9/11 Pollution 'Could Cause More Deaths Than Attack'

Up to 400,000 New Yorkers breathed in the most toxic polluting cloud ever recorded after the twin towers were brought down three years ago, but no proper effort has been made to find out how their health has been affected, according to an official report.

The US government study provides the latest evidence of a systematic cover-up of the health toll from pollution after the 9/11 disaster, which doctors fear will cause more deaths than the attacks themselves.

The Bush administration suppressed evidence of increasing danger and officially announced that the air around the felled buildings was "safe to breathe". Another report reveals that it has since failed at least a dozen times to correct its assurances, even when it became clear that people were becoming sick.

The official report - sent to Congress last week by the US Government Accountability Office - says that between 250,000 and 400,000 people in lower Manhattan were exposed to the pollution on 11 September 2001. But it shows that the government has yet to make a comprehensive effort to study the effects on their health.

There's just no way to comment on the mendacity and incompetence of the Bush administration when you read items like this, contained in that administration's own reports.

turning your bowels to water

About the one symptom a bad flu has not given me, yet. It's also what passes for foreign and defence policy for the Coalition.

Jemaah Islamiyah is not a spectacularly successful terrorist organisation. The Bali atrocity was a one-off they've been unable to repeat since. They can hit soft targets in Indonesia but their efforts elsewhere, such as the attempt to bomb Britain's and Australia's Singapore embassy, have been detected beforehand by conventional policing methods. They suffered major losses after Bali because the vehicle they used could be traced by its chassis number. POLRI, the recently demilitarised Indonesian national police, have now found the chassis number of the vehicle used in the Jakarta embassy attack. That suggests JI is not even especially good at revising its methods in the light of past mistakes.

Reuters reports

Fifty Australian police are in Jakarta assisting the investigation into last Thursday's suicide bombing outside the Australian embassy, which killed nine people and wounded 182.

"In the last few days the chassis number of the vehicle used in the (embassy) bombing has been discovered," Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said Monday.

"People might recall that that was one of the early leads in the Bali (2002 nightclub) bombing that led to the identification of those responsible, so we're hoping that that will be the case on this occasion," Keelty said after returning from Jakarta.

The October 2002 Bali blasts killed 202 people, including 88 Australians. Police suspect the militant Islamic network Jemaah Islamiah was responsible for that attack, Thursday's embassy blast and the suicide bombing of Jakarta's JW Marriott hotel last year that killed 12.

JI is a lot better at killing Indonesians than it at killing Australians. That doesn't make their efforts less criminal or less repugnant to humanity. It does say their targeting is not all that competent. On the other hand, describing JI as an incompetent organisation would not keep the populace alert but not alarmed.

The Jakarta bombing will not have a big impact on the Indonesian election:

But despite the outcry, analysts said the attack itself was unlikely to play into the choice of ordinary voters on Sept. 20.

"I think people are going to vote for quite different reasons. Foreigners looking at Indonesia think the bomb is the big news. Bombs are not that unusual in Indonesia," said Harold Crouch, an Indonesia expert from the Australian National University, who was in the embassy at the time of the blast.

"Indonesians are interested in a forceful leader, but not because of the terrorism," he said.

In a nation where some 40 percent of the workforce are unemployed or underemployed, voters have shown more concern for jobs and food prices than security.

"Based on surveys, it seems that unemployment is the first priority, then corruption. Those are the policies that voters care about in Indonesia," said Joseph Kristiadi of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta.

Kristiadi said the embassy blast highlighted the current administration's reluctance to publicly discuss the dangers of Indonesia's radical Muslim fringe, but ultimately the winner on Sept. 20 would make little difference.

What effect it has in Australia remains to be seen, although the Great Texted Warning Incident of 2004 suggests not all that much. Shortly after the bombing Downer and Howard announced to a thrilled and expectant nation that there was early warning of the Jakarta bombing. They omitted to mention that the early warning was a third-hand single source item that should have carried very little weight.

Let's move now from March to last Friday, after the Jakarta embassy bomb went off.

An Islamic website linked the attack to Iraq, saying there would be more to come unless our troops were withdrawn. Downer was dismissive of it.

"We don't know whether this website is credible and obviously that is being analysed by our intelligence people," he said.

Which is fair enough. You can't attach too much weight to unsubstantiated claims. But what happened when Keelty informed his political masters of another unsubstantiated claim, heard third-hand and phoned in by an Australian business person in Indonesia some hours after the bombing?

