Australian Leftist commentators bubbling over with deluded hatred

LIKE those inexperienced footballers who attempt to dispose of the ball before they have it, Australia's standing army of Howard-haters has gone beyond predicting a Labor victory at the forthcoming federal election. They are now explaining, and claiming ownership of, that victory. Writing on this page last month, Phillip Adams put John Howard's looming defeat down to the fact the Prime Minister's "wedging, vote-buying and sundry pork-barrelling has confirmed the electorate's worst suspicions about his deviousness". Any evidence those suspicions are widespread outside the echo-chamber of Late Night Live, Phil?

Adams continued: "Honest John is now seen to be as tricky as Dicky. Our increasingly Nixonian PM is focusing on his worst attributes and sinking into deeper do-do and disrepute." Apparently, after years of ignoring the prophets of the cultural Left, the electorate has woken up to the truth of what they have been saying all along: that Howard is evil incarnate.

Reading Adams, I was reminded of a comment made to me recently by a Left-leaning friend who works in one of the arts industries: that Australians are about to ditch the Government because of its abandonment of the anti-Semitic terrorism-supporter David Hicks.

But if a kind of Rip Van Winkle theory of the electorate was merely hinted at by Adams, it was outlined in great detail last weekend by Hugh Mackay, the social researcher and Fairfax columnist whom Tim Blair recently dubbed "Australia's most boring human". The key point about the election, wrote Mackay, will be its "retrospective character". This will be an election "about the past - the Government's and ours - catching up with us".

The poll will demonstrate the electorate awakening from a "dreamy period" during which it has disgracefully prioritised material satisfactions over principled politics. And can you guess whose pet peeves will be legitimised in this catch-up? "Many Australians who have felt powerless will want to punish this Government for sins long past," Mackay says. "Those who once marched in support of Aboriginal reconciliation, for instance, will decide it was not good enough, after all, to simply push that idea off the agenda. "Those who were ashamed of our treatment of asylum-seekers, but let themselves become anaesthetised by propaganda, will decide it was wrong to capitulate. Those who took the easy path of prejudice against ethnic or religious groups will decide they are capable of nobler responses than that. "Those who were too dozy to react to their gut instinct that told them the anti-terrorism laws went too far will think again."

But why, Hugh? Why would voters who rejected the reasons put forward by the cultural Left to ditch Howard in 1998, 2001 and 2004 suddenly accept those as the best reasons to ditch him now?

Similar threads were apparent in an extraordinary opinion article by Catherine Deveny in The Age yesterday. "If I were John Howard, I'd be praying for a terrorist attack," wrote Deveny, revealing a level of bloody-mindedness I wouldn't have expected even from the worst of the Howard and Bush-haters. Deveny looks forward to an election-night party that will deliver her and her crowd their long-delayed revenge. "The angry and disillusioned (I take it she means the green and the Left) are hoping for a grudge match come election night," she writes. "It's not enough for the Howard administration to be voted out. People want to see blood. They want to see Howard cockily strutting into the election claiming smugly, 'We are the underdog' ... only for it to go horribly wrong as the votes come in. "It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it."

And I bet it gives Howard goose bumps just reading about it. Do Mackay and Deveny even realise what utter poison it is to Labor's cause if voters in outer-suburban seats get a sniff of the looming triumphalism of those who seek to turn politics into either a moral crusade ("nobler responses") or a blood sport?

Anyway, do we really need such abstruse and self-serving theories as these to explain the predicament of the Howard Government? Here's a simpler account, based on the universal logic of the use-by date. The electorate is considering a change of government for the same reason I just traded in my old Commodore: as any unit ages, it becomes less reliable. While voters have, in fact, been toying with a political upgrade for some time, Labor has previously failed to satisfy one of the basic criteria: sound leadership. Voters thought Mark Latham was too volatile, Kim Beazley too soft. But in Rudd they are prepared to embrace a leader every bit as conservative, temperamentally cautious and safe-handed as Howard.

A disclaimer: the above theory is not original. It was unrolled before me by Rudd himself, five months ago, in the bookshop at Sydney Airport, as we stood leafing through Anne Applebaum's superb new study of the Soviet gulag and pondering whether to buy it. (I did; he didn't.)

Let me say that, as a swinging voter, I don't invest anything like Deveny's emotional energy in the outcome of the election. Rather, I celebrate the convergence of the main parties, which testifies to the contemporary Australian settlement in favour of markets as the fairest mechanism for distributing scarce resources, and the US alliance as the foundation of our foreign relations.

