The government’s position on the Rau case seems pretty clear. Ms Rau was an ‘illegal’, that is, a person found to be in Australia and unable to satisfy the authorities that she had a legitimate right to be here. As was established in apartheid South Africa, where the term originated, illegals have no human or civil rights. They can be locked up in atrocious conditions, denied contact with the outside world and so on. Now the authorities are satisfied about her status, and she has been duly released.
Many commentators, including bloggers, have insisted upon both the term ‘illegal’ and the fact that such people have no human rights. All that is new is the discovery that an ‘illegal’ is anyone the government chooses to detain.
John Quiggin 
Beazley has now mustered the courage to call on the government to apologise to Cornelia Rau.
Who says he’s got no ticker?
“The government’s position on the Rau case seems pretty clear. Ms Rau was an ‘illegal’, that is, a person found to be in Australia and unable to satisfy the authorities that she had a legitimate right to be here.”
Not quite. As I understand it, Ms Rau deliberately
created a false, “illegal” persona for herself and managed to persuade the Queensland Police of it’s veracity. Far from being unable to satisfy the authorities as to her right to be here, she appears to have gone to some lengths to convince them otherwise. We need to see the details – a public enquiry becomes more pressing by the hour.
The Rau situation is not comparable to the situation under apartheid in South Africa. Rau was not a black subject to arbitrary arrest or arrest on the grounds of political belief. Nor was she completely denied all human rights. She was someone who suggested herself that she was illegally in Australia and gave a false name. The government of Australia doesn’t arbitrarily detain anyone but does detain people who are believed to be unlawfully in Australia or to have broken some other law. The term ‘unlawful resident’ from memory is in the immigration legislation.
By the way which blogger asserted that Rau should have no human rights?
I am not sure where you are heading John. Are you saying that no-one who breaks Australian law should be subject to detention? Are you suggesting that the detention law for unlawful residents should be scrapped? Or are you suggesting it was specifically wrong to detain Rau because, along with Dave, you see it as patently obvious that Rau had mental problems and that she should never have been detained in the first place? I am unclear about this last point. Was it self-evident that she had mental problems?
If you are opposed to detention of unlawful residents per se then this is old ground and I won’t argue the point. I just disagree and believe we need to detain those who illegally enter Australia.
this episode was a mistake but one that is understandable given the circumstances. The simmering moral outrage is misplaced as is the hysteria.
No, Harry, John’s point is that the executive arrogates to itself, not the courts, the right to decide who should be held. That, at bottom, is why Ms Rau was detained wrongfully.
Yes, court review is possible but it is not automatic (as Ms Rau discovered, the detainee has to initiate it), it is delayed, and no ‘bail’ is granted in the meanwhile. Further, the government is explicitly keen to curtail as much as possible of this review. Whatever happened to the default assumption that no-one should be detained without a body of evidence being presented before an independent tribunal? It’s fundamental to human rights or even of the rule of law, I should have thought.
One thing we are told ad nauseum by the apologists for our detention regime is that those people who are held in detention centres can leave any time they like. All they have to do is agree to be deported.
I haven’t seen any reports that Ms Rau was offered this option, and I’m willing to bet the reason why she wasn’t is that the authorities could see that she was in no fit state to make a rational decision.
In which case, why was she imprisoned in the first place?
“Many commentators, including bloggers, have insisted upon both the term ‘illegal’ and the fact that such people have no human rights”
Illegal immigrants have human rights, they just don’t have the right to be in the country. What bloggers and commentators are you talking about?
“I haven’t seen any reports that Ms Rau was offered this option, and I’m willing to bet the reason why she wasn’t is that the authorities could see that she was in no fit state to make a rational decision.”
I’m picking that it was much more likely that the German authorities were unable to identify her as a German national. You can’t be deported unless there’s somewhere to deport you to. Had they been able to establish her claimed bona fides, I assume she’d have been shipped back in a flash.
“I’m picking that it was much more likely that the German authorities were unable to identify her as a German national.”
In which case, and considering she was eating dirt and covering herself with her excrement, the authorities might have stopped taking her story at face value (that is, stopped following the Harry Clarke manual for dealing with the psychotic) and realised she shouldn’t have been in Baxter in the first place.
“In which case, and considering she was eating dirt and covering herself with her excrement, the authorities might have stopped taking her story at face value (that is, stopped following the Harry Clarke manual for dealing with the psychotic) and realised she shouldn’t have been in Baxter in the first place.”
Yep. It’s the point upon which the whole thing pivots. Presumably they were still assuming that she was a German, just not the one she was claiming to be…….
It would be nice if Pr Q could check his diatribes against the facts before launching them. He implies a moral equivalence between the SAF govts apartheid policy and the AUS govts anti-illegal alien policy.
Geoff Honnor pointed out in this thread that Cornelia was missing for five months before she was reported missing. She seems to have been insisting she was an illegal immigrant so they treated her like that.
The situation was completely weird. Normally our system takes refugees and deports them because they don’t have papers; here they can’t deport someone because they don’t have papers.
I suppose that means the best strategy for an illegal immigrant caught in Australia is to insist they are in fact an illegal immigrant but from the wrong country, with a made up identity.
Now it seems all the problems are in DIMIA’s handling of the initial assessment, refusing her care, blocking the psychiatrists and holding her after the Germans said she was not one of theirs.
And I too am a bit appalled that we seem to accept this stuff when it happens to Muslims from outside, but when a good white girl falls into its clutches, outrage spreads around the nation.
