The following is an extract from a news article titled Keelty’s rage at Moti manoeuvres which appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on October12, 2006.
Mr Keelty said yesterday he was concerned about “recent developments” involving both PNG and the Solomons.
“If the criminal justice system is corrupted, or otherwise interfered with, a community is left with few options, the least desirable of those options is for them to take the law into their own hands,” he said. Mr Keelty said if it had not been for the recovery of more than 3700 weapons since the Australian-led law and order restoration force arrived three years ago, he believed there would have been “numerous” fatalities in the April riots.
He pointed to shadowy vested interests behind violence and intimidation in the Solomons.
The occasion for former Australian Federal Police (“AFP”) Commissioner Keelty’s rage, or perhaps rave, against Mr Julian Moti QC was a presentation he made to the National Press Club in Canberra the day before, titled Policing in a Foreign Policy Space. History has shown and will no doubt continue to show that the speech Keelty delivered on October 11, 2006 and his follow up comments to the press gallery was nothing more than a congratulatory self-slap on the back from a man who is seemingly unable to differentiate reality from spin. In fact, Commissioner Keelty’s delusions about the competence of his beloved AFP became such an embarrassment to the Australian Government that it sought and received his resignation, which came into effect on 2 September, 2009. On hearing of Keelty’s resignation, Dr Haneef’s lawyer, Rod Hodgson made the following observation:
“The AFP under Mr Keelty was incapable of accepting responsibility and, when mistakes were made, they sought to blame them on someone else such as the Commonwealth DPP”
This was followed with Barrister Stephen Keim, who also represented Dr Haneef, observing that Commissioner Keelty’s resignation:
“Provides an important opportunity for the Commonwealth Government to correct the built-up mistakes from the past… One of the problems with Mr Keelty is that in his public statements over the years he has not shown any ability to acknowledge error on his part or the organisation”
Indeed, error and contrition are words seemingly unknown in the Keelty vocabulary. The Keelty inspired bungle that was the Haneef affair cost the Australian taxpayer at least $7.5 million, together with an additional $1.8 Million in compensation for Dr Haneef. For the princely sum of $9.3 Million, Keelty made Australia the laughing stock of international policing community. But, to borrow a phrase from a well-known Australian marketer, “wait there’s more” – indeed there is a lot more.
“If the criminal justice system is corrupted, or otherwise interfered with, a community is left with few options, the least desirable of those options is for them to take the law into their own hand” Phrases such as this, along with other meaningless flummery ran like a sewer from Keelty’s gilded tongue. What would cause a criminal justice system to become corrupted? One way would be when a Police Commissioner refused “to acknowledge error on his part or the organisation”, the very crime Keim accused Keelty of!
While Dr Haneef remains an innocent victim of AFP corruption, there remain a number of more serious examples for which the victims are still awaiting justice. The most recent example is that of Mr Julian Moti QC, the former Attorney-General of the Solomon Islands who was kidnapped by the AFP and brought to Australia to stand trial on trumped-up child sex charges. In December the High Court of Australia granted Moti a permanent stay on the child sex charges because of the illegal actions of the AFP in kidnapping him from Honiara and forcing him to Australia against his will.
In his speech to the National Press Club on October 11, 2006 Keelty went on state that:
“What if Moti was not a politician? What if he was accused of another type of crime? Albeit that it would be hard to imagine a more deplorable crime than the one alleged…”
Actually, I can imagine a crime more deplorable than the one that Moti was alleged to have committed. The crime I’m thinking of is putting self and political interests ahead of your duty and obligations as Australia’s most senior police officer.
If indeed there is a culture of corruption in the Solomon Islands, which Keelty argued there was, how does behaving in an imperious and racist manner assist in bringing the ‘rule of law’ to a community that is allegedly rotting from the head down? No, I didn’t make a mistake when I used the word racist. Moti was most assuredly a victim of the anti-indigenous racism that so infects the Australian psyche, a mindset that is reinforced from the top down by Australia’s so called leaders.
Moti did commit a crime and that crime was that he attempted to put the interests of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific ahead of Australia’s neo-colonial interests in the same region. This brings me to the focal point of this post.
