stephen keim is being way too kind. "mistakes and failures of judgment" doesn't begin to describe keelty's reign as lap dog and as cheerleader and front man for authoritarian bullying. good riddance to this pathetic, dishonest, thoroughly appalling man.

In this decade the increased powers of the AFP has been a threat to the citizenry's civil liberties. I hope the next incumbent of the AFP has the ability to preserve our civil liberties, as well as our security. I would like to see an end to the endless 'security threat' scare campaigns which just encourage people to be xenophobic and selfish

If Haneef is Keelty's Achilles Heel then nobody could survive in Keelty's position .
If a terrorist was arrested for murdering 50 children in London with my sim card on his person are you telling me that I would be less than a person of interest ?
How would anyone know if the card was genuine original ?
Why couldn't it be re-manufactured ,still work as a sim card and have a key code to Lucas Heights ?
If you are living with a number of people you are building up a profile of each person in the back of your mind , if you have to live with someone you need this background to live harmoniously , but the whiter than white Haneef he knows nothing ? Innocent as a newborn ?

How ridiculous to believe that Haneef would have been treated any differently by an AFP force headed by someone other than Commissioner Keelty. The AFP doesn’t make its own rules.

I’m inclined to think that Keelty resigned, after doing an excellent job, because he was sick and tired of toadying and incompetent politicians and left-wing loonies always keen to denigrate anything Australian.

Stephen Kleim is a one issue man because he was involved in ‘assisting’ Haneef, a man who never stood trial; a man whose innocence or guilt will never be known. Haneef’s case was handled by the Federal Police under Keelty’s leadership in a way designed to protect Australia and Australians. Haneef is out of Australia, and good riddance.

Good on Keelty. He was a good Commissioner and will be hard to replace. He certainly doesn’t deserve the abuse – “pathetic, dishonest, thoroughly appalling man’ – handed out by Bushbasher who wouldn’t have a shred of evidence to back up his stupid claim if he were to identify himself and face a charge of libel, as he certainly deserves. In the real word, calling a police officer “dishonest” is taken seriously.

Wow, we still have supporters of corrupt authoritarian stuffups like Keelty! Howard's attitude of "God put me here so shutup" seems to have permeated all the officials working under him. (and some of his supporters too.)
Leigh: He didn't go to trial for the same reason *you* didn't go to trial: There was no evidence of wrongdoing. If you want to use circumstancial evidence to "brand" someone then why not question the family connections between Bush and Bin Laden? (A.One is a christian rich guy, the other...not)
Arresting people without due process is not protecting Australia, it is the start of chaos. Remember: the un-ravelling of a community starts with the authorities, not the minions. Authorities *must* be held to some sort of account.
Fact is a senior policeman arrested someone with no evidence and then lied about it. First an abuse of power, then proof of dubious character. Being mates with Howard may have saved him for a while (corruption had a golden era under Howard) but the nature of his compromised nature finally became too much to bear and he quit.
Goodbye, good riddance and please take the other Howard lackeys with you. (We cannot afford them anymore)

No, just a fellow who ended up way out of his depth in a job that quickly became much bigger and more important than when he was appointed.
The Libs should have moved him out - that's what would have happened in a business but by then it had all become political.
I feel sorry or him, in a way.

keith, if you think there was anything remotely honest about keelty's conduct with regard to haneef, then ... well then, nothing. you believe so much crap, a little more makes no difference.

or, perhaps you would like to ask lee rush how truly honest is this slimy little man.

toadying to the left? he's a born fascist, who licked the asses of his fascist masters. the one explicit example of toadying is when he forgot his role, told the truth about the iraq war, was subsequently kicked in the balls by ruddock, and took back the obvious truth of what he said.

pathetic, dangerous fungus of man.

I don't know who you are addressing, Bushbasher. Nobody called "Keith" has posted. However, I did use the word toadying, but I was referring to Australian politicians now toadying to the people who could be very dangerous to us. I believe Keelty was sick of the current mob of politicians who seem eager to allow anyone into Australia, whether they arrive via smugglers' boats or legally as Haneef did, although the Howard Government's negligence in training enough Australian doctors was the reason for his presence.

Your hysterical condemnation of Keelty with very florid language is hard to understand. Perhaps you simply have a hatred for police and law and order, as many self-hating (as in hating Australia)lefties seem to. Perhaps you have personal problems with police and the rule of law. To lash out as you have at a public servant (whom you don't know) who is under the thumb of politicians is amazing.

Whatever your reasons, you are well over the top: it's almost as though you want something really nasty to happen to Australia, so intense is your reaction to the handling of a foreigner who was genuinely suspected of being a danger to Australia. Haneef is nothing compared with the safety of Australians. He might or might not have been up to no good; the AFP might have stuffed up; but the fact that Haneef has gone back to where he belongs is a good thing, principally because his arrest and departure is a warning to others coming here who might not be nabbed as Haneef was.

