linked to, a possible terror plot in Queensland because he had photos of Queensland buildings in his possession. His lawyer summed up the new rumours that are not yet charges, or even official AFP allegations :

"Obviously if you're Muslim and you come from India, don't dare take any photos of any structures ... or that will be interpreted by the Queensland police force of having a sinister intent."

Another option under consideration is simply to deport Haneef, as soon as possible :

“Our best option is to cancel the Criminal Justice Certificate .... and that is my understanding of what our intentions are,” the source told the newspaper.

“Cancel the certificate and get this guy out of Australia...”

The string of apparently baseless allegations and media leaks against Haneef has proven to be a major international embarrassment, not only for the Howard government and Australia's fight against terror, but also for the Australian Federal Police, who are being referred to as Keystone Kops, "bumbling" and "hopeless" in British and Indian newspapers.


He was bitten three times on the leg by a bronze whaler shark, but the 15 year old boy fought back and has survived the attack. His mother thinks he was inspired to defend himself, and to try and stop the bleeding, after having recently watched a horror movie where a man bled to death.


John Howard was rallying the troops yesterday in western Sydney, while all the usual key Liberal Party media addicts were hiding from the cameras and microphones.

Howard told a Liberal Party conference he was "very proud of the fact in the 11-and-a-half years we have been in government ... we have lifted defence expenditure by 48 per cent in real terms..."

Curiously, this is almost the exact same percentage by which US defence expenditure has risen since the Project For A New American Century architects, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, 'Scooter' Libby and Paul Wolfowitz, started rallying for 1995 and 1996 for less money to be spent on education and health and more on weapons and bombs. Luckily, Al Qaeda and Islamic extremist-linked terrorist attacks rose dramatically around the same time.

Australia will spend more than $23 billion on 'defence' in 2008, giving Australia the second highest per person defence expenditure in the world, after the United States. The Iraq War has already cost Australian taxpayers $4 to $8 billion.


More than 130 people have attended the funeral of a baby boy they didn't know. The baby, named Luke for the service, was found dead and abandoned in rubbish. Many of the people drawn to the funeral, some of whom wept openly, said they didn't want the infant to be unrecognised in death. Police believe the unknown mother of the child may have been amongst the mourners. A christening gown and headstone were donated by the public and funeral directors.


Piers Akerman stabs fruitlessly at his keyboard : "It's no real surprise that the book actually flying out of the stores this weekend is the new Harry Potter novel, and not John Winston Howard: The Biography..."

It's no real surprise because John Winston Howard : The Biography hasn't been released yet.

Akerman claims "the biographers can only recycle and repackage past events, adding a little light and shade gleaned from interviews with some of the participants but nothing that was not already known."

The biographers interviewed more than 70 people, including John and Janette Howard. If Akerman is so keen to write off this book by claiming there is nothing new inside, you can rest assured that there is actually reams of valuable information and important insight to be learned that the vast majority of Australians, and probably lots of federal politicians, didn't know about John Howard.

To show just how ridiculous Akerman's attempts to claim there's nothing new, or of interest to the voting public, to be found in the new Howard biography, in the very same pages of the Sunday Telegraph, fellow columnist Glenn Milne writes :

The most damaging insight to emerge from the new biography of the Prime Minister comes, remarkably, out of the mouth of his chief loyalist: his wife, Janette.

The problem for Mrs Howard here is that she has inadvertently shone a light on the darker recesses of Howard's modus operandi that were for years hidden, but have now come to dominate the public debate about whether he deserves another, final term.

The Sunday Telegraph's lead editorial finally admits that the majority of Australians are unlikely to vote for John Howard come election time :

...the situation for the Prime Minister looks dire.

It's a crushing loss of confidence for John Howard from one of the primary newspapers he has long counted on for support, and to paper over his numerous lies, deceptions and faults, particularly on the eve of yet another Newspoll which is likely to show that Howard has already lost his chance for a fifth term in Kirribilli House :

After 11 years in office, the idea that he is a bit too sneaky has taken hold in the public psyche. It is a culmination of the "children overboard'' affair, the AWB wheat scandal and the ongoing suspicion that he dudded loyal deputy Peter Costello on when he would hand over the job.

Not to mention the widespread realisation that he deceived the nation into joining the United States in the illegal and horrific War On Iraq, and spat in the faces of the 75% of Australians who didn't want their country to be involved when he did so. Not to mention the wage-and-benefits stripping IR reforms. Not to mention the David Hicks fiasco and the widespread disgust Howard's generated by his acquiescence to Indonesia over the Schapelle Corby trail in 2005. The list is long, and grows longer by the week.