Howard and Downer went public with it straight away; no cautious caveats this time.

Why? This story - denied by the Indonesian authorities - alleged they had received an SMS message giving advance warning that western embassies would be hit, and linking it to the jailing of Abu Bakar Bashir, not Iraq.

And Downer even dragged poor Keelty up before the media again, to add the authority of his uniform to the dodgy claim.

Keelty did as asked and he's got a pretty good poker face, too. But he must have been thinking "Oh, here we go again."

We get told again and again that everything changed on 11 September. That is not true of al-Qa'ida.

Much has changed in the last three years to improve the effectiveness of U.S. counter-terrorism — above all the galvanization of intelligence services around the world that now share our perceptions of the threat and work closely with us. But the fundamentals of catching terrorists has remained much the same. The overwhelming majority of major catches — Abu Zubeida, Ramzi Binalshibh and the mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed — were all apprehended this way. So too was the Jemaah Islamiah operations chief, Hambali; the head of operations for Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula, Abd al Rahim al Nashiri; and many of the other 3,500 terrorist operatives in custody around the world.

By contrast, only two top operatives have been killed by military means: Abu Hafs, Al Qaeda's operations chief until November 2001, and Abu Ali al Harethi, a Yemeni operative, were killed through military means, specifically, a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone — a weapon system devised for counter-terrorism by the Clinton administration.

That is even less true of JI where the struggle against them has not been militarised at all. It's all old-fashioned and unsexy stuff of cops asking questions and tracing networks. The Coalition needs to overstate the JI threat in order to bring the war home to the Australian electorate and link Australia's security to Iraq. If that means turning unreliable text messages into national security threats, they'll do it. As long as that does not mean admititng that our Iraq ivolvement has raised the terrorist threat against us.

Lastly, it's worth reading the whole of Lessons from the Jakarta blast by B Raman, former head of counterintelligence in India, on the Jakarta bombing:

In looking at the car bomb explosion outside the Australian Embassy in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta last Thursday, one must avoid an over-interpretation and over-assessment of the blast, which caused the death of nine persons and injured more than 100 others, most of them civilians.

The post-September 11, 2001, breed of al-Qaeda watchers tend to hype up every act of terrorism, projecting it as the outcome of an al-Qaeda grand strategy and evidence of the group's octopus-like nature, thereby creating an unwarranted perception of al-Qaeda's continuing anti-state potency and the seeming helplessness of the state in countering this threat. By doing so, these al-Qaeda watchers tend to play into the group's hands and give it an image that helps it in its self-perpetuation.

While the death of even a single individual at the hands of terrorists is shocking and ought to be a matter of concern to the state and the international community, one has to note that on the scale of terrorist incidents, the Jakarta blast would fall into the category of low-to-medium or, at the most, medium gravity. Such incidents have been taking place at frequent intervals in India since 1956. As a result, Indians treat terror attacks with a sense of balance and consciously avoid overreaction and over-projection, which would be counter-productive.

Axis of Evil goes bang

Big blast reported in North Korea

A big explosion rocked a northern province of North Korea near the border with China last week, South Korea's Yonhap news agency has reported.

The blast is said to have happened last Thursday, as North Korea marked the 56th anniversary of its founding.

Yonhap quoted a diplomatic source in Seoul as saying a large mushroom cloud was spotted in Yanggang province.

South Korea's Unification Minister has reportedly played down the possibility that it was a nuclear weapons test.

Diplomatic officials in Washington are also quoted as saying the nature of the blast is unclear.

The diplomatic source in Seoul said the mushroom cloud, with a radius of up to four kms (2.5 miles), was spotted in Yanggang province's Kimhyungjik county.

Gee, I'm really glad we invaded Iraq which had no WMDs, and ignored North Korea, which now probably has nuclear weapons. Excitable statements from Dolly Downer about nuclear missiles hitting Sydney do not count as a policy.

Beslan/Jakarta

At the Widening of a War

Everyone was frightened of the sky.

Each night, Mars emerged at the zenith.
A bleb of pure rage tore off the sun.

For days, the living and the dead
hung in the air like dust
whirled aloft from tired roads.

The fuselage of a lobster lay abandoned.

The Isles of the Blest were receding
to their sailing distances
and the gunfire of tourist shoes was stilled.

Sports stadiums and crowds loomed from another age.

The blow struck now
would be weaker than the blow withheld.