Well, BUSHBASHER, think of the words "I never spoke out when they took them away. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me."

I am an ex-cop, but what you are saying is absolute BS Bushbasher. Haneef was totally innocent from the start, Keelty knew it, and he lied. End of story.

I know just what they are like, I've suffered the corruption that exists today.

Next time, I hope they come for you! Or, are you a cop? I suspect so!

I say goodbye to bad rubbish. Since its inception the Federal Police have been a political police, available only to the ruling party, and unable and unwilling to act as a law enforcement agency for society at large. It has stood idly by while the Constitution has been defiled and dragged through the mud. It has stood idly by while Judges and Magistrates have completely ignored the legislation made by the Parliament of the Commonwealth. It has allowed organized crime to thrive, and State Police forces to be bribed, break the law with impunity and become a quasi army owned by the State Governments of Australia.

Anyone who has tried to make a complaint to the Federal Police knows this. The Parliament of the Commonwealth has the power to take over and control the forces to execute and maintain the laws of the Commonwealth, but it has never done it. ( S 51 Placitum vi). Consequently the States have run riot. Lindsay Tanner wants to see the States abolished. He cannot do that but he should seek to end the unholy alliances forged between the States and the Commonwealth with organizations like COAG, where the nine separate State Governments in Australia work out new ways to abuse the civil rights of every Australian, men and women alike.

A real Police Force, would start by arresting every Judge and Magistrate in Australia and charging them under Part III of the Crimes Act 1914 ( Cth). They are guilty of offending the laws of the Commonwealth by attempting in a way not specially defined in this Act to obstruct, prevent, pervert or defeat the course of justice in respect of the Judicial Power of the Commonwealth. Every time they sit without a jury, these criminals offend. That goes for the lot of them from the High Court down to your local magistrate. At the same time they should be arrested for an offence against S 28 Crimes Act 1914 ( Cth) interfering with political liberty, because since 1275, it has been a political right to choose mode of trial, and they refuse.

"I feel sorry or him, in a way".

I don't Ken. I had an open mind on the bloke, but then swung wildly against him for his performance in the Children Overboard Inquiry.

He gave the impression to me, that he treated the then opposition Senators with contempt. He is now in the position of working for them. Maybe his contract was always bound to come unstuck early.

I saw Haneef as an organizer , paving the way for the assassins , maintaining the integrity of their cover , what a sweet man ?

But the bile and extreme left wing ideologues he enlisted indicates he must have been a recruiter of fanatical f'wits who are unable to manage their medication .

Keelty did a good job considering the role he played by nature will always be political , he was an ideal icosahedron .

Keelty tried to be his own man in the beginning and I had a lot of respect for him. He learnt very quickly that telling the truth is not always palatable to the government of the day.

This was all too apparent after the Spanish bombings when Keelty's comment about Australia's involvement in Iraq/Afghanistan as a trigger for terrorism went down like a lead balloon. His comments were in fact correct but were not appreciated from a political standpoint under the Howard regime.

His mistake was in not staying his own man. Instead of just admitting mistakes were made with the Haneef case and apologising, he had to buy into the whitewash. Stupid because in these types of situations the truth will always out.

There was a whole new set of anti-terrorism legislation to play with, along came Haneef as a test case and with it the obvious pressure from Ministerial level to provide validation for the unpopular changes to legislation.

There is no death penalty in Australia. I think it totally objectionable that a public office holder can legally pass information to a third party that may lead to the execution of an Australian citizen. It is worse when the informing parents of a person now facing execution were assured that their son would be prevented from leaving Australia.

Good to see Mick go.
Had occasion to write to his agency a few months back.
His outfit couldn't admit anything wrong with suppled, irrefutable,public domain evidence of internet porn trading by a magistrate and a certain barrister here in Oz.
But I suppose like everything else 'narrow definitions' exclude such activity by 'professionals' in Oz.
In this regard, a jaded term 'Koalas' - protected species, applies to their sort.
Ja?

A NON FARMER, you sound like you're involved in some sort of vigilante action!

You are right about going after the wrong ones, with Keelty announcing 300 arrests in Operation Centurion, with only 80 arrests and 20 summons, that's getting it wrong on the face of it 2 out of 3 investigations isn't it? Then when you do the sums on just a 63% conviction rate, that's getting it wrong in 79% of total cases.

Then the AFP changed the statistics in later media releases to make it sound much better for them, saying they only executed 130 warrents, with 100 attempted prosecutions. Sounds much better that only 30 innocent law abiding citizens had their names dragged through the mud rather than 200 doesn't it?