ABC Radio's coverage of the horrors of the Iraq War once made John Howard so angry his "face went red and his lips white." That's the trouble with the truth, it often sparks emotional and physical reactions in the people who don't want it to get out.


More than 150 people have died in just four weeks of Sydney's flu epidemic. Hospitals are crowded with the sick and close-to-dying. Hundreds of babies and children have needed specialised care, pushing hospital capacity to the brink. Compared to last year, viral infections are up by an astounding 200%, with respiratory illnesses ratcheting up by 70%.


Australians may soon have to come up with a 20% deposit to secure a home loan. Considering most young Australians don't have $30,00 or $40,000 kicking around, they'll have to get their parents or grandparents to put up their homes as security. Personal bankruptcies are rocketing towards record highs, and falling house prices mean that tens of thousands of families will be left with enormous debts if they are forced to sell the family home due to "economic shock". The Howard government continues to claim that there is no housing crisis in Australia, that the Australian economy is booming and rock solid and that Australian families have "never had it so good."


A former bodyguard of Saddam Husein wants to open a fish and chip shop in Sydney.

While the local 'outrage' over the absurd Haneef Sim Card Of Terror case continues to grow, the scandal is now making international headlines of the very worst kind.

Paul Kelly writes that the Haneef case has thrust the Australian legal profession and the Howard government into a state of open warfare.

The intervention by the immigration minister to verbal Haneef by claiming he was of "bad character" may see the weak-as-piss charges against the Indian doctor thrown out of court and Haneef set free.

Attorney General Philip Ruddock is now being told he should have to explain his role in the scandal.


Australians owe more than $40 billion on their credit cards. With interest rates on credit cards ranging from 10% to 19% (and sometimes beyond), Australian banks are reaping in more than $4-7 billion a year off interest alone. Another billion or more is scoured from late payment and 'account keeping' fees. Not bad from a customer base of less than six million people.


Underneath Sydney, there lies an all-but-forgotten system of abandoned train tunnels. It now takes longer to get to Newcastle on a train than it did in 1937.


The Sydney house where John Howard grew up has been turned into a KFC outlet. John Howard has been treating poor people like shit since he was a little kid at the local cinema. Little Johnny once considered a career in acting. Few would deny he has proven to be an accomplished performer with a mastery of faking various emotions. Before he entered politics, Howard worked in a shop selling budgerigars. That's a small sample of just how exciting the new biography of John Howard is.


Why John Howard is a "dead man walking" only a few months out from the federal election.


Brisbane just had its coldest day on record. Out and proud global warming conspiracy nuts, like this goose, celebrate, not seeming to comprehend that the theory of global warming induced climate change claims there will be increased episodes of extremes of temperature, both hot and cold.


John Howard says Australia will not become a nuclear waste dump, even when exporting uranium becomes the nation's biggest export industry, after coal. Nobody believes him. Naturally, foreign minister Alexander Downer is doing exactly what he is told to do by the Americans, who want nuclear energy to crush renewable energy.

Downer says concerns about such trivial matters about widespread radioactive contamination after accidents or spills of nuclear fuel or waste materials are just plain "wacky".


Michelle Grattan explains why Treasurer Peter Costello might get a shot at the leadership of the Liberal Party about the same time he qualifies for the pension.


The Federal Government were always aware that controversial changes to the wages and working lives of most Australians brought in under WorkChoices - changes that they so thoroughly embraced on behalf of big business - would lead to ruin for many working Australians. They knew it, but they didn't care.


29 passengers who were believed to have been exposed to a man sick with polio, on a flight into Melbourne, are still missing.


Police have found a suburban Sydney house literally stuffed with more than $800,000 worth of cannabis. Meanwhile, someone is wandering around unaware they've won $20million in a lottery.

An Australian publishing industry insider claims there at least six "dirt" books being written by current and/or former members of John Howard's staff and team of advisers, in preparation for his departure from federal politics. One book deal is said to be worth some $200,000. Presumably the details in that book, in particular, will be extremely juicy and controversial.

A man in Canberra became hypothermic after jumping into an ice-touched lake to retrieve a ticket that would guarantee him a copy of the new Harry Potter novel this morning. He had to be rescued. He lost the ticket.


Two teen lovers plotted to kill the parents that were trying to keep them apart. Now they will spend more than a decade apart, in jail, for planning the failed killings.


The West Australian health department has denied that there is a "killer bug" circulating around Perth, after a fourth child died from what appears to be a "killer bug."


Fifi, probably the world's oldest chimpanzee, has died, only weeks after celebrating her 60th birthday in good health. Fifi will be missed by three generations of Sydneysiders, who trekked out to Taronga Zoo to show their kids the beautiful chimp they saw when they were kids.