Les Murray

Budget figures to help keep lid on rates, says Labor

The Federal Opposition says today's revised budget figures allow it more than $3 billion to spend before it dips into the surplus.

Federal Treasurer Peter Costello has revealed an $8 billion surplus for the last financial year.

The announcement comes in the wake of a revised Treasury surplus forecast for this financial year, required at the start of an election campaign.

The surplus for the last financial year is $3.5 billion more than expected.

Mr Costello says the $8 billion will go to retiring debt but he has announced that surpluses in the future will go to a new fund to pay for the Commonwealth superannuation liabilities.

"Having now repaid $73 billion of the Labor debt, it's time to invest in the future," he said.

Mr Costello says net debt is at its lowest level since 1977.

Treasury figures also out today have predicted a $5.3 billion surplus for the 2004-2005 financial year, double initial indications.

I suspect the splat we just heard was the Great Interest Rate Scare of 2004 splattering on the foot path. Labor has no plans to spend anything approaching the surplus so the issue of higher interests rates, insofar as they depend on aggregate government spending, is dead. This also emphasises the big difference between the Man of Steel and the Great and Powerful Dubya. The Man of Steel is much better at economic management.

the mathematical logic of blenvy

Some posts immediately cause a deep and abiding sense of bloggers' envy. be warned. Notebooks on mathematical logic is one such post.

Our outsider would, of course, have been wrong. Mathematical logic was the inspiration for perhaps only half of twentieth-century philosohpy (that is, of honest philosophy; by volume, as Kolakowski says, Stalin was the century's most influential philosopher); many of our finest mathematicians, such as Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann and Andrei Kolmogorov cut their teeth on it, and notation (and notions) which began in the obscurities of Peirce and Peano are now to be found in every undergraduate math book. True, some early application --- one thinks particularly of Woodger's axiomatization of biology --- have, perhaps unfairly, gone nowhere, and McCulloch and Pitt's "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity" is more important for launching neural nets upon the world than for using Carnap's formalism. But in one extremely important field, however, it reigns supreme, and that is computation. Programming is, simply, mathematiucal logic in action; the melding of theory and practice is so complete that most practioners have no idea that their speech --- recursion, lexical scope, data abstraction, even those banes of C novices, pointers, referencing and dereferncing --- is prose. (Speaking of speech, Chomsky of course began as a logican, and his early work (air force and navy supported!) on formal languages is as much a part of logic as it is of linguistics or the theory of computation.) Of course, some of the computer's intellectual roots were more obviously useful --- but since these were the study of Brownian motion, and the physics of crystals and spectral lines, not much. (Its practical origins were military needs and vast quantities of government subsidies, which continue, but let's not disturb the myths about private enterprise any more than we must.)

Sigh...

checking the blogosphere on Chechnya

I don't know a lot about Chechnya or Chechen history. The killing there, whther by local fighters or central government troops, is repugnant.

I don't plan on finding large blocks of Chechen analysis to blog after carefully selecting what my gut tells me is right. I leave that to the Bush administration and its henchcreatures.

I think Mark Kleiman has it right when he links to a moderately pro-Chechen screed and notes:

Mail accusing Gessen or the undersigned of defending terrorism will not be responded to. That the children are dead is horrible, but horror isn't a policy

This century is going to see increasingly untenable cases that just do not have solutions that are very thinkable. Refusing to think is, like horror, not a policy.

Did the First Americans Come From, Er, Australia?

But Silvia Gonzalez from John Moores University in Liverpool said skeletal evidence pointed strongly to this unpalatable truth and hinted that recovered DNA would corroborate it.

"This is very contentious," Gonzalez, a Mexican, said with a smile at the annual meeting of the British association for the Advancement of Science. "They (native Americans) cannot claim to have been the first people there."

She said there was very strong evidence that the first migration came from Australia via Japan and Polynesia and down the Pacific Coast of America.

Skulls of a people with distinctively long and narrow heads discovered in Mexico and California predated by several thousand years the more rounded features of the skulls of native Americans.

One particularly well preserved skull of a long-face woman had been carbon dated to 12,700 years ago, whereas the oldest accurately dated native American skull was only about 9,000 years old.

"We have extracted her DNA. It is going to be a bomb," she said, declining to give details but adding that the tests carried out so far were being replicated to make sure they were accurate.

She said there were tales from Spanish missionaries of an isolated coastal community of long-face people in Baja California of a completely different race and rituals from other communities in America at the time.

