On David Hicks: Enough already!

The Australian Communications Minister, Senator Helen Coonan, represented the Foreign Affairs Minister in Senate estimates hearings on Thursday. Senator Coonan reportedly made the following curious statement regarding the situation of Australian Guantanamo detainee, David Hicks:

“I’m not in a position to give you some sort of definitive answer other than to say that I don’t think that this Government has ever said that these processes are satisfactory,” she said. “What we do say is that we would like them to get on with it and for the charges to be laid and Mr Hicks to be dealt with according to fair and proper processes.”

Good grief! It just seems that Australian elected officials are pathologically unable to talk or think straight.

In the first part of that quote, Coonan makes a weaseling non-statement about the Government’s position on the satisfactoriness or otherwise of the Guantanamo processes. The Senator hints that these processes may be unsatisfactory, but she quite evidently refuses to let her Government's position be pinned down.

Coonan then indicates the Government’s preference that these processes should be expedited, satisfactory or not. Of course, Coonan pays lip service to the principle that Hicks should be accorded “fair and proper processes”, but she has already conveyed gross ambiguity regarding the fairness and propriety of the current processes.

Enough already! I urge anyone reading this to get behind Amnesty International’s campaign to bring Hicks back home to face a fair trial, or be released.