Monday, July 23, 2007

Chronicle of a death foretold

The demise of Howard has been predicted more times than rain on the West Coast. Still, he hangs in there as desperately as does George Gregan. But this must surely be his end? Poll after poll show the Liberal's losing ground despite all manner of dodgy politics including the entirely predictable union smears. Now facing renewed leadership tensions triggered by the release of a new biography, Howard's days are numbered with some even suggesting he might not be leader at the election.

Australian politics is a mess. The detention of Mohamed Haneef appears a gross breach of basic human rights and each day's news reveals deeper and deeper flaws in the case against him - the latest that his diary was tampered with by the Police. And on the eve of APEC, Sydneysiders are being urged to pack up essentials into a "go-bag" in the case of an emergency - this isn't stupid, but the timing suggests a degree of hysteria. Interestingly, BBC World service interviewed random Sydneysiders in a local shopping mall, asking them what they'd pack? Not surprisingly a number suggested beer. Aren't the colonials cute?

And now today's news that NSW Police Commissioner, Ken Moroney, wants the power to take DNA samples from anyone arrested, regardless of their offence, for storage in a DNA database. This is, of course, obscene. The presumption of innocence cannot be said to be meaningful if, on being arrested and regardless of whether you are tried or convicted of a crime, your DNA is stored for cross referencing against future crimes. Moroney appears to be putting his hand up for even earlier retirement.

Thankfully sanity prevailed on the weekend with both the All Blacks and Silver Ferns beating their trans-Tasman rivals. Sadly, even if you have pay-TV, you won't see the final game in the Netball series as, yet again, ABC have decided against showing the decider live...

2 comments:

Cheezy said...

Interesting info. Especially that bit about the Queenland police (always a class act, much like apartheid-era Saffa cops).

As you'd expect, I hadn't heard any of that from this distance away... And I'm hoping that these rumours of Howard's political demise are not exaggerations.

PS: Also, I only just found out about that fantastic football score today! 3-1 to Iraq, huh? Oh dear!

backin15 said...

I suspect Howard's not as vulnerable as I'd like but he's more vulnerable now than he has been in the last ten years. Iraq played well, Australia played like a bunch of arrogant wankers... got through but then lost on pens to Japan... dead boring game though.