These last survivors were wiped out by diseases imported by the Spanish conquerors, Gonzalez said.

Weird, weird headline. If one first people proves more first than another first people does that really call for dispute?

hitting reverse gear on Guantánamo I

The November 2003 speech by Lord Steyn, a judicial member of the House of Lords, is the best place to start:

Let me now turn to the second matter. The question is whether the quality of justice envisaged for the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay complies with minimum international standards for the conduct of fair trials. The answer can be given quite shortly: It is a resounding No. The military commissions contemplated by the United States government have been described by Professor Ronald Dworkin as the type of trials one associates with utterly lawless totalitarian regimes. David Pannick, Q.C., invoked Kafka's The Trial in which the great novelist describes how Joseph K's advocate warns him of the difficulties of presenting a defence when "the proceedings were not only kept secret from the general public, but from the accused as well." But as David Pannick observed, Joseph K could see his lawyer, however incompetent, and there was a court, however imperfect, making the decision. The military commissions are not independent courts or tribunals. The term kangaroo court springs to mind. It derives from the jumps of the kangaroo, and conveys the idea of a pre-ordained arbitrary rush to judgment by an irregular tribunal which makes a mockery of justice. Internationally military commissions at Guantanamo Bay will be so regarded. Trials of the type contemplated by the United States government would be a stain on United States justice. The only thing that could be worse is simply to leave the prisoners in their black hole indefinitely.

Australia is the only allied government which has accepted the Guantánamo process for its citizens. If Australia, or rather the Man of Steel, had been daring enough to object it is probable the whole thing would have been abandoned. The Guantánamo 'operations and procedures' cannot be the problem because they have not changed since Bush first issued a series of executive orders on 13 November 2001. The military commissions are not the same as regular courts-martial. There is no appeal to an actual judge.

Since nothing has changed in the operations and procedures it follows that Downer and Ruddock either have just discovered problems they previously ignored or have chosen to try and avert criticism in the context of the election. More later.

Australia to tackle US over Hicks trial

The Australian Government will raise concerns with the United States about the handling of the military commission trial of alleged terrorist David Hicks.

That follows concerns raised by Australian officials who attended the preliminary hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, last month amid fears that the proceedings lacked fairness.

The Age has been told that the officials felt that the details of an agreement on trial procedures reached by the US and Australian Government had not got through to the US military personnel handling the hearing.

In a joint statement yesterday Attorney-General Philip Ruddock and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the officials identified a number of problems with "operational and procedural aspects of the military commission process".

Problems included a lack of agreed rules of procedure that could lead to uncertainty for both the prosecution and defence in preparing cases.

This is outrageous. Downer and Ruddock have again and again defended these same operations and procedures since they were first announced. I'll update with their previous comments in the morning. This is not a Damascene conversion. This is realising that the Hicks trial could get very embarrassing, very quickly.

It also sits very strangely with Rudocck's endorsement of military commissions in Australia.

the week that was

Rod Cameron on Lateline:

Yeah, but the impact will be less and less.

What's it's done, it's forced a number of expert commentators and economists to question the validity of Howard's statement that interest rates are always higher under Labor - not so.

The market itself has judged it to be fallacious, because the people who put their real money in are not factoring in higher interest rates other than the expected small increase no matter who wins, and in fact it gave Mark Latham the chance to respond in values terms and I think his best performance so far was his response to the interest rates scare.

He was able to deflect it in terms of aspirationalism and the battler versus the big end of town and he was able to be reasonably convincing at his biggest vulnerability, so I think Labor would be well pleased that it came in the first week of a long campaign.

All in all, I think the government is sounding a little tired. The Costello never, ever thing took up Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday were dominated by the interest rate claims and the magic documents from the prime minister's staff which disproved the Scrafton evidence but can't be be seen by the select committee on the Scrafton evidence. Friday of course, was the sad news that the safe seat of Wentworth had suddenly gone marginal with the sitting member running against the Liberal candidate.

In the background the crepuscular Ruddock managed to relate the Beslan atrocity to the ALP and the deputy prime minister (the Mini Me of Steel, perhaps) suddenly discovered that the ALP are haters. Perhaps if the Man of Steel is re-elected he could hire Zell Miller as governor-general. Better, he might like to think about the Kennet election that used negatives from the outset and managed to convert a sizeable majority in the Victorian parliament into an election loss in one easy hit. Nick Greiner almost achieved the same unhappy result in NSW in 1991.

