Philip Ruddock: Evil Incarnate
Harold Hark
3 June 2003

Thine may be the power and glory now but thy kingdom to come is going to be hell on earth.
Harold Hark

Notorious gangster Al Capone was finally brought down over income tax evasion. The American government knew he was guilty of racketeering and murder, but they could never prove it. They got him on what amounted to a technicality.

Heil Ruddock is currently under fire for taking bribes, "money-for-visas", from applicants normally turned down by Immigration. There have been several, more will no doubt come to light, for this is what the Howard Government does best. In the case of the Maha Buddhist monastery, a "donation" of the exorbitant sum of $100,000 was made to Ruddock's own election campaign. Some 30 visa applications were subsequently approved. Ruddock insists he did not know of this "donation", claiming, in the tradition of criminals generally and this government in particular, that the Illiberal Party's fund-raising code required party lackeys to look after donations without informing their bosses.

He seems to voluntarily intervene only to insure that children remain incarcerated under Gulag conditions, that families remain separated in different countries, with the promise of reunion to be granted only if they take a few dollars and return to the countries from which they fled under threat of death.

This tactic of insuring that condoned skulduggery does not reach the ears of the minister responsible is the corrupt foundation of John Howard's Coalition. Howard and Peter "The Gunsel" Reith used it to election-manipulating advantage during the Children Overboard shamefest.

Unlike the government that nailed Al Capone, Capone's political equivalents are part of the present government. They believe themselves invincible, and they may well be. They thrive on avoiding responsibility as a democratically elected government by resorting to technicalities and subterfuge to boost their narrowest of narrow ideology.

Nothing short of people taking to the streets in mass revolt will cleanse the nation of the cesspool of ignominy emanating from Canberra. Labor won't stop it, because it is no longer a genuine party. Most Labor politicians, or the ones that control the party, stand for the same ideology the Illiberals stand for, minus to some extent the criminal intent. Those Labor worthies who consistently stand up for justice would be wise to form a coalition with the minor parties. Such a coalition may not have the numbers to win elections, but their very important existence would lift the dark cloud of depression from a significant number of Australians. Defeat with honour is the difference between courage and baseness. For this reason, the potential re-emergence of Kim Beazley as Labor leader spells disaster. He went down to defeat as a collaborator. And we know from World War II that collaborators are the lowest form of human scum.

Heil Ruddock, Alexander Downer, Richard Alston, and John Howard (to name just the hardcore vandals) are on a loop-de-loop of infamy. One day it's Ruddock at the apex of disgrace, the next Alston, then Downer, and always Howard. More often than not, they share the spotlight all at once. They each deserve nothing less than arrest for crimes against humanity, crimes against the Constitution, and crimes against Australians, excluding, of course, those born-yesterday, factory defectives who continue to support them, just as their German counterparts continued to support the Nazis long after the war. When found guilty, their sentences should reflect the same compassion they have shown others. None.

I'll conclude with a few letters from The Age:

I want Philip Ruddock to explain, clearly and concisely, why deporting a women who is eight months' pregnant (The Age , 2/6) is necessary to "protect our borders"? Or how deporting a man to a country his children are barred from "protects our borders"? Or why he believes that using temporary protection visas to leave genuine refugees in limbo "protects the migration program"?

Minister Ruddock, you are creating a nation of very depressed and despairing Australians. Please just give these people an amnesty - they should never have been treated so badly.
Marilyn Shepherd, Kensington, SA

Will Philip Ruddock ever have the right or the nerve to claim that he acted in good faith when his peculiar form of child abuse is finally recognised as such?

There are the two motherless children in Bali who cannot join their Iranian father in Australia. Perhaps Mr Ruddock believes that one act of humanity will open the floodgates to orphans all over the world?

There is the Kadem family in Melbourne, still living in limbo while every other family on the same boat has been given temporary protection visas. They have nowhere to go. Bright young kids - whose motivated parents did exactly what you, I, and Mr Ruddock himself would do in similar perilous circumstances - are submitted to a life of insecurity and rejection.

There are the many children still in our detention centres, children who should be in our school system preparing to be useful citizens - but are instead at risk of becoming disheartened, alienated and depressed people whose capacity to participate in any society will eventually be impaired.

The boats have stopped. Let's do the right thing by these children and give them a chance.

How can we, who know what damage was done to the stolen generation, allow these vengeful processes to happen?
Pamela Lloyd, West Brunswick

I have heard it said by people who knew him in his younger days that Philip Ruddock used to be "a good man". What events transpire in the world of politics that a person will consistently say things he must know to be untrue, and say the most terrible things about desperate people?

What emotional faculty is missing or buried, such that the psychological damage inflicted upon children by years of detention simply doesn't register?

What reward is so gratifying, Mr Ruddock, and how does your conscience weigh it?
David Rivers, Bentleigh

Over the past 18 months the Prime Minister has revealed, by his words and actions, a disturbing personality flaw. The flaw is his repeated inclination to blame, or at least not defend, a victim against whom some wrong has been perpetrated. On the contrary, he has on a number of occasions supported the person who has either perpetrated the wrong or has acted inappropriately to deal with that wrong. Let me illustrate with a few examples:

• Senator Heffernan used the protection of Parliament to launch a most vicious and false attack on Justice Kirby of the High Court. The PM was silent in any defence against that attack, merely saying ". . . he (Heffernan) felt justified in using parliamentary privilege to air the matters which he did". When the attack was proved to be without foundation and was withdrawn, the PM declined to deal with him appropriately, but merely left him in the sin bin for a short time before restoring him to a key position in the Liberal Party.

• During the Tampa crisis, again there was no sympathy expressed by the PM for the asylum seekers. Rather there was a serious attempt by him and his ministers to dehumanise these victims, some 80 per cent of whom were subsequently found in fact to be refugees. This included the repeated reliance on the false allegation that children were being thrown overboard. Instead of expressing sympathy for these people, he chose to support and ultimately reward the man, Peter Reith, who was responsible for these false statements.

• Finally, with regard to the governor-general crisis, he gave Peter Hollingworth the support he had declined to give Michael Kirby, while neglecting the hurt and damage suffered by child-abuse victims.

• In all these cases, the three people involved - Heffernan, Reith and Hollingworth - were men the PM had chosen for their office. To them he gave the support he failed to give to a man, Justice Kirby, whom he had not appointed. In his partisan understanding of the word, he owed the judge no loyalty. The asylum seekers and the abused children were for him worthy of no concern.

It is a truly sad state of affairs that we have as our PM a man unable to recognise the need for compassion and who regards as a top priority the preservation of his own limited sense of loyalty - and who is more concerned with the possible electoral advantage of his actions than with the effect they have on the disadvantaged and the vulnerable.

John Howard may indeed take some personal satisfaction in parading the world stage; he should feel no such pleasure in the damage he has done to the basic Australian sense of fair play and decent and caring concern for the victims of a harsh world.
Frank Costigan, QC, Melbourne

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