Political Corrections

with Mungo MacCallum

No hope for an honest copper

There are times when the worst thing about the Howard government is its sheer nastiness.

Such times are, of course, irrational; the destruction of public health and education, the lop-sided economic hand-outs, the loss of an independent foreign policy, cynical short-sightedness on the environment, the deliberate exploitation of racism, the corruption of the public service, the misuse of the armed forces and the intelligence services, the erosion of civil liberties, the attacks on the Senate and the courts, the manipulation of the media, the mendacity, the cronyism and the transformation of Australia from a generous and optimistic member of the world community to a scared and selfish xenophobe (to name just the more obvious) are all more dangerous and worrying than the numerous acts of petty malice that have peppered the last eight years.

But at times it is the moments of personal grubbiness that stand out. Thus the monstering of Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty will be remembered when many more important atrocities from Howard and his colleagues have been forgotten.

Keelty, as his carefully tended moustache attests, is a conservative, no-nonsense copper. Despite having two university degrees, he takes a fairly old-fashioned attitude to his work; ironically, he would probably agree with Howard more times than not, especially on such issues as a zero-tolerance approach to drugs.

His principle asset is his unquestioned honesty; in an industry notorious for bending and frequently breaking the rules, there has never been a hint of suspicion over Keelty's conduct. He calls it as he sees it, and this, of course, is what got him into trouble.

His remark that if Al-Qaeda was responsible for the Madrid bombings, then Spain's participation in the war in Iraq probably had something to do with it was, to use one of Howard's favourite phrases, only common sense. Keelty did not say it was the only reason or even the principal one; but even the suggestion that Iraq was a factor was too much for our Prime Minister, who has always maintained (contrary to all logic) that the war has actually made us safer from terrorism. Here was the country's top cop confirming what every sane person already knew: joining the coalition of the willing had moved us up bin Laden's hit list. Death to the heretic.

Literally within minutes Howard was on the blower to his chief of staff, Arthur Sinodinis (best known as the subject of a scurrilous press gallery limerick which begins: "Howard's hatchet man, Art Sinodinis...") and Sinodinis got hold of Keelty at the TV studio where he had done the offending interview and told him to shut the f*#% up.

Howard said Keelty had got it wrong, Phillip Ruddock said there was no evidence to support Keelty (one might have thought that our Attorney-General's razor sharp legal mind would have noted Al-Qaeda's own words on the subject) and Alexander Downer, as always the most vicious, hissed that the police commissioner was simply mouthing bin Laden's propaganda. Most disturbingly the Chief of the Armed Forces, Peter Cosgrove, was prodded forward to contradict his colleague.

Keelty, now softened up to the point where he was contemplating resigning, was then told by Sinodinis to sign a recantation; like Galileo, he did so, and his opening sentence - that he had been taken out of context - became his only lie in the whole squalid affair. Howard completed the humiliation in a series of public handshakes at the police commissioners' conference next day and his ministers were suddenly fulsome, Downer (of course) being the most sickening.

Perhaps the saddest part of the affair was Keelty's reported remark that at least he had maintained his integrity. But he hasn't; like Cosgrove, he has put the political interests of the government ahead of the public good. He is no longer a public servant; he has become Howard's servant. In terms Keelty would understand, a straight copper has been bent.

Against the ruin Howard has inflicted on the country as a whole, Keelty's personal tragedy is a minor one. But it deserves its footnote in the history of the times - if only for its nastiness.

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about Greens leader Bob Brown's effusive endorsement of Mark Latham in Tasmania last week was that the Greens got exactly nothing in return. Zilch, zip, zero.

While Brown was hailing Latham as the prime minister in waiting, the voice of the new generation, just about the greatest thing since unsliced, unprocessed wholemeal bread, Latham was busy telling the media that not a single timber worker's job would be lost, the Regional Forest Agreement would run its course and the clear felling of those old growth forests marked for the industry would continue. No wonder he looked slightly bemused by the stream of flattery Brown unleashed.

Presumably Brown had been hoping for the kind of conversion Bob Hawke's Environment Minister Graham Richardson underwent (or at least professed to have undergone) in the quest for Green preferences at the 1990 election. The very down-to-earth Latham refused to oblige. Confronted with the iconic Cave Tree, a giant Eucalyptus Regnans with a tunnel through it wide enough to accommodate four men standing side by side, Latham commented: "It's a big tree that's gone rotten in the middle" - hardly the lyrical reception the Greens might have expected.

But he won at least one heart and mind. Asked what kind of milk he took in his coffee, the wily politician replied: "Soy." "Ooh, I'll vote for you," squealed a Green supporter. Well, that's the vegan vote tied up.