Both parties have been guilty of high interest rates in the past. It's a pity no-one's mentioned that the low interest rate regime is a major factor driving the housing bubble. The market is not factoring high interest rates under Labor. Running on a furphy is not quite as easy in Australia as it is is elsewhere.

Flashy election map

The ABfrigginC (which still hasn't discovered RSS) has a useful flash map showing key marginal seats and stuff.

Tip via The Poll Vault.

I'm still hunting for a useful explanation of preferential voting. I might have to (shudder) write it myself.

bombshell goes phut

If you hurry (as the great majority of professional journos reporting it have not) to the homepage of the Select Committee on the Scrafton Evidence you can download the entire day's proceedings. It's worth doing because the transcript bears little resemblance to most media reports.

According to the fat and bloated old media, Senator Brandis produced evidence that showed Scrafton's phone call to the prime minister only ran for 51 seconds. No such thing happened. Brandis claimed to have evidence of two calls, one lasting 9 and a half minutes and one lasting 61 seconds.

CHAIR—If it is a point of order, you may intervene; if it is a question, you will need to seek Senator Brandis’s acceptance that you interrupt his questioning.

Senator BARTLETT—I guess it is for a ruling from the chair—and I know you have raised it a bit. I appreciate that Senator Brandis wants to put all this on the record, but can we have an overarching recognition from the chair that saying all these repeated statements that this establishes, this is a fact, this is now acknowledged is simply not the case. We have not seen these records. Even if we did see them, we would have no way of knowing whether or not they are accurate.

Senator FAULKNER—I do not believe anything the Prime Minister’s office says about anything.

Senator BARTLETT—Can we have a suggestion or something rather than this continual assertion that this is fact all the time?

Senator FAULKNER—And I do not believe anything the Prime Minister has ever said about anything. He is a known liar. Senator Brandis knows that—and says it.

CHAIR—Order, Senator Faulkner! It is up to this committee to evaluate, in the long term, all the evidence we hear, and everyone can put their assertions. It is not up to me to make a ruling on Senator Brandis’s credibility here today. I have indicated to Senator Brandis that I think I have given him what I regard as reasonable latitude out of the chair to set up the direction of his questions.

Senator BRANDIS—And I have done that. I have finished doing it.

CHAIR—You have well and truly done it is the point being made. Let us just get on with the questioning. I do point out that I have not had the chance to ask any questions yet. I am waiting patiently. Senator Brandis, you have got the call.

Brandis is a QC. He knows his stuff when it comes to examining a witness. Presumably, he also knows that leading evidence from the bar table carries no probative value at all. All he's done is wave about a document he says shows the phone records. He's refused to table the document. The media should really have picked this up.

clucking about the speaker

The ALP has promised an independent speaker. This is a customary opposition promise. John Howard promised it in 1996. It was meaningless then, it is meaningless now, and it will be meaningless in three years time when whoever is then opposition leader again promises it. In 1996 John Howard promises

The Coalition will seek to invest the Speaker of the next parliament with greater independence similar to his or her counterpart at Westminster.

In 2004 Labor promises:

An independent Speaker for the House of Representatives and improved Standing Orders.

The constitution provides:

35. The House of Representatives shall, before proceeding to the despatch of any other business, choose a member to be the Speaker of the House, and as often as the office of Speaker becomes vacant the House shall again choose a member to be the Speaker. The Speaker shall cease to hold his office if he ceases to be a member. He may be removed from office by a vote of the House, or he may resign his office or his seat by writing addressed to the Governor-General.

An independent speakership is impossible under those provisions. The Australian speaker is endowed with powers unknown to the House of Commons, including unilateral suspension. No governing majority is going to vest those powers in an independent speaker. No political party is going to (or should) declare one of the 150 house electorates off-limits to election challenges. More to the point, the electors are not going to take kindly to being told they are not allowed to elect their own MHR because he happens to be speaker. Most of all, when a speaker is unwise enough to name a government minister, as Speaker Cope discovered in 1975, the majority will not back the speaker who then has little choice but to resign.

If you asked any speaker since federation if they were independent and impartial they would all insist they were. Short of drastic constitutional change that situation is not going to change in the future.

weak on rights

I do not often agree with the Man of Steel. But there's always a first time.

John Howard on the 7:30 Report

They will always remember that and they will always remember the Government was strong on border protection and the Labor Party was weak.