That said, if the Government falls, will I be discomfited by the crowing of the Howard-haters, against whom I have spent most of the past 15 years at war? Well, OK, yes. But even as I cringe under that cacophonous onslaught, I will be anticipating a more familiar and comforting sound: their howls of disappointment, as Rudd reveals he is no more a victim of their prejudices than Howard.

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Sleepy New Zealand police good at excuses only

New Zealand police say they are relying on Interpol to coordinate the search in the United States for fugitive father Michael Xue. He is now the prime suspect in what is thought to be the murder of his estranged wife Annie Liu. Mr Xue fled to Los Angeles at the weekend, leaving his three-year-old daughter Qian Xun Xue at a Melbourne train station, yet US police claim not to have been contacted by detectives in Auckland.

The officer in charge of the homicide investigation, Senior Sergeant Simon Scott, says they are dealing with Interpol, rather than local law enforcement agencies. "We want to speak with [Mr Xue] in relation to what's gone on here and in Melbourne," he said.

A post-mortem examination today is expected to formally identify a body found in Auckland as the toddler's missing mother. The body of an Asian woman believed to be 27-year-old Annie Liu was discovered in the boot of her estranged husband's car almost 48 hours after police first went to the family's suburban Auckland home.

But Senior Sergeant Scott blamed the apparent delays on obtaining a search warrant and the need to follow procedures. "We haven't had the keys for the vehicle - it's just not a matter of breaking the windows and getting in," he said. "I'm satisfied my staff have done an excellent job. "We are hoping examination of that vehicle is going to reveal evidence as to how the person that is in that vehicle has met their death."

Meanwhile the toddler's grandmother Liu Xiaoping, 53, will travel to New Zealand and then on to Australia to try and gain custody of Qian Xun Xue. "What she is going through now has no doubt left scars on her heart," Ms Liu said. "The Australian Government and people have given her great caring and support, for which I feel very grateful, but it will take some time for her to recover and walk out of the shadow cast on her heart." Her grandmother says she is the only one left to care for the girl. "I'm her closest and most important family member - she's got nobody apart from me," she said. "Anan [mother Annie] was my only child and she's my only granddaughter. I will do my utmost to bring her up."

Ms Liu wants to take her back to live in China's Hunan Province where she works as the deputy general manager of a large company. A Chinese politician in New Zealand says the three-year-old girl is best off being reunited with her extended family in China. Nationals MP Pansy Wong says the girl speaks Mandarin, and her grandmother has given assurances about family connections in China. "She's a very youthful grandmother, strong woman, they also have uncles," she said. "Qianxun also has grand-uncles and grand-aunties, so there's a lot of very caring extended family there."

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Police union attacks police bureaucracy

But the Leftist government loves the bureaucracy, of course

The Queensland Police Union (QPU) says the Commissioner needs to make police on the front-line his priority if he is going to be in the job for the next three years. The State Government has extended Bob Atkinson's contract to keep him on as Police Commissioner until 2010.

QPU vice-president Denis Fitzpatrick says the union yesterday opted against pushing for a vote of no-confidence in the Commissioner but that things need to change in the police force. "We disagree with the priorities of the Police Service - the way the service is operating at the moment, the way administration seems to become the main focus of the police service in Queensland, rather than preventing and solving crime," he said. "It's the union's firm view that operational police should be the priority of the Commissioner."

Queensland Police Minister Judy Spence says she has told the union to work with the Commissioner. "I had a meeting with the police union last night and told them of the Government's decision to renew the contract of Commissioner Atkinson," she said. "I'm disappointed with the fact that they've gone round with these motions of no-confidence. "They're not going to influence the Government's decisions and it's about time they agreed that they would work with the Commissioner."

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Rough West Australian cops betray their community

One would have thought that the wrongful conviction of Andrew Mallard would have shown them that their "anything for a conviction" mentality was wrong

There is a lot of soul searching going on inside the criminal justice system in Western Australia, after the guilty plea this week by a man named Dante Wyndham Arthurs to the shocking murder of an eight-year-old girl in a Perth shopping mall toilet last year.



It was a routine shopping trip that turned into a crime which shocked the nation. In June last year, the young girl, Sofia Rodriguez-Urrutia-Shu, was brutally murdered in a toilet at this shopping centre in Perth's southern suburbs. She was out of the sight of her brother and uncle for just 10 minutes, but the violence of the attack shocked even the most hardened police, including WA Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan. "The girl has got some shocking injuries, including broken bones and it's a very disturbing crime," he said. "As I said, it's one of the worst that I've ever seen."