Sorry about the messed up tags. Is there any possibility that good old “preview” could be restored?
“The situation was completely weird. Normally our system takes refugees and deports them because they don’t have papers; here they can’t deport someone because they don’t have papers.”
The ritual destruction of identifying documentation prior to unsanctioned arrival in Australia is pretty well regarded as a delaying tactic isn’t it? I think that the establishment of identity is pretty crucial to deportation which presumably is why those seeking to avoid it take evasive action.
In reply to dave ricardo’s comment:
many people who suffer from mental illness insist vehemently that they are perfectly sane. it makes it very difficult to diagnose them (or to persuade them to accept treatment). her actions may have been chalked up to the mental anguish of being placed in detention for so long.
Jack, the term used in this debate is not “illegal immigrant” or “illegal alien”, it is simply “illegal”. The use of “illegal” as a noun to describe people has no history in Australia until very recently. This is either a borrowing, or an independent reinvention of a similar usage from apartheid South Africa.
derrida derider — 8/2/2005 @ 1:28 pm miscontstrues, or imputes Pr Q misconstruction, of the Westminster system of government:
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No. The whole discussion of alien settlement policy is disfigured by entirely fabulous conceptions of our system of government and the rights & duties of citizenship.
Ms Rau was detained because the executive (Minister & Department) branch blundered in administering the legislative branchs intention – which is to detain illegal aliens. She was not an illegal alien yet she was detained ipso the Minister et al stuffed up. The judicative branch (courts) are there to review appeals against the Ministers decisions and to enforce existing civil rights, not to make new laws or defeat Parliaments statutes.
…test]
Detained Illegal aliens, I take it, are those who appear to be aliens and who can provide no proof of legal authority to be in this country. It seems that Ms Rau got into the net, for reasons of her ailment’s peculiar symptoms and bureaucratic stuff-up. No doubt a more caring ministry would avoid this kind of mistake but it is a far cry from abandoning habeas corpus and instituting the some quais-Nazi “Nacht und Nebel” policy of disappearing persona non civitas. I take it that this comment is another effusion of Howard-hating malice rather than an attempt at rational cognition.
“Illegal immigrants have human rights, they just don’t have the right to be in the country.”
So they get whichever international human rights Australia doesn’t think it can legislate over?
Certainly that is Australia’s position, as it was South Africa’s. That we decide how to run our internal affairs and pay such heed to international conventions as suits us. The government has repeatedly said as much.
People claim asylum as of right. We treat them as criminals. There’s a conflict. The government knows as much, or else they wouldn’t have legislated to neuter the Teoh decision.
Illiterate One, the Aboriginals in North Queensland who took Rau to the cops figured out there was something wrong with her. That was obviously well before she suffered any mental anguish for being in detention.
Rau was subsequently misdiagnosed as not being mentally ill by psychiatrists employed by her jailers.
Why did they get it so wrong given her behaviour? Hopefully, Rau will sue them for a zillion for malpractice and we’ll find out then. (Let’s not pin too many hopes on Vanstone’s inquiry, eh.)
I reckon that because she was presented to these psychiatrists as a likely illegal alien, they assumed she was putting it on, because, as we all know, all people in detention centres are liars who will do or say anything to be allowed to stay in the country. Rather than objectively assessing Rau’s condition, they allowed her circumstances to influence, if not determine, their professional judgment.
If I was running the College of Psychiatry or whoever it is regulates the (mal)practice of psychiatry in this country I’d be taking a very keen interest in this case.
Many years ago I got a deranged Rumanian past security into the West German embassy in London after it was closed. I did this because he was lost, spoke no English, our only common language was German (which I don’t speak very well myself), he was skint, and he had come all the way to London to see the Queen and was loitering with intent at the back of Buckingham Palace.
The Germans didn’t want to know, but – to cut a very long story short – they were eventually obliged to accept him since it turned out he was an ethnic German, and their laws extended to requiring protection for these too. (Sceptical readers may confirm details of this incident with the Diplomatic Protection Squad, who I got the Germans to call in from Cannon Row; it turned out that they spoke worse German than I did).
The lesson from this is that Germany today should still be extending this sort of protection and presumption of duty towards even someone with Cornelia Rau’s background (though I wonder if her name is a variant of the Polish name Ral?).
For what it’s worth, while I believe there should be some system for illegal residents, I believe it ought to based on the thinking behind dealing humanely with vagrants and Distressed Seamen’s Acts in previous periods. With that approach none of this should ever lead to inhumane treatment for anyone.
P.S. I’m not telling how it is that I know the techniques for breaching security. But that’s as nothing compared with some of the things my father did in his day…
if it is of interest Cornelia is referred to by the government as an unlawful non citizen and the German Consul General visited her on a number of occasions and doesn’t seem to have caught on that she wasn’t a German. It was noted that her German was very childish
In a globalised world Ros, not even Germans can be relied upon to have “correct” German accents.
A refugee advocate on John Laws the other day pointed out the firm running the detention centre gets fined if someone is transferred out on medical grounds. Wonder what bright spark thought that regulation up? No possible conflict of interest there! BTW wonder how the immigration rep whose responsibility it is in such cases is feeling at the moment? Will he or she fall on their sword for the good of the department and Australia’s collective guilt?
You bad bad person.
Ps I don’t think it’s only the PM who should be saying sorry.
How come nobody