ANGUS Houston’s basic decency and humanity were obvious every time, as head of the Australian Defence Force, he had to announce the death of another soldier in Afghanistan. 
His fundamental integrity was apparent when he refused to economise with the truth during the inquiry into the children overboard affair.
Almost inexplicably, however, the recommendations of his expert panel on asylum seekers do not sit well with this. It seems, alas, the military mindset might have got the better of him.
The military mindset is one that looks at isolated objectives in a sliding scale without fitting each of them in context.
The chief of defence must win the war; the general must repel an offensive; the colonel must take a city; the lieutenant take a hill; the soldier move 50 metres and fire at anything that moves. The whole thing relies on unquestioning obedience.
It may work and may be necessary when a nation is at war or when natural disaster threatens order. In those circumstances, the niceties of human rights take second place.
Sometimes, nations at war take reprisals against the innocent; put people who might threaten security or national cohesion in concentration camps; push civilians into places that might endanger their health or lives; or they might kill or injure innocent bystanders as “collateral damage”.
It is a question of proportionality. The bigger the threat, the less important the fate of individuals. The bigger the threat, the more the immediate “objective” becomes essential.
The Houston report, to at least some degree, has the hallmarks of these military mindsets, but the question is, are they justified by the extent of the threat.
The objective is to stop the boats. The recommendations are directed at that, almost to the exclusion of all wider considerations.
Economic cost is touched upon, but only as an assessment of the cost of the objective, not in the context of a balancing act of all options or with an eye to the long-term costs.
National self-esteem and respect in the eyes of other nations are surrendered to the objective.
The importance of the rule of law and respecting humanity are again surrendered to the objective.
The principles of a liberal democracy are surrendered to the objective.
It would all be understandable and acceptable if a foreign army were at the gates. But it is not.
We must understand what our government has accepted – with unseemly haste – in our name.
It has accepted a recommendation that anyone without a valid visa arriving on our shores claiming refugee status can be removed to another country (Papua New Guinea, Nauru or perhaps Malaysia) and imprisoned for an undetermined time in a camp (yes, tents at first) that is paid for and controlled by Australia. The term of imprisonment will be equivalent to however long it might have taken the UNHCR to process those people in their own country. Four years? Five years? Who knows? And who knows who sets the time.
Some of these people will inevitably be completely innocent wives accompanying husbands, or young adult offspring accompanying parents. They have had no choice in the matter.
And in this time of imprisonment without trial, any children will either be imprisoned with their parents or separated from them.
Moreover, the panel countenanced another disincentive – towing, sending or escorting boats back to Indonesia.
It is done in the name of the objective – to stop the boats and to stop the people smuggling.
We will stop the activities of people smugglers by ruining their economic model whatever the cost to the innocent.
We will stop the partasans and the resistance by executing 10 villagers for every German soldier killed.
We will stop these rebellious Boer farmers by rounding them and their families into camps.
Our objective is to stop military supplies coming in from North Vietnam by bombing, and any civilians killed or injured are collateral damage.
Our objective is the River Somme, even if it costs 20,000 lives in a couple of days.
The mindset in the panel’s recommendations about boat people is nowhere as extreme, but it has its similarities.
Yes, it is difficult handling increasing numbers of smuggled people, as it is for any nation on the receiving end of refugee influxes. But by world standards ours is a comparatively small problem and we have comparatively greater resources to deal with it. There is no imperative to be cruel to the innocent.
We should redirect the spending the millions that we are spending on detention facilities and the millions we will have to spend trying to treat the mental-health of the vast majority of detainees who will inevitably remain in Australia. We should channel it into Indonesian law-enforcement to catch the people smugglers — in the same way as we helped catch the Bali bombers.
Meanwhile, as our government has taken the poorer alternative we should at least refrain from the self-congratulatory descriptions we bestow upon ourselves: tolerant, compassionate, a free society which has inherited democracy and the rule of law. Otherwise, we risk another epithet being applied to us – hypocrites.
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THE Government’s acceptance of all the Houston panel’s recommendations before even the fastest reader could get through the report is as puzzling as the Government’s equally rapid rejection of the recommendations of other inquiries’ recommendations. Or its sometimes long and secretive digestion of a report and delivery of whittled down acceptance without so much as a whiff of public discourse.
I suspect it has very little to do with the merits of the recommendations of these inquiries; the expertise of the inquirers; or the quality and quantity of research and analysis.
The Government’s reaction to Ken Henry’s tax review reminds me of the words of another Henry – Professor Henry Higgins who sang in My Fair Lady:
“She will beg you for advice
Your reply will be concise
And she will listen very nicely
And then go out and do precisely what she wants.”
The quote applies equally to the Finkelstein-Ricketson recommendations on media regulation, except you would change the last line to read:
“And then go out and do precisely what Rupert Murdoch wants.”
There is no logical explanation. What you see is all there is.
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BY THE way, following up the column from a few weeks ago, I somehow got that yacht to Port Douglas and my admiration for James Cook is now even greater.
CRISPIN HULL