EDITORIAL : THE AUSTRALIAN, AUSTRALIA

NSW police get the job done

CANBERRA is sending the wrong signals on asylum-seekers.

It's no laughing matter, but there is a bad joke doing the rounds in pubs as drinkers speculate whether they might get away with burning down the tax office if they first claimed refugee status. Unfortunately, the asylum-seekers who spent 11 days on the roof of Sydney's Villawood detention centre treated the Australian government as a joke, defying repeated orders and pleas to climb down. The Immigration Department, the Australian Federal Police and the operator of the centre, Serco, appeared helpless until Kurdish detainees Mehdi Darabi, 24, and Amir Morad, 22, climbed down on Saturday. The mishandling of the crisis sent a bad message to the nation and the world that Australia's handling of the issue is out of control.

Federal authorities have much to learn from NSW Police and Fire and Rescue officers who wasted no time in safely pulling three protesters off the roof of Immigration Minister Chris Bowen's Sydney electorate office on Friday. It's understood that Premier Barry O'Farrell would have happily sent in police with the expertise to handle the Villawood debacle, but it was not his jurisdiction. Serco staff have raised serious concerns with their union that their training is inadequate for the task they are being asked to perform. Until that shortcoming is rectified, the government needs to delegate the harder jobs to the AFP, the army or contract it out to services such as the NSW police. Instead, as it dithered, the rooftop protest, which followed a riot on April 20 in which nine buildings were set alight, causing millions of dollars damage, signalled to the world, including people-smugglers and would-be asylum-seekers, that Australia has lost control of the problem.

Mr Bowen is right to amend the character test to ensure that detainees who incur any criminal convictions fail the test so that those responsible for riots, violence and vandalism will have their quest for permanent residency rejected. While the Gillard government denies it is restoring Howard-style temporary protection visas, it is right in granting only temporary asylum to refugees who break the law.

Beyond handling of the crisis in overcrowded centres, the government must also stop the influx of boatpeople by resuming offshore processing at Nauru or Manus Island, and considering a form of temporary visas for all boat arrivals. It is time to retake control. 

Gaddafi's rule is irredeemable

ONLY the despot's departure will end the bloodshed.

With the death of his youngest son and three grandchildren in a NATO airstrike, Muammar Gaddafi, even in his megalomaniacal madness, must now realise the game is up and he has no alternative but to go. Otherwise he faces not just further destruction of his country, something about which he has shown he cares little, but also more loss of life within his family circle.

Libyan government officials say Gaddafi and his wife were in the mansion when their son Saif al-Arab, 29, and three grandchildren were killed and other family members and friends injured. The despot and his wife, it is claimed, were unharmed in what his officials label an assassination attempt, something denied by NATO, which insists the attack hit one of the regime's command and control centres and individuals are not being targeted.

Loss of life in any conflict is always to be regretted, especially that of children. But the inescapable reality is that the bloodshed in Libya, wherever it is occurring, is the result of Gaddafi's murderous obduracy, and it will end only when he goes. The Libyan government's oleaginous spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, seeking to raise sympathy in the Islamic world, claims Saif al-Arab was martyred. That's hogwash. He died as a consequence of his father's murderous rampage against the Libyan people as they seek freedom and democracy after decades of tyranny, and NATO's determination, at the behest of the UN Security Council, to put an end to the bloodshed. Claims of martyrdom will inevitably find an echo in some parts of the world. So, too, will charges that Gaddafi and his family are being unreasonably targeted, something not provided for in UNSC resolution 1973. The coalition must not be deflected by such arguments, but should step up its drive to demonstrate that his situation is irredeemable.

While not specified by the Security Council, regime change is an inevitable consequence of seeking to end the bloodshed. It is also essential to serve notice on other loathsome dictators such as Syria's Bashar al-Assad that they face similar consequences if they continue their brutal suppression. NATO is right to reject Gaddafi's latest disingenuous plea for a ceasefire. The only thing that will end the killing is the despot's departure. The sooner he buckles, the fewer lives that will be lost. 

Only the populace, not the elite, can foster a republic

PRINCE William is shaping up as a first-rate monarch.

As senior members of the royal family have indicated in the past, the question of Australia becoming a republic is entirely a matter for Australians. Such a transition is not a first-order issue, but The Australian has long supported the idea as a natural progression of our independent, robust democracy -- possibly after the distinguished reign of the Queen. That said, the extraordinary worldwide interest in last Friday's royal wedding is an indication of the resilience and durability of the monarchy, which has defied attempts to be written off as an anachronism. And, from what we have seen in recent weeks of Prince William's interactions with victims of Queensland's floods and cyclone and the New Zealand earthquake, and at his wedding on Friday, Britain and possibly this nation have the makings of a first rate monarch in the future William V.

Most of Australia's commentariat regard the advent of a republic as a no-brainer. Once again, however, their preoccupations have been shown to be vastly out of step with millions of Australians, including many young people. When the figures are finalised, the number of Australians who watched the royal wedding on television or online will not fall too far short of the audience who tuned in to the opening and closing ceremonies of the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Most were delighted by the rich pageantry, the dignity of the traditional ceremony in the hallowed halls of Westminster Abbey and the refreshingly unaffected young couple at the centre of it all. It does not suggest any widespread desire to break ties with the commonwealth or turn our backs on the Westminster system, heritage and cultural traditions. Nor will the predictable arguments of radical nationalists impress young Australians, who have rediscovered the Anzac tradition in a way that has surprised their parents, who were reared on the cynicism of the One Day of the Year and the teachings of left-wing historians in the 1970s. For them, William and Catherine are people to admire and respect.

It is almost half a century since Donald Horne wrote about the inevitability of a republic, a concept heavily promoted by the old Bulletin magazine late in the 19th century. Horne and others recognised one of the biggest threats to the monarchy would be its possible degeneration into nothing more than a celebrity cult or, in modern terms, a soap opera. Such a fate seemed imaginable with the crumbling of the first marriage of the Prince of Wales and that of his brother, the Duke of York. But the stoicism of the Queen following her "annus horribilis" has shown that it is so much more. The stability afforded by constitutional monarchy was emphasised on Friday in the abbey that has served as the Coronation church since 1066.

Being discerning and independent, Australians would eagerly oppose the monarchy if they saw it eroding the robustness of our democracy. After voting down the 1999 republican referendum in all states, people will need more convincing, and a much better model, before they revisit the issue. Given the resistance of the monarchy to fall in with predictions of its demise, only a brave person would predict when Australia might become a republic, which this newspaper believes is our destiny. In the meantime, in the absence of an Australian head of state, Prince William has the makings of a good substitute.