Sadly, this is true. Labor's weakness in defending human rights alienated many of its supporters and drove them to vote for minor parties. There is a real issue in border protection, but it can't be exploited unless Labor does something unprecedented - admit a mistake and announce a new policy. Labor's recent performance over rights issues, not just gay marriage but also the treatment of foreign gay marriages and the children of those marriages, suggests it's not going to happen any time soon. The growing minor party vote should perhaps encourage them to change their mind.

Inquiry sliced as ALP abandons ship

Labor has executed an early campaign backflip and will not subpoena ministerial aides to appear before a new inquiry into the children overboard affair.

The decision for only an abbreviated, one-day inquiry into the saga before polling day came after the Opposition Leader, Mark Latham, had said days earlier that he favoured forcing aides to be scrutinised. The inquiry will also report after ballots are cast, and further witnesses may be called after the election.

The former Defence adviser Mike Scrafton is likely to appear as early as tomorrow and expand on his allegation that the Prime Minister, John Howard, lied and knew that there was no evidence to back his claims during the last election campaign that asylum seekers threw their children into the sea.

The senior military officers who supported Mr Scrafton's claim, Major-General Roger Powell and Commander Mike Noonan, may also be called, but the intention was for the newly convened inquiry to run for just one day.

While there were plenty of brickbats slung at the Government benches in a rowdy question time yesterday, the decision by Opposition senators means that the public may be denied the full facts on the children overboard affair before they vote.

Labor also declined to subpoena witnesses during the first children overboard inquiry, including Mr Scrafton.

The Government and other critics said it had shied away from taking this step so it could hide its own "dirty laundry" should it form government.

Key figures in the saga yet to be questioned include Miles Jordana, the Prime Minister's then adviser, Ross Hampton, the press secretary for the former defence minister Peter Reith, and Peter Hendy, Mr Reith's chief-of-staff.

Mr Scrafton also worked as an adviser to Mr Reith.

Sacrificing scrutiny for the need to get out on the campaign trail, senators have handed Mr Howard his first big tactical coup of the campaign.

Really, really bad call. Without any examination of the ministerial advisers involved in the truth overboard matter the credibility of the Senate committee will be about zero. This probably throws away Labor's chance of seizing the initiative at the campaign's outset. A cynic might think one motive is Labor's anxiety about the calling of ministerial advisers in a prospective Labor government.

starting gun

The ADF will fire a 19-gun salute on Federation Mall immediately after the dissolution is proclaimed in Parliament House at 5pm tomorrow. Why parliament gets 19 guns and the governor-general gets 21 is not immediately obvious.

Media coverage seems to be all about the Senate debate on Faulkner's motion for a select committee on the Scranton evidence. Inexplicably, the opposition has decided not to subpoena ministerial advisers during the election campaign. Unless and until advisers become part of the regular machinery of government and account to parliament for their actions the executive will be able to get away with the abuse of power the select committee is to investigate.

A few sites worth looking at:

• The Poll Bludger
  
• At a glance
  
• All you need to know
  
• ABC Election Guide
  

Howard was fairly obscure on the question of whether a 65-year old prime minister will serve a full term at yesterday's press conference. That forced Costello to promise not to challenge for the leadership. It's only a small thing but it doesn't speak for a lot of message discipline in the Coalition. It's also frankly ridiculous for Costello to promise not to challenge for the term of the next parliament.

The Senate debate is still running. After weeks of phoney war it still feels like the campaign has not started. That may change tomorrow once the House is formally dissolved.

Scrafton ready for new Senate inquiry

A new Senate inquiry into the children overboard affair will be set up tomorrow and immediately move to call Defence Department whistleblower Mike Scrafton.

The inquiry will continue for at least the early days of the election campaign, focusing on what Prime Minister John Howard was told about the episode before the last election and the truthfulness of his public comments.

Several senior defence personnel who can corroborate that Mr Scrafton told them he had informed the Prime Minister that the allegations that asylum seekers threw their children overboard were false will also be asked to appear.

Mr Scrafton told The Age that he was ready and willing to testify before the new hearing, indicating he may have further revelations to make.

The inquiry will ensure a continued focus on the episode and on Mr Howard's credibility during the initial days of the campaign. Labor will also use the Senate sitting to grill Defence Minister Robert Hill on the overboard affair and a United States report slating an Australian officer for allegedly helping to gloss over claims of abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

Although the House of Representatives will not sit, the Senate will meet today and tomorrow and its committees can continue hearings throughout the election campaign.