Almost four years earlier, police had charged Arthurs with sexually assaulting another young girl, but the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) then dropped it because he ruled the police interview was too aggressive. In this week's murder case, the Supreme Court dismissed the police interview once again for exceeding acceptable boundaries.

Police acknowledge improvements need to be made and there are mounting calls for a major overhaul of law enforcement tactics.

On Monday, the man accused of the crime, a 22-year-old shopping centre worker, pleaded guilty to murder after the DPP dropped charges of wilful murder and sexual assault. "We have a conviction by a plea of guilty to murder and there will be a life sentence imposed. That's not a bad outcome," WA DPP director Robert Cock QC said.

Spokesman for the family of the murdered girl, Father Bryan Rosling, says they are relieved to be spared the trauma of a trial. "They are relieved in the sense that they don't have to be involved with the ordeal of a long trial and that their son Gabriel, who is only 15, will be spared having to be a witness," he said. "But they're very disappointed and saddened by the downgrading of the charges through the plea bargain."

The question now being asked of the DPP and the police is, could this murder have been avoided? In 2003, Dante Arthurs was charged with sexually interfering with an eight-year-old girl in a park near his home. Arthurs confessed to the attack, but as Mr O'Callaghan says, the matter went no further. "The DPP made the decision not to proceed with that case because they thought the detectives' questioning of Dante Arthurs was robust," he said. "We disagree with that, we disagreed with it at the time, we disagree with it now."

"It was just devastating to know that nothing was going to be done about it," Sophia's mother said. "It was just dropped and I was angry. I think it was inevitable that he was going to do it again."

But Mr Cock does not think the decision to deal with Arthurs led to the recent murder of Sophia. "I think it draws a very long bow to suggest that had he been dealt with for that offence, this offence may not have happened," he said.

The handling of the Arthurs murder case came close to failure last month. The defence had a win in the Supreme Court, when a videotaped police interview with Arthurs was ruled in admissible because of the aggressive interrogation yet again.

Mr Cock has criticised the interrogation of Arthurs by police. "The questioning by police went beyond the wind in this one, it wasn't just close to the wind," he said. "It exceeded the limits of a fair interrogation such to produce an interview which was not admissible in court. "So in that respect, it went too far."

"We have to understand that firstly there were no admissions made in that particular interview, so it wasn't necessarily as key as we think it might be," Mr O'Callaghan said.

Dante Arthurs pleaded guilty, therefore saving another potential embarrassment for police, but in recent years WA has seen a string of high-profile cases result in defeat and sometimes red faces for law enforcement.

In 2002, deaf mute Darryl Beamish was freed after serving 16 years in jail for murder and in 2004, the Mickelberg brothers conviction for a multi-million dollar gold swindle were overturned after more than 20 years. In 2005, Rory Christie's conviction of his wife's murder was overturned and in the same year, Andrew Mallard's 1995 conviction of Perth jeweller Pamela Lawrence was quashed, which is now the subject of a Corruption and Crime Commission inquiry. Earlier this year, three men were acquitted of the murder of Phillip Walsham in 1998.

But Mr O'Callaghan warns against drawing conclusions. "I think we have to be very careful in drawing conclusions that because a case is lost, the police have not done their job or the investigators have not done their job. That's not true," he said. "I don't want to sound overly defensive about policing, I think that we do have some improvements to make."

Mr Cock shares a similar view. "I think it's unfair to put in a bundle, about seven or eight high-profile cases that have been delivered recently - although depending on trials that have happened over the last 40 years - package all them up and say therefore you haven't learnt anything," he said.

Many in Perth's legal community, including barrister Tom Percy QC, believe there needs to be a radical overhaul of the law enforcement culture, even after a royal commission into police conduct which reported in 2004. Mr Percy has been practising criminal law in WA for three decades. "I haven't seen any major changes in the last 20 years, 30 years of any real significance at all," Mr Percy said. "It's time that the whole culture of the police and the DPP was examined and examined by someone who doesn't have a culture within the DPP or the police. "Someone from the outside [to] have a good look at it, because as long as the people who've been part of the system for many years are in charge, we're unlikely to see anything change."

WA Attorney-General Jim McGinty has announced the State Government will abolish the offence of wilful murder to bring it in line with other states. But regardless of any reforms, the family of Sofia will always be haunted by the question, what might have happened had Arthurs been convicted in 2003.

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