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Australia’s Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, sounded like a posh private school boy exasperated at being walloped in a debate by some working class upstart when he appeared on radio today. This is because he was.

Former pig-shooter and Guantanamo Bay inmate, David Hicks, continues to haunt the Howard Government on the election campaign trail despite being behind bars in Adelaide’s Yatala prison and subject to a gag order.

For five years, while Hicks languished in the notorious US military prison without charge but under suspicion of involvement in terrorism connected to his Taliban activities, the Howard government demonised him and refused to intercede on his behalf. That was until the eventual public backlash against his (mis)treatment threatened to turn the Hicks case into an election issue.

Within weeks of the government changing its tune and calling on the Americans to charge or release Hicks, a plea deal was struck at the highest level which resulted in the Adelaide father of two entering a guilty plea to one charge of ‘providing material support for terrorism’ in exchange for his repatriation to Australia. Hicks was ultimately sentenced to nine months jail in Adelaide’s Yatala prison and he’s due for release on December 30th.

At the time, the government denied it had done a political deal to secure Hicks’ release before the election and ensure he was behind bars on polling day. But revelations from US military sources this week appear to put the lie to that claim. The respected magazine Harpers carried an article from a US Civil Rights lawyer who quoted an unnamed military officer saying “Vice President Dick Cheney interfered directly to get Hicks’ plea bargain deal… He did it apparently as part of a deal cut with Howard.”

The Chief Prosecutor in the Hicks case, Colonel Mo Davis, today lent weight to those claims, telling ABC Radio he resigned his post in response to high level meddling with the judicial process in the Hicks case. “Unfortunately in my opinion, politics has inserted itself in the process so it’s, in my view, no longer a military commission, it’s become political,” he said. Colonel Davis says he was taken by surprise when the plea bargain was announced to the court after a deal was struck at levels above his head, disconnected from the judicial process. And he claims Hicks got off lightly.

Alexander Downer was clearly angry about these claims when he appeared today on another ABC radio program. “I mean honestly and truly,” he said, urging listeners to trust him. “I was exasperated by the amount of time it took and I thought that the public criticism of…no, and a lot of people were not supporters of David Hicks but they thought it was taking too long.” Not a particularly convincing performance and he was clearly rattled by the line of questioning from Virginia Trioli: “You’re just blackening our names. That’s all you want to do," he protested. I wonder what David Hicks would have to say in response to that complaint?

John Howard, who earlier in the year denied intervening in the case, was today telling a different story. “Of course I plead guilty to having asked both the President and the Vice President, within whatever power they had, to accelerate resolution of the matter,”he told another ABC presenter. His argument, though, was that this intervention was good and proper.

Meantime, Hicks’ father, Terry, who campaigned tirelessly for his release from Guantanamo, is once again a thorn in the side of the Howard government. He is raising questions about separate ABC reports that the Australian Federal Police are considering slapping a control order on Hicks when he’s released from jail. According to the ABC his movements and communications would be restricted and he’d be required to report to the police for up to a year if the order is applied. Terry Hicks is calling for a meeting with the AFP, saying such an order could destroy his son’s life.

And, with echoes of the Hicks matter, the Dr Mohamed Haneef case is also continuing to plague the government with the AFP Commissioner, Mick Keelty, admitting to the Bulletin magazine today that he advised the Director of Public Prosecutions not to lay charges against the Gold Coast Hospital registrar who was falsely accused of involvement in the June terror attacks in Edinburgh. The Immigration Minister, Kevin Andrews, cancelled Dr Haneef’s visa on the grounds he was of bad character after the charges against him were dropped. The decision was overturned by the Federal Court but the Federal Government is appealing the decision and the matter is set down for hearing on November 15th – ten days before polling day.

Dr Haneef’s lawyer says he’s astounded at the AFP Chief’s admission which will be inadmissible at the appeal due to the rules of evidence precluding the tendering of new information.

It’s almost surreal watching the government stumble on its back foot on these issues of ‘national security’ during an election campaign. It was just six years ago, during the 2001 election that the ‘Children Overboard’ and ‘Tampa’ scandals underlined the electorate's racist response to the fear of terror whipped up by Howard’s ‘dog whistle’ politics. This time around, though, the Howard Government appears to be unraveling on similar issues. Could it be that the electorate will no longer be bluffed by the race card and has finally had enough of the so-called ‘War on Terror’?    [read more]