http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/200000-to-tell-all-just-for-starters/2007/07/28/1185339327056.html

Yup. Poor Mr. Haneef. His wife will be wondering why she's not getting any attention after the lefty media coming hands n' knees.

I can't wait for Harry Freedman to recite Haneef's tales of torture and physical abuse at the hands of his all female watchers.

SNAP. Ohhh. Your a very naughty girl. I hope I can get another visa.
My wife doesn't understand me.

God, I love soap operas

Okay can someone explain why the pro "lockem up and throw away the key" mob is not concerned that the DPP and AFP managed to completely bollocks the case up?

I would have thought that being the law and order people that they are they would have been jumping up and down about incompetence putting our great nation at risk.

Or is it really a case of anything to stick it to the "lefties"?

The Haneef case clearly shows how tainted our laws are with political intervention.

The office of the federal Attorney General to should be completely independent of government.

Moreover, the office of national Attorney General should be held by an eminent and highly qualified member of the legal profession able to provide government with legal advice without it being tainted by party politics.

The pass the package / line of fire from Howard down to Attorney General Philip Ruddoch and then sideways to Andrews is there for all to see.

In this instance it was someone who was not an Australian but with a working visa.

No wonder he chose to fly home yesterday. The laws here provided him no protection at all.

Having read Surya Deva’s article numerous times since I “fell” into this thread and having observed the dichotomy between ‘right and left’, ‘evil and good’, ‘neo-conservatism and socialism’, ‘Leigh and Frank’, ‘us and them’, etc - I have to say I completely agree with the author’s tenets.

Both sides of the “debate” have important points to make and it is frustrating to see how they can not come to some common ground – it is very divisive and points to further problems in our society. We seem to have lost our communication skills and respect for alternative points of view.

I don’t want to live in an ‘Orwellian’ state of ‘thought police’ or be encumbered by ‘draconian sedition laws,’ but the actions of ‘the powers that be’ and comments by some posters on this thread suggest that is indeed what is happening here – Haneef’s case is an example and unfortunately, we have probably stuffed up.

You may have noticed most of my OLO comments are to do with issues of global warming or climate change; I have some expertise in the area. However, I try to make the point that the problems we see in the world today can be solved if the protagonists converge to some common ground. Only then can we progress.

It is sad that power and control of one over another will stifle any chance of solving the world’s problems; be it the war on terrorism, “weapons of mass destruction or weather of mass destruction”.

Themistocles states: "It’s because of this cerebral inability of civil libertarians to see the fundamental distinction between a crime committed and a crime prevented and the different “remedies” that apply in each case, that all their strictures and arguments against the incursions of governments to people’s civil liberties, are trite, irrelevant, and intellectually out of depth."

Leigh then responds: "...Your final paragraph sums up the flaws of the civil libertarians."

It seems some have never heard of the saying "Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile", or the phrase "Opening doors you can't close."

These laws will only ever get worse, until generations down the track, we won't just be a police state, we'll be a military state.

If this is what our government is doing before a terrorist attack, imagine what they'll do when an attack finally does occur. For example, just take a look at the "protections" the US enjoys. It's now even illegal for Americans to not put their real name to a webmail account! Given time, our children's children may be so "protected", they'll need protection from their own government. In fact, wouldn't it be interesting if they became "protected" to such an extent that they found themselves siding with those whom they were originally being "protected" from.

If these so-called "screechers", who believe in civil liberties weren't "screeching", we wouldn't have any rights left to "screech" about. In fact, this forum wouldn't even be here for us to be discussing this.

It's these basic points that render the opinions of the far-right on this issue null and void, and Themistocle's last paragraph intellectually out of depth.

Thank you, John Simpson. I think that Australia is at more risk of becoming a managed democracy, like Malaysia, than a despotism. But we are quite some way from that yet. For example, while the handling of the Haneef case has been very poor, ways have been found to provide him with some protection.

Andrews I think has shown himself misguided rather than corrupt; though how anyone could argue that Haneef’s rapid departure to India today is a reason for suspicion is beyond me. (Can anyone make sense of it, without adopting a conspiracy theory? The idea is so absurd, the conspirators would have to be demented.)

There were at least four bungles that emerge from the first police record of interview. The police thought Haneef’s reason for providing money to a relative—that the relative in turn was providing money to Haneef’s mother—was suspicious. They made no effort to find out if that was common or reasonable. But it is both. It's not new. I remember it being done more than a decade ago. It saves bank fees.

The police knew that Haneef had stayed in the same building as one of his criminal relatives. They had no reason to believe that the two had stayed at the same time. Nor did they find out that the building is run by an Indian charity; which explains why each of them would stay there.

The police thought that Haneef’s first departure was unduly hurried. Yet he had given them a good explanation.

The police took it that supplying something that was used in a terrorist attack is a crime. By itself, it isn’t.

In spite of these faults, Andrews still believes what he is told, and comes out with rubbish. What is wrong with the man?