The following is part of an interview between Australian Broadcasting Commission (“ABC”) journalist Gillian Bradford and then Australian Federal Police (“AFP”) Commissioner Mick Keelty, which aired on the ABC’s PM programme on October 11, 2006.
GILLIAN BRADFORD: There are some who think the Government is carrying out its own witch-hunt in pursuing Julian Moti. But Mick Keelty says the AFP has been onto the case since 2004, and it has an obligation to pursue any Australian thought to have committed child sex offences overseas.
MICK KEELTY: It had absolutely nothing to do with the intended appointment of Moti as Attorney-General in Solomon Islands. And indeed all of our activities, particularly the work that we’ve done with the young female victim, or the alleged victim, was even before the Sogavare Government was put in place.
Keelty’s comments to Bradford contain two statements with which I wish to take issue. The first is that the AFP’s pursuit of Moti had absolutely nothing to do with his “intended appointment… as Attorney-General in Solomon Islands.” In fact, it had everything to do with his intended appointment. Each time it was mooted by Honiara that Moti might be appointed to the position of Attorney-General of the Solomon Islands the child sex allegations for which he had previously acquitted in 1997 were revived. In the period between 1997, when Moti was originally acquitted of the child sex charges and December 2007, when he was kidnapped by the AFP and unlawfully returned to Australia, he had entered and left Australia legally on numerous occasions without incident. The real issue was that Canberra and its minions in the AFP could not tolerate a black man speaking up for black rights to a white Australian male! And Australia is asking the world’s black communities to vote for it next year, to be awarded with a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council!
The second issue I have with Keelty’s statement is that he pretends concern for “the young female victim”. At the end of 2005, about ten months before Keelty’s speech at the National Press Club where he spoke up for “the young female victim” of Moti’s alleged crime, an Australian Aboriginal female bank executive was indecently assaulted by a politically connected Canberra based public servant in the centre of Canberra, the AFP’s policing heartland. What happened to this investigation? Nothing, because the AFP under Keelty and policy which seems to continue to this day, refuse to investigate complaints made by indigenous Australians against non-Indigenous Australians. And Keelty expects us to believe that he has concern for “the young female victim” of Moti’s alleged crime. The real answer is black and white, and in Australia at least, according to the AFP, if you’re black you have no rights. And Keelty wants us to believe …
If the Haneef investigation cost the Australian taxpayer $7.5 Million, imagine how much the Moti fit-up cost each and every Australian taxpayer. If Haneef was awarded $1.8 Million in compensation paid for by the Australian taxpayer, imagine how much Moti is likely to be awarded! Both Moti and Haneef are Australians of Indian extraction, which left them exposed to the racism and xenophobia which so corrupts Australian society from the top down. Haneef and Moti have been denied justice by a corrupt and racist AFP because of their ethnicity, in the same way that Australia’s most senior Aboriginal Australian female bank executive has been denied justice.
It is racism and some form of misguided white superiority complex that has “corrupted, or otherwise interfered” with Australia’s criminal justice system. Perhaps if Moti hits the Australian Government’s ‘hip pocket nerve’ hard enough, Australia will wake up and realise that all (wo)men are born equal.
The racism that the AFP and the Oz Govt. meeted out to Moti is the same type of racism that is meeted out to every Aborigine in Redfern and Waterloo every day of every week of every year since the whitefella first invaded the shores of Aborignal Oz. Go figger.
The difference between Moti and our brothers and sisters is that he had the money and the education to demand his rights. We on the other hand have to sit by and watch our liver destroyed by a white racist Australian regime because we lack the resources to demand our rights. Fuck you Oz!
Andy Mason what you is the defining difference that causes injustice. In a just society everyone regardless of circumstance would be able to defend themselves against injustice. In an unjust society this ‘right’ is confined to the elite. I’m fully behind Moti’s struggle; however, we must recognise that it’s his wealth and education that has allowed his struggle to prevail to the extent that it has. Let’s all hope that his struggle doesn’t lose momentum.
Moti has one other advantage in that he ca do a lot of his own research as he’s a QC. Even money is not always enough. News reports not long before the judgement indicated that he had almost exhausted his financial options.
http://www.samoaobserver.ws/index.php?view=article&id=33617%3Amoti-broke-b&option=com_content&Itemid=65
Seems his judgement may have come just soon enough, but he still has to get compensation.
