Minister opts for easy path | The Australian
Setting a new definition for "pyrrhic victory" seems to be the main outcome from the Federal Court's decision in the Haneef case yesterday. Peter Faris' fierce criticism of the logic of the case seems very valid.
Both Peter Russo and Hedley Thomas (whose juvenile journalistic contempt for Minister Andrews is just ridiculously overblown) acknowledge that the Minister is probably capable of simply making a valid fresh decision that still removes the visa.
Andrews is appealing the court decision, and why wouldn't he? The government wants "association" to have as broad as possible interpretation, and another Federal Court judge had basically agreed with them. Judge Spender says he just thinks the other judge got it wrong, it can't mean that, otherwise the Minister would be capable of making all kinds of "unfair" decisions.
Why wouldn't the government want this issue settled by the courts once and for all? I strongly suspect the appeal will succeed, even at the Federal Court level.
Yet Hedley Thomas still finds a way of twisting this against Andrews (in the link above). He claims that the Minister is "talking tough but his actions point to a significant backdown".
Huh? I don't see why the Minister is not capable of reviewing the visa decision again even if he loses the eventual appeal.
Hedley Thomas is just one of those commentators to whom the Minister must be criticised, no matter what he does.
No comments:
Post a Comment