A change in government usually reveals and exposes things the previous government did - or did not do.
To date the new Rudd Government has been silent about anything "uncovered" to date. Of course it is still early days. Mike Carlton in his weekly column in the SMH reflects on what skeletons might tumble from the closet:
"If the new Rudd government follows hallowed custom, one of its first tasks in power will be to rummage through the cupboards of its departed predecessor, looking for skeletons.
There should be plenty of them after almost 12 years. A good many of the more incriminating documents will have been shredded or carted away by frantic Coalition ministers in the panic that followed the election result, but a thorough forensic search will surely turn something up. It always does when governments change.
The departmental files on the fanciful Iraq war intelligence or the AWB scandal might be a fruitful field for study and I suspect there is much more we could learn about the Immigration Department's carefree practice of banging people away behind the razor wire of the detention centres if it didn't like the look of them.
Then there is the case of Mohamed Haneef, the deported Pakistani doctor. As he lurched from blunder to bungle in that dizzy affair, the former Immigration Minister, smarmy Kevin Andrews, would hint darkly that, ah, there was a much more sinister side to the story that, regrettably, he was unable to reveal for security reasons.
It would be interesting to find out what, if anything, that was all about.
I expect the job of uncovering these and goodness knows how many other bleached bones will fall to John Faulkner, the new special minister of state, known to friend and foe alike as "Whispering Death".
In opposition he was a relentless inquisitor at Senate estimates committees. In government, he will strike terror into the stoutest public service hearts."
To date the new Rudd Government has been silent about anything "uncovered" to date. Of course it is still early days. Mike Carlton in his weekly column in the SMH reflects on what skeletons might tumble from the closet:
"If the new Rudd government follows hallowed custom, one of its first tasks in power will be to rummage through the cupboards of its departed predecessor, looking for skeletons.
There should be plenty of them after almost 12 years. A good many of the more incriminating documents will have been shredded or carted away by frantic Coalition ministers in the panic that followed the election result, but a thorough forensic search will surely turn something up. It always does when governments change.
The departmental files on the fanciful Iraq war intelligence or the AWB scandal might be a fruitful field for study and I suspect there is much more we could learn about the Immigration Department's carefree practice of banging people away behind the razor wire of the detention centres if it didn't like the look of them.
Then there is the case of Mohamed Haneef, the deported Pakistani doctor. As he lurched from blunder to bungle in that dizzy affair, the former Immigration Minister, smarmy Kevin Andrews, would hint darkly that, ah, there was a much more sinister side to the story that, regrettably, he was unable to reveal for security reasons.
It would be interesting to find out what, if anything, that was all about.
I expect the job of uncovering these and goodness knows how many other bleached bones will fall to John Faulkner, the new special minister of state, known to friend and foe alike as "Whispering Death".
In opposition he was a relentless inquisitor at Senate estimates committees. In government, he will strike terror into the stoutest public service hearts."
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