The Iraq Inquiry: so what did the then Australian PM John Howard know and when did he know it?

The Brown Labor Government has convened an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the unlawful invasion of Iraq by Britain (as part the Coalition of the Willing) and lack of evidence supporting the reasons given for going to war.

This coalition included Australia, but thus far former Prime Minister John Howard and his Cabinet are escaping scrutiny at home, with the exception of an October 2003 censure motion passed by the Senate.

Perhaps the Chicot-led inquiry (which is still conducting public hearings through 2010) will give some indication as to Howard's role in staging the invasion, given he was so publicly proud of this role and his association with then British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush on 28 March 2003:

Prime Minister John Howard held a lengthy discussion late last night with United States President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair on the war in Iraq.

Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski also joined in the four-way, 20-minute conference call, a spokeswoman for Mr Howard said.

Mr Bush and Mr Blair, both at Mr Bush's Camp David, said they were pleased with the progress of the conflict and thanked Australia for its contribution.

The four leaders also spoke of the need for post-war reconstruction in Iraq and the role of the United Nations in the rebuilding.

"They had a brief discussion about how the military campaign is going," the PM's spokeswoman said.

"Mr Bush and Mr Blair expressed great satisfaction with the progress being made.

"They expressed thanks and admiration for Australia's contribution."

Howard of course picked up the ball and enthusiastically ran with it without too much urging as he had earlier told the National Press Club on 13 March 2003:

I did speak to him [President GW Bush] yesterday. He didn't ask me to lobby anyone, but if you want to know, I have already spoken to a number of countries and I hope to speak to others. I had a conversation with President Musharraf of Pakistan last week. I'm pleased to say that part of the conversation was an indulgence by both of us in our common love of a particular sport. And I spoke two nights ago to President Fox of Mexico, and I hope to speak to one or two other leaders over the course of the next day or so. But I have not been asked to lobby by President Bush. I have not been asked to lobby by Tony Blair. There are somethings that I can usefully do, and I'm doing them, but we haven't been sent a list of countries to lobby. It doesn't work that way, whatever may be the view.......
In the end, all of these things involve questions of judgement. We're not talking about proving to the, beyond reasonable doubt, to the satisfaction of a jury at the Central Criminal Court in Darlinghurst, if you'll excuse my Sydney origins, I mean if you wait for that kind of proof, you know, it's virtually Pearl Harbour. You've got to make judgements, and judgements are made and I have given you the judgement of the [inaudible] and I've given you our judgement. I mean, people are saying well, you know, where is the further proof? I mean, what I am saying is you have Iraq with weapons of mass destruction, Iraq's terrible track record, refusing to disarm, the world in effect buckles at the knees and doesn't disarm Iraq....
Iraq is demonstrably, to use my language, a rogue state. If we don't make sure that Iraq is disarmed, that of itself will encourage other rogue states to acquire and develop weapons of mass destruction....

Of course the British inquiry may never reveal any information on the part Howard played, as it is well within the realms of possibility that as soon as this inquiry was mooted the Australian Government made representations to the effect that all mention of our involvement should be kept to a minimum during proceedings. The Rudd Government would not enjoy talk of war criminals and national culpability in an election year, given its current tacit support of the War on Terror.

From The Iraq Inquiry website:

The Prime Minister announced on 15 June 2009 that an Inquiry would be conducted to identify lessons that can be learned from the Iraq conflict. The Iraq Inquiry was officially launched on 30 July 2009. At the launch the Chair of the Inquiry, Sir John Chilcot, set out the Inquiry's Terms of Reference:
"Our terms of reference are very broad, but the essential points, as set out by the Prime Minister and agreed by the House of Commons, are that this is an Inquiry by a committee of Privy Counsellors. It will consider the period from the summer of 2001 to the end of July 2009, embracing the run-up to the conflict in Iraq, the military action and its aftermath. We will therefore be considering the UK's involvement in Iraq, including the way decisions were made and actions taken, to establish, as accurately as possible, what happened and to identify the lessons that can be learned. Those lessons will help ensure that, if we face similar situations in future, the government of the day is best equipped to respond to those situations in the most effective manner in the best interests of the country."
The Inquiry committee members are Sir John Chilcot (Chairman), Sir Lawrence Freedman, Sir Martin Gilbert, Sir Roderic Lyne and Baroness Usha Prashar.
The Inquiry will take evidence over a number of months, with as many hearings as possible held in public. Hearings will begin in the autumn and continue into the New Year. A report of the Inquiry's findings will be published at the end of this process, but as the Inquiry has such a complex task ahead of it the report is unlikely to be ready for publication before summer 2010. The Inquiry committee intends to include in the report all but the most sensitive information essential to our national security. The report will then be debated in Parliament.

So far over sixty witnesses have been heard in sitting days spread over seven weeks. Evidence presented so far is posted on the website as transcript or video.

• John Howard and George Bush 2002
• John Howard and Tony Blair 2006

Censored! Great Australian Internet Blackout

As part of ******

EFA questions about mandatory national ISP-level Internet filtering which shoud be answered by Austrlaia's Comminications Minister

Colin Jacobs of Electronic Frontiers Australia has posted the following questions for the Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy:

The top 10 filtering questions yet to be answered

The Rudd Government's mandatory ISP filtering bill will soon be introduced into Parliament, and we can only hope that the debate there will focus more on the real merits of the scheme – which are few and far between – than empty rhetoric about protecting children. When the debate happens, here are some questions the Government needs to answer under the glare of public scrutiny.

1. Given the trouble and expense of this policy, you must have some pretty convincing evidence that children are being constantly exposed to RC material. How was your research conducted and will it be released to the public?