Both justice and democracy are ephemeral things. They are hard to attain and easy to lose. Unfortunately for all Australians, indeed for all the people in our region, the AFP under Keelty and Howard did all in their power to undermine our trust in both and our belief in the integrity of our most cherished institutions. Hopefully in time both the institutions and our trust in them will be rebuilt.
Yes Anne being able to do your own research is a big advantage. However you still need the ‘balls’ to stand and fight. Tom Ashby you’re right Howard and Keelty have damaged our institutions. Let’s all hope that they can be rebuilt.
Yes Julian Moti was probably or should I say almost definitely a victim of Keelty inspired AFP racism. If he were white none of this would have happened to him. What really surprises me though is that Australia, even after all of this, still believes that it deserves a seat on the United Nations Security Council. What utter tripe! Australia today is like Mississippi was in the 1960s, that is, nothing more than a racist place where the coloured is despised. Australia grow up, deal with the racism in your own ranks, put Pepe in jail for being the racist bastard that he is, then ask the UN for a reward!!!
Hope this Moti bloke sues the AFP’s white arses from here to the rock and back again – lets have some black solidarity.
It seems that Moti “fought the law” and Moti “won” the problem is that the situation would not have arisen in the first place, but for the racism that “so infects Australian society”. Until people start standing up and saying no to racism this kind of thing will go on and on and on. Yes Paulo Flores Pepe should be in jail for the racism, the fraud and the assault. Will his victims ever see justice from the AFP? I some how boubt it!
Susan Moti may have won round one, but if you read the article Anne Shiny has linked to it may prove to be a hollow victory unless he gets compo and soon. Hope for his sake and the sake of the country he wins.
What price justice, bankruptcy if you’re lucky, jail and ostracism if not. If people can’t defend themselves because they have no money can the outcome be called justice? If people go bankrupt defending themselves, can the outcome be called justice? If people like Moti or the Commissioner for ACT Revenue become victims of political corruption because of their colour and social beliefs, is this justice? I suggest that the answer to each is a resounding NO!!!! So how about some real justice in Oz!
What type of society do we create when we let the colour of a person’s skin determine whether they are victim or perpetrator? If a society allows this type of situations to develop, worse if a society allows it to be perpetuated after it has reared its ugly head it can lead to nothing but disaster. Moti is obviously a victim of white Australian racism. I read the statement from the victim of the Waldorf Café assault which has been posted here and see nothing but disaster for Australia’s race relations within its own borders and beyond if it is not dealt with.
Richard Orr you have asked the salient question about the effects of racism on a community and gone to the core of what Blak and Black is about. There are a large number of victims of anti-black racism living in the Australian community right now. Many if not most of these victims are forced through circumstance to remain silent. If you speak out in the way Moti or Bakchos have done, the system comes after you with vengeance. This is a hate filled society in which we live.
Hope Moti brings this racist shithole we call Australia low in the international community. I personally have had enough of being vilified because of my colour and race.
Richard Orr and Estelle Dunlop the thing about racism is that it starts at the top. People follow the lead. The lead in Australia is politically driven; the NT Intervention and the negative stereotyping that forms the justification for the Intervention reinforce the perception in the community that somehow ATSI Australians are less than other Australians. What we need is positive political leadership on the issue of racism.
Richard Millhouse I sympathise with what you say.
Bakchos as you say the Moti saga is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to racism and corruption in the AFP. The AFP in particular Mick Keelty need to be held accountable for all the crimes they have committed against Australian citizens and others. Keelty should be charged for his role in the Moti, Martens, Courtney, Haneef and ACT Revenue matters.
Helen Roland I totally agree with what you are saying about Keelty. Reading the next post in this series, the statement from EY and your comment about Rob Priest sheds a lot more light on the true nature and extent of corruption in the AFP and ACT Government. It would appear that the AFP’s modus operandi for solving crimes is to fit people up. In this case Moti was a victim of an AFP crime. There are many others including as you say Martens, the Commissioner, Courtney and Haneef to name just a few.