Friday, September 16, 2005

WTF?

I am bothered by this Scott Parkin deportation thing. What is this guy supposed to have done that merits an $11,000 fine without any legal proceedings? Why won't anyone tell us? Surely it is a breach of our bilateral free trade agreement to protect our local peace activist industry by deporting American ones.
You all know that I am naively trusting of our government, and I would be satisfied with a transparent excuse; even if Alexander Downer said 'Sorry, they're a law of their own in that department, we haven't got a clue what they're doing... I don't want to make any comments on the record, in case they deport me.' I'd be happy with that. But we haven't been told anything.

5 comments:

Marco Parigi said...

I can't remember if I imagined it or not, but I remember hearing that he was going to organise an anti-globalisation protest for that big international event at the Sydney opera house. Even imagining that it could be the reason makes me delighted that he got deported. Our local greenie, naive, peace-loving, non-violent, and largely ineffective protest movement needs all the protection it can get from imported influences!

Dave said...

You know what I'm going to say, right? That this is just another inevitable consequence of the failure of the centre-left to hold these governments to account for their rather negligent relations with standards of truth and legal probity.

In other words, the fuckers have been allowed to flagrantly lie and recklessly steal in the pursuit of their ideological causes, have glibly shaken off infrequent showers of timid criticism, and now increasingly feel empowered to act as they will, without reference to quaint notions such as the law.

Marco Parigi said...

Standards of truth? Legal probity? We're talking about politicians here. Truth and lies are indistinguishable in politic talk (just read Latham's diaries for instance) and they know the law better than to be caught out in the cases of day to day discretionary decisions. This deportation is just as much a diversionary tactic from the fact that immigration numbers have been doubled within the last couple of years. The government wants to look like they're still sending some back and not letting in a free for all.

Dave said...

Doesn't much matter if they don't know the law - Alston, for example, didn't know his arse from his elbow, repeatedly lied about Telstra and other things (knowingly as well as through gross ignorance of his portfolio) and got a plum Ambassadorial posting to - what was it, London?

(But I'm not bitter.)

Point is, you're completely right.

Dr Clam said...

Your plum ambassadorial posting will come Dave, just be patient!

From where I sit- whether as devoted follower of B.A. Santamaria, P.J. O'Rourke-style libertarian, amateur Islamic jurist, wannabe pirate king, or revolutionary firebrand, it looks like the Howard government has simply carried on with all the policies initiated in the Hawke-Keating years: erosion of civil liberties (e.g., the loss of presumption of innocence in taxation law), privatisation of everything that moves withou serious parliamentary debate (e.g., Qantas and the CBA), dodgy financial connections (e.g., a certain millionaire piggery owner), dumbing-down of higher education, mandatory detention of asylum-seekers... Keating was the first to suggest a GST and now his 'Australia Card' is on the way...

I don't think the centre-left have any ground to stand on as far as holding the current government to account. We have to rely on the lunar left and the paranoid right, which seem to be doing a reasonably good job of it to me, at least in the blogosphere...