Letter from Australia 200
Dr Mohamed Haneef, a 27-year-old Indian
doctor from Bangalore, would have been surprised to hear
prayers being said for him and his family in Australia’s
churches today. These were prayers of regret for the harm done
to a man most people believe to be innocent and prayers for
the government law-makers and officials whose disregard for
the rule of law in the case of Dr Haneef has been criticized
in the strongest terms from coast to coast.
Dr Haneef was, at the time these prayers were being said, on
his way back to Bangalore to join his wife and newborn
daughter after a harrowing experience at the hands of the
Australian Federal Police and the Australian Department of
Immigration, whose Minister, Kevin Andrews, must have the
reddest face around considering the blunders of recent weeks.
Most Australians are outraged at the treatment Haneef received
following his arrest on suspicion of being involved in the
‘doctors’ plot’ to explode bombs in London and Glasgow. After
being held incommunicado for several days, he was eventually
charged with intentionally providing support to an
organization deemed to be a terrorist organization under the
terms of the Criminal Code Act 1995 and held in prison for 3
weeks. The grounds for the charges were that Dr Haneef is
related to one of the suspects who were captured after the
failed bomb attempt at Glasgow airport and that he gave or
lent his SIM card to one of the men. The information that the
SIM card was found in the car that crashed into Glasgow
airport proved to be false: it was found in a flat in
Liverpool, hundreds of kilometres away. In the end, and to the
most profound embarrassment of the government, all charges
were dropped and Dr Haneef was freed. Unfortunately for him,
however, the Department of Immigration declared him to be of
suspicious character and withdrew his working visa, so that he
could not legally remain in Australia. Graciously, he
voluntarily left the country, saying that he might consider
returning. We hope he will, because he has a reputation to
reclaim.
Dr Haneef’s medical colleagues in Australia
know that the Australian health system would collapse were it
not for the many overseas trained doctors who plug the gaps.
Workforce planning errors led to a sharp reduction of places
in Australia’s medical schools in the 1990s and the effect of
these cuts are now being felt. Australia has too few new
medical graduates to go around, especially in the rural
sector. Overseas trained doctors make a contribution to the
Australian health system that is highly appreciated and it
would be terrible if potential applicants for positions here
were deterred by Dr Haneef’s experience.
The medical profession in Australia had other grounds for
outrage recently. A report released a few
months ago documented appalling rates of child sexual abuse
and other forms of alcohol and substance-fuelled violence in
remote Aboriginal communities. Having totally ignored warnings
from doctors and welfare workers for the past 10 years, Prime
Minister John Howard, wanting to be seen to be strong during
an election year, announced some draconian measures to address
these problems. One of these was that every Aboriginal child
living in every remote community and under the age of 16 years
would be forced to undergo a compulsory medical examination.
Doctors asked: ‘Who will carry out these health checks? Will
they be for the purpose of obtaining evidence of sexual abuse?
What programme will be established to provide treatment for
all of the problems found? What long term solutions will be
found for the seemingly intractable problems related to
unemployment, societal breakdown, substance abuse and
worsening race relations that pervade Aboriginal Australia?’
The proposal quickly disintegrated into a
farce as both Government and Opposition realized that
electoral advantage had swung around to electoral disaster.
The only good thing to be said about the whole affair was that
it showed the entire world how bad things are for Australia’s
indigenous people. One wishes that the United Nations could be
permitted to implement a strategy, but that would involve too
much loss of face for the Australian government.
Strange things happen in an election year.
John Howard won the last Federal election on the strength of
the ‘children overboard’ affair when asylum seekers aboard a
small boat, SIEV-4 (suspected illegal entry vessel 4), were
reported to have started throwing their children overboard in
an attempt to force the Royal Australian Navy to rescue them
and take them on board a ship to Australia. ‘We don’t want
people like that coming to Australia’, said the Prime
Minister. A wave of fear gripped the Australian people—fear
that they would be overrun by thousands of illegal immigrants
who would take their jobs if the Howard government was not
re-elected. The fact that there never were any children
thrown overboard emerged later, but not soon enough to change
the election result.
Dr Mohamed Haneef, the indigenous children
of Australia and the children on board the ill-fated SIEV-4
have been used as cards to be played in a dangerous game that
attempts to generate fear and disunity. We pray that they will
forgive us.
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