Abbott defies the “Black Legend” of the Haneef case.
By Gary Scarrabelotti
“Oh, it’s so peaceful,” my hostess declared last Saturday night.
We’d been talking about the low-key style of the new Abbott government and that we no longer have to listen either to Julia Gillard’s diphthongized hectoring or to Kevin Rudd’s contrived folksiness.
Not for long, I thought ruefully. The peace won’t last. But, true, momentarily at least, the chattering class, the media sages, have nothing much to talk about. And yet we have to talk about something, something really important, don’t we?
Thus, bellowed a September 18 headline in The Australian, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has already “lost his way”! There were too few women in his Cabinet.
Groan!
Even after the unelectable Abbott’s election victory, the professional commentators still insist on “misunderestimating” him. It is an ingrained habit of not seeing what’s there.
In April 2012, for example, there was a small but revealing incident. There had been gossip around the scuttlebutt about whether Joe Hockey should get the shove in favour of Malcolm Turnbull. Hockey had become briefly notorious for having given a speech in London entitled “The end of the age of the entitlement”. It was a fine speech on the need to wind back the welfare state, but it was interpreted as a critique of Abbott and an indiscrete display of a fine leadership feather. Abbott killed the speculation with a brisk football analogy. He was, he said, going to deploy in Government the team he had been training with in Opposition. Full stop. Period.
Dangerous admirers
Such low, footy team wisdom, however, could not – certainly, should not – survive election day when, or so the wisest pundits agreed, a drastically reshaped Liberal Party lineup was called for.
To go no further than the News Limited stable, if it was not Niki Savva, then it was Peter van Onselen; between them, they regularly advised Abbott who he should purge and who he should promote. Two names recurred on their lists: Kevin Andrews (Member for Menzies) — to be purged; and Kelly O’Dwyer (Member for Higgins) — to be promoted.
Well, today Kevin Andrews is Minister for Social Services and a full member of Cabinet while Kelly O’Dwyer is a backbencher. Lessons can be drawn.
One lesson might be this: that, if Abbott says he is going to field such-and-such a team, he means to do it. Another might be this: that, however gratifying it might be to see one’s credentials talked up in the media, it can be dangerous if it seems to be done at a colleague’s expense.
For sure, the time will come for some women now on the Liberal backbench. But not before they’ve proved themselves à la Julie Bishop. Meanwhile, intrigues can be an expensive indulgence.
Justice
Now, let me contribute a modicum of justice to balance the scales so shamelessly tilted since 2007 against Kevin Andrews.
Andrews has been damned unrelentingly for his alleged mishandling of the Haneef case in 2007 when he was Minister for Immigration and Citizenship.
The then Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd, did much to promote the “Black Legend” of the Haneef Case and otherwise intelligent commentators have been embellishing it ever since, as people do embellish such tales.
When he became Prime Minister, Rudd set up an “Inquiry into the Case of Dr. Mohammed Haneef.” Its political purpose was to discredit Andrews and, through him, the reputation of the Howard government on immigration and security. To conduct the inquiry, Labor commissioned John Clarke QC of Sydney’s Wentworth Chambers.
Clarke released a meticulously researched report in November 2008 and cleared Andrews on all counts. This was not what Labor had expected. Then, for all intents and purposes, the report disappeared. It did not fit the Rudd-Labor narrative. Nor has it suited, subsequently, the narrative of others, in and around the Liberal Party, who have wanted to put the boot into Andrews for quite different reasons: chiefly, because he is close to Abbott and represents a consistently strong natural-law influence on life, marriage and family issues.
Andrews acquitted himself well, and honourably, during the Haneef affair. His place in the first Abbott Cabinet indicates, among other considerations, that Abbott thinks so too.