(In fact, research indicates that of all the threats kids face online, accidental exposure to disturbing content is about the least significant.)

2. Two-thirds of Internet-connected households don't have school-age children. Isn't forcing a filter onto them as well as businesses unnecessary?

(We have never heard a cogent explanation why the filter should be mandatory and not opt-in, or why it's a better solution than more comprehensive and customisable PC-based filters.)

3. Given the reasonably poor uptake of filters by parents in the past, what makes you so sure the Australian people want a filter at a national level?

(Survey data shows that parents who don't install filters do so mainly because they consider them unnecessary or too restrictive, not for technical or cost reasons.)

4. Why did you meet with the Australian Christian Lobby before making last week's announcements? Have you met with groups opposed to the filter?

(Conroy's office ignores our polite requests to make our case.)

5. In targeting child pornography, isn't the blacklist mechanism, which relies on the media regulator and the Australian public, a poor way to track down this material compared to investigations by law enforcement professionals?

(Illegal material is not typically published on the open web, and when it is, is usually taken down quickly.)

6. In the past you have indicated that the blacklist will include material imported from overseas groups like the Internet Watch Foundation. Is it still the case that lists prepared by unaccountable third parties overseas might be part of Australian censorship?

(The Internet Watch Foundation's list caused controversy in Britain when it added a Wikipedia page to its list in 2008.)

7. The Enex trial indicated tests at speeds far below those promised by the new National Broadband Network. Won't the filter interfere with the rollout of this much more important project?

(We can't understand why the Government is pursuing the filtering policy so zealously when the $43 billion NBN is so clearly a higher priority for the country.)

8. Experts say than an ISP filter is easy to circumvent by anyone who wants to. Doesn't that undermine the usefulness of the entire enterprise?

(It's inevitable that getting around the filter will be easy. Therefore, it only prevents accidental access to any site on the list.)

9. When they reach banned websites, will Australians see a message from the government informing them why the page was blocked, or will the page just refuse to load?

(We have many more worries about transparency in the system, especially concerning the oversight of the list itself.)

10. What would stop some future conservative governments adding to the blacklist in a campaign against dangerous or immoral content?

(Of course, this question only has one answer: Nothing. Once the blacklisting has begun, it's hard to imagine it will never expand, let alone ever be rolled back.)

Sadly, EFA suspects that if these issues have been considered at all by the Government, they do not have good answers ready. We maintain that until all of them can be addressed satisfactorily, mandatory ISP filtering amounts to nothing more than a political stunt designed to wedge the opposition and garner some easy votes.

Australian Health Minister Nicola Roxon is not telling the truth about the Medicare e-card

Remember over the course of 2009 the Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon assuring everyone within hearing that the new Medicare smart card would contain data and, give access to a database, which could be checked for accuracy by individual patients and that information would only be given out if the individual patient agreed to participate in the e-health scheme?
This is what the Minister was putting about at the time:
Eventually, the plan is for each person to have an individual e-health record, which holds their personal details; a summary health profile that can be shared with the person's permission between treating doctors; event summaries such as hospital discharge reports, care plans and test results, and a self-care management record where people can add their own material. and Ms Roxon has said participation in e-health records schemes would be voluntary and yet again All Australian residents will be allocated an Individual Healthcare Identifier (IHI) to support better communication between healthcare providers involved in patient treatment – but no patient will be forced to use it to access any health service.
Believed her did you?
Well, she told whoppers - barefaced and knowingly.
The proof is in the draft Healthcare Identifiers Bill 2010 which contains no precise provisions along those lines.
All the bill does is allow for the collection, storage and dissemination of personal and health information without the patient's explicit knowledge or consent.
This outrageous bill relies on p*ss poor protections found in the Commonwealth Privacy Act, which has few teeth to redress bureaucratic wrongdoing in relation to misuse of personal information or inaccurate record keeping.
The Privacy Act was never designed to cover a national health information datatbase and National Privacy Principles also only contain general intents that informed consent be given for data collection and dissemination or that an individual be given access to their information {thanks to Clarencegirl for pointing that out to me}
As for what looks like exemption for incorporated medical practices from any application of the Criminal Code in relation to improper handling or misuse of personal health information compiled for or received from the national database - well the mind boggles.
While NEHTA's claim that “There is also a very strict audit trail so that any individual can know that someone has accessed their record in the system which is an additional layer of security" is just plain absurd when there is no legislative requirement in place which would allow any individual patient to be informed if their records had been accessed and by whom.
But what really has the Rudd Government falling down that rabbit hole into an alternative reality is the fact that politicians and "well-known personalities" will be given special false identities to prevent their medical records falling into the wrong hands.
Apparently the threat of your personal medical details falling into the wrong hands is an acceptable risk, but the risk is not acceptable when it comes to the personal medical details of Rudd & Roxon or their mates. {Yep, three cheers here for egalitarian Australia}
And what is the Rudd Government going to do with all this very detailed information (right down to whether a twin was delivered first or second) it intends to collect?
Well b#gger all, because no state or territory or hospital or medical practice or doctor or community nurse is anywhere near geared up for this giant trawl though the nations' private life and may never be.
For state governments have not proceeded past a sort of glorified memorandum of understanding on e-health in effect until 30 June 2012.
Roxon's information collection through compulsory sixteen-digit health identifiers is looking more and more like a national identity database in disguise.
No wonder there's such an uproar among the privacy watchdogs.
When did the Australian Labor Party lose its basic common sense?

• So you want to look through my medical records?
• Federal Labor and Health Minister Roxon crossing a bridge too far