Keep watching the media towards the end of the year. There's an interesting case about to break over in the UK that will indicate widespread systemic corruption where they have been going after a huge number of innocent men simply to further their own causes to obtain funding! There is currently a class action underway over there now, and there are current serving police and ex police who have turned whistleblower with evidence of a world-wide collusion on this.

I would like to know what Keelty knows about SIEVX.

Hello Wronglyaccused,
With regard to your much appreciated last - I refuse any form of vigilante action despite seeing how effective such can be when properly managed and directed.
I do have some small experience of these things.

Such arrangements soon get administratively and operationally ‘white anted’ – and often end with the ‘claret’ staining the streets.

Forgive me when I say how the rule of law and correct and scrupulously applied process must be supplied at every stage of governance in our ‘modern democracy’.
This is something that OZ governance is hopeless at achieving since the arrival of the Rum Corps.

Therein, the rub.
What emerges to supplant the ‘powers that be’ when they flat refuse to do their job?

Kelty. I’d hate to have been in his shoes during his tenure.
It’s plain that he would do exactly what Herr Howard demanded of him.
It’s called the ‘Tiberius Complex’ – those temporarily powerful appoint the malleable, the controllable into subsidiary posts for obvious reasons.
Hence Kelty and many more.
I pray that Kev gains enough confidence to avoid using such strategies.

Your last paragraph about the UK case sounds right to me.
The entire show fits in with ‘international crime’ being matched by ‘international policing’.
It’s an industry like any other - requiring a resource, a market, and those placed to supply a marketable product.
That resource and product base has been expanding, exponentially, yearly.

Reinhardt Heydrich (Himmler’s 2IC) was involved with rounding up Innocent Jewish people in Central Europe when also head of INTERPOL.
How stuffedly, single mindedly, compromised could SOME coppers get?

Interesting that Churchill had had enough @ about 1942 to have Heydrich assassinated despite him being head of INTERPOL.

If Australians could get their head past their immediate comfort zones, they might research civics, governance and precedence. They’d gain understanding of their exploitation by a succession of utter bastards.

Unfortunately, such knowledge once acquired leaves some feeling as if they stand on the edge of the precipice.
Some comment please?

It is probably too late for this, but I've been overseas (in two real police states).

Keelty and the AFP were seriously in breach of the rule of law, in their double failure to release to Haneef and his team information that would help Haneef's case.

They repeatedly showed their lack of commitment to democratic principles in their failure to put forward cases for their demands for more police powers until it was too late for those cases to be tested and challenged. An excellent example is the B-Party interception powers.

They, along with the State police services, sought powers supposedly to protect us against terrorism, but saw to it that those powers extended to the investigation of a wide range of crimes, most of them not involving any threat to life. Those powers have been used mainly to investigate the lesser crimes. No justification has been offered for this, except that the powers are useful.

Members of the Bali nine face the death penalty because the AFP alerted the Indonesian police to the nine's activities, instead of arresting the latter in Australia.

When Mick Keelty first came to office, he was notable for his attack on corruption within the AFP. He has built up a strong relationship between the AFP and other police forces in South East Asia. He has been vigorous in an attempt to protect us against the threat of terrorism, which he correctly saw was created or increased by Australia's participation in the Iraq war. Some faults could therefore be excused--if he had been prepared to admit them. Instead, he has become stubborn in the face of evidence and argument. We cannot afford a top police officer who refuses to change his mind. Not can we afford one who has less than a full commitment to democratic values.

All Well said but somewhat lacking in salients.
Despite wanting to be a world citizen I believe myself primarily an Australian.
I cannot any longer be a Queenslander ‘cos queensland no longer exists as a lawful entity.

I cannot get past how the Aussie media just keeps griping about the awful things happening to foreigners. I'm past believing it is other than distraction from truth.

No-one has worked out yet that our ‘raffle winners’ (those floggers who ‘win’ elections) are bound to several constitutions within our Commonwealth of states yet by omission keep causing immense grief for people overseas or those wanting to come and settle here.

Face it. You’d have to be mentally deficient if you hadn’t worked out the displacement and disinformation game our ‘media use to keep us all distracted from important issues within Australia.

It is also about time that the ‘Indigenous Australians’ are those who were born here. The skin colour doesn’t matter a good goddamn if we can all get to embrace our common concerns, share in effort and fight the hate caused by the greedy.

What’s this to do with Kelty?
Wake up and think.
We had to create a hate during the Howard Reich. Terrorists all had dusky skin.
Then it reached the stage when Australians with dusky skin became suspect.
Then anyone associating with that sort – but, thank God, we had an election before that happened.
But I just remembered. I have a motorcycle license !!