SOME HAVE NASTY, SUSPICIOUS MINDS
There is something quite intriguing about the way the State Government has manipulated the legal system to make the current Commissioner for the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) re-apply for her job.
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There are many people out there who have nasty, suspicious minds, people who might think the government was worried that she might be investigating someone or a group of people close to the government who have been very naughty and might embarrass the government if anyone looks too closely at their actions.
Those of us who do not have nasty, suspicious minds know our elected government would never stoop so low, but ...
Originally, the creators of ICAC thought they had an air-tight system to ensure that some future government could not interfere in the work of ICAC, and for very good reason.
This is supposed to be a crime-fighting organisation that is totally independent of the government of the day and the citizens must wonder why the present team apparently sought a way of circumventing that.
To ease our minds, maybe the NSW Law Council (or some other legal organisation who really believes the independence of the law and that includes ICAC) could start asking the tricky questions about the independence of ICAC and if the NSW Government’s actions are warranted?
A good, open inquiry could certainly calm the fears of the voters who must be wondering what it is all about and why the government seems so concerned about what ICAC has been investigating.
MY FRIGHTENING TSUNAMI
The recent earthquake and tsunami scare in Japan made this old scribe realise that he is probably the only person alive to have actually seen the start of a tsunami and that maybe that scaring time should be recorded.
It was a long time ago, 1953, and I was running the radio station in Suva, Fiji: a wonderful experience, at a time when every village consisted of grass huts with crushed coral walkways through the village and Suva was the headquarters of what was then a British colony.
Our studio was only about 10 metres from the harbour foreshores. It was lunchtime, a typical tropical day when suddenly there was a strange and very loud rumbling noise and our substantial building started to shake and twist violently as a co-worker and I ran outside only to see mud flats where once there had been water and on the other side of the harbour, maybe five or six kilometres away, was this huge wave which was later estimated to be ‘between 60 and 80 feet high’ – over 20 metres high.
It wasn’t like a wave on the beach. It was as though the earth had opened, the water had rushed into the gap and then the gap suddenly closed sending the water spurting up in the air.
We ran to a car and drove along the main street yelling out about the big wave coming. Fortunately there were coral reefs throughout the harbour and it was less than two metres high when the wave hit our studio.
Eventually I was able to get the station back on air, not a comfortable task when salt water had washed into the transmitter.
The next few weeks were tough with regular after-shocks, but that is another story.
WHERE NOW WITH DEFENCE?
Someone in Canberra will need to take a serious appraisal of Australia’s future defence policies, and that doesn’t mean ‘more of the same’ that we have had in the past when we simply played ‘follow the leader’ with the United States.
We have made some terrible blunders in the past but recent events make it essential that Australia creates a new and more independent policy.
Consider this new situation. We have President Putin in Russia continually niggling at the United States and still fuming at the great loss of power and prestige Russia has suffered since the collapse of world communism. Russian hackers were even involved in the US presidential election but, strangely, opposing Mrs Clinton’s campaign.
But now we have Mr Trump as incoming president of the United States and wonder what will happen if either one of them, Trump or Putin, steps on the other’s toes or even starts niggling the other. Methinks it could lead to fireworks.
Australia has had a long commitment to support the United States in international affairs and has followed the US into several unwinnable wars. We must reconsider that commitment under this new American regime.
THE MIDDLE EAST MUDDLE
There was a long and detailed report in an international journals about the mess in the Middle East, which described the problems being faced by the forces trying to stop ISIS in its strange aim to kill people who don’t follow their brand of religion.
The report said ISIS was using IEDs (improvised explosive devices) similar to those that killed thousands of American troops “during the occupation of Iraq that helped give rise to ISIS”.
This was, at last, an acknowledgement that our involvement in the invasion of Iraq during the Howard years was a terrible blunder, particularly since reports by American investigative journalists now claim that the war in Iraq was had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction but was manipulated by the American oil cartels.
It was all about oil and their contracts with other Middle East countries and Saddam Hussain was simply in the way.
Surely it’s time our government gave all parliamentarians the task of deciding whether or not our country should ever go to war.
Ray Williams has been a Post columnist since retiring from the newsroom in 1993.