EDITORIAL : THE AUSTRALIAN, AUSTRALIA

Right solution on boats still eludes government

IT would have been impossible to imagine a few years ago, but some of the most strident critics of the Howard government's Pacific Solution are calling for the reopening of the Australian-built detention centre on Nauru.

And with good reason. David Manne, co-ordinator of the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre, is right to argue that it is not in the children's best interests to be sent to Malaysia, where the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates there are already 1300 children who are either refugees or awaiting refugee assessment.

Lawyers Marion Le and Julian Burnside are correct in pointing out that asylum-seekers would be better treated at the Nauru processing centre - the facility they demanded that the Howard government close down. Whatever its faults, 70 per cent of asylum-seekers detained at Nauru won the right to settle in Australia. Australians were in charge of the centre and would be again if the Gillard government had had the common sense and decency to speak to the government of Nauru.

The prospect of sending vulnerable, unaccompanied boys and girls to take their chances in detention in Malaysia, where authorities can be merciless, is unconscionable. Refugees, including children, have reported beatings, cruel punishments such as being forced to stand for hours with their arms over their heads and other brutal abuse, corruption, unsanitary conditions and lack of education. No wonder a third of state Labor members in Western Australia are in revolt.

It is a sign of the government's breathtaking incompetence and sheer desperation over the issue that it boxed itself in badly by announcing its deal with Malaysia on May 7, before such sensitive details as the fate of children were finalised. Reportedly, Australia's agreement with Malaysia to transfer 800 asylum-seekers to Kuala Lumpur will not specify whether children and victims of torture will be exempted. Immigration Minister Chris Bowen has said some people, including vulnerable children, will be exempt but with decisions to be made case by case. But how he intends to keep his promise that those sent to Malaysia will receive special care and support is not clear.

At the same time, the government faces a serious dilemma. The more it routinely exempts minors and other vulnerable boat people from transfer to Malaysia, the more it will encourage the ruthless people-smuggling trade, with desperate families hoping that the acceptance of a son or daughter in Australia will allow the rest of the family to join them eventually.

Labor's then-immigration spokeswoman Julia Gillard claimed in 2003 that any boat arrival was a policy failure. In less than a month, five boats have arrived since Ms Gillard announced the Malaysian deal, in addition to 210 boats with more than 10,000 people that have turned up since Labor declared the Christmas Island facility a "white elephant" and scrapped the Coalition's border protection regime, including temporary protection visas. The Christmas Island boat tragedy in which 50 people drowned last year, the East Timor debacle and now the confusion over the Malaysian deal amount to three years of policy failures. And still the boats come.

US drone attacks gain ground

IN terms of importance to the battle against terrorism, the killing of the notorious militant commander Ilyas Kashmiri in a US drone attack in Pakistan is not far behind the death of Osama bin Laden.

The hope must be that Islamabad will spare us a replay of its confected outrage over alleged violation of its national sovereignty when the al-Qa'ida leader was targeted.

Kashmiri was as bad as they come. An associate of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl's kidnappers, he gained infamy when he decapitated an Indian soldier in Kashmir and posed for photos holding the head. As a member of Pakistan's Special Services Group in the 1980s, he trained militants battling the Soviets in Afghanistan. As leader of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami jihadists allied to al-Qa'ida, he was linked to the 2008 assault on Mumbai, an onslaught against military headquarters in Rawalpindi and last month's siege of the Mehran naval base in Karachi. That he has now been killed in one of the Predator drone attacks that Islamabad, in public at least, has been up in arms about is a reflection of the value of those strikes and Washington's welcome determination to ignore Pakistan's carping over violations of national sovereignty and get on with a job Islamabad itself is failing to do.

The incontrovertible reality is that as long as Pakistan dickers and fails to confront the militants in the way it should, there will be no progress in the war in Afghanistan. The Durand Line border is artificial. Jihadists, when they want a respite from coalition onslaughts in Afghanistan, cross into Pakistan where they know they will remain untroubled by Islamabad's forces. That scenario is unsustainable. The US is right to ignore Pakistan's protests and continue the drone attacks which, since 2008 when they were launched by the Bush administration, have killed 1400 militants.

To mask its feebleness in dealing with terror, Pakistan complains that each such attack involves loss of civilian life and that this recruits new followers for the militants. There may be something in that, but that is Islamabad's problem. After their credentials as allies were brought into question when bin Laden was found in Abbottabad, Pakistani authorities must expect the US and its allies will pursue high-value targets such as Kashmiri. If they can't do the job themselves, they must let others do it for them.

A destructive siege mentality

AS part of his inquiry into the "effectiveness and functions of the senior structure of Victoria Police command", Jack Rush QC must thoroughly investigate the Office of Police Integrity's decision to eavesdrop on the personal phone calls of deputy police commissioner Ken Jones and his wife.

The surveillance, based on information provided by Chief Commissioner Simon Overland, who told Sir Ken to take leave and clear his desk, is indicative of the paranoia that can some times overtake crime-fighting organisations. It arises when they overreach and become more obsessed with buttressing their own powers than serving the public interest by doing the job for which they were established. The tapping of the work and mobile phones of one of Police Minister and Deputy Premier Peter Ryan's most senior staff members reflects the same fortress mentality.

In different ways, the former National Crime Authority and the former Queensland Criminal Justice Commission also became overly focused on playing politics and lost their way before being restructured into the Australian Crime Commission and the Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission respectively. While the current mess in Victoria is not of the Baillieu government's making, its urgent task is to restore public trust in the state's law enforcement agencies, a challenge that must involve major structural as well as senior personnel changes. Structurally, it has long been clear that the OPI is far too close to Victoria Police to provide meaningful, independent oversight. The abuse of telephone and surveillance powers should be better regulated in Victoria and elsewhere, along the lines of Queensland's Public Interest monitor system. Abuses have blunted the effectiveness of such powers, which exist to help with the fight against organised and major crime, not to help paranoid law enforcement officers keep tabs on colleagues.

Rather than sacking Mr Overland, which it had sound reasons to do or opting for a royal commission, the government has opted for Mr Rush's investigation, which will report in November.

If that probe is to help restore public confidence in police, it must deal comprehensively with Mr Overland's role in Operation Briars, for which he has never been held accountable, as well as his conduct in prompting the OPI to spy on his deputy.