Forgive And Forget? NOT!

The Haneef case will be an interesting litmus test of Kevin Rudd's desire to investigate his predecessor's crimes. As Tom Allard and Jonathan Pearlman point out, the enquiry will be severely constrained, with no power to subpoena witnesses and documents or investigate Scotland Yard's role:

Many of the inquiry's deliberations will be held in secret and the man heading it, John Clarke, QC, has been urged to step carefully lest he jeopardise the Australian Federal Police probe into Dr Haneef.

The inquiry's limited powers and restricted terms of reference, unveiled yesterday, fall well short of those given to the Howard government's royal commission into the "wheat for weapons" scandal involving bribes paid to Saddam Hussein's government by AWB.

We need full, transparent investigations into Haneef, AWB, David Hicks, and the decision to go to war in Iraq. I suspect a Royal Commission would uncover links between all these cases and more.