Greens leader Bob Brown even raised the prospect of recalling the Senate during the campaign if matters of "national importance" emerged from the overboard inquiry.

Labor leader Mark Latham said Mr Howard was trying to avoid further parliamentary scrutiny of the children overboard affair by calling the election.

Mr Howard said the issue had been "done to death" and he had no further comment on it. He said the public would deliver its verdict on election day.

The Opposition leader in the Senate, John Faulkner, last night released the draft terms of reference for the new inquiry, saying that "the Senate must get to the bottom of this sorry chapter in Australian politics". They say the inquiry will examine Mr Scrafton's statements about his conversations with the Prime Minister.

Mr Scrafton said he would provide further details on the affair if asked by the inquiry. He conceded there were other areas he could "cast light on", including his conversations with then defence minister Peter Reith and Mr Howard's international adviser, Miles Jordana. The inquiry is likely to invite Mr Jordana and other Howard staff to appear, testing the Government's gag on them.

The two military investigators who backed Mr Scrafton's stance, Major-General Roger Powell and Commander Michael Noonan, are also likely to be called.

The Governor-General has the power to prorogue Parliament - ending a parliamentary session in order to hold an election - on the Prime Minister's instructions. The Senate may still be able to sit, according to its clerk, Harry Evans.

This constitutional debate may explain why Mr Howard's announcement allowed the Senate to sit until tomorrow afternoon.

I think Howard has given away the first week. The Senate will sit tomorrow and Tuesday. The Senate inquiry on the Truth Overboard incident will be reconvened. Last time, it failed to get to the bottom of anything because Labor voted with the government against the issue of subpoenas to ministerial advisers.

Paragraph 9 of Senator John Faulkner's draft terms of reference reads:

9. That the committee and any subcommittee have power to send for and examine persons and documents, to move from place to place, to sit in public or in private, notwithstanding any prorogation of the Parliament or dissolution of the House of Representatives, and have leave to report from time to time its proceedings and the evidence taken and such interim recommendations as it may deem fit.

The first two days of this week will be dominated by the Senate sittings. The last three days will be dominated by the Senate committee. Without parliament sitting and with the campaigns still gearing up the media is going to have a feeding frenzy at the committee. The constitutionality of a Senate committee during a prorogation has never been tested, but there is not really any venue in which it can be tested. The government staffers could refuse to obey the subpoenas, but that's not going to be a good look at all for Honest John.

From Australian Senate Practice

On many occasions, Senate committees have continued their activities after the dissolution of the House of Representatives or prorogation of Parliament, including by taking evidence and presenting reports. The absolute privilege of these activities has not been called into question and the practice is now firmly entrenched in standing orders as well as being confirmed by declaratory resolution (22/10/1984, J.1276). The power of the Senate to authorise its committees to meet derives from the Senate's character as a continuing House and from the Constitution. (For the major discussion of the effects of prorogation, see Chapter19, Relations with the Executive Government, under Effect of prorogation.)

The 1984 resolutiuon (passed without division) says:

That the Senate declares that where the Senate, or a committee of the Senate which is empowered to do so, meets following a dissolution of the House of Representatives and prior to the next meeting of that House, the powers, privileges and immunities of the Senate, of its members and of its committees, as provided by section 49 of the Constitution, are in force in respect of such meeting and all proceedings thereof. (22/10/1984, J.1276)

This will be a really interesting week.

To get on the electoral roll

Pick up an enrolment form from any Post Office, AEC office, State/Territory Electoral Office or from the internet.

Fill it in, remember to have your signature witnessed, and post it back (reply paid envelopes are provided at our Post Office stands).

If you use the form from the internet, the form must be printed out, completed, signed and mailed to the AEC. The enrolment form cannot be e-mailed back as the AEC requires a hard copy of your signature.

If you wish to send the enrolment form electronically, you may send it via fax to the relevant Divisional Returning Officer. No other kind of electronic communication will be accepted. By faxing this form you agree that the time of receipt is the time when the message has completed printing from the relevant AEC fax machine, and that you will not hold the AEC responsible for any deadlines missed or losses incurred. For further information, please refer to www.aec.gov.au or call 13 23 26.

You can call into an Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) office and enrol on the spot. Click here for Divisional Office addresses

OR

Ring 13 23 26 for further information.

So go and do it. Now. You've got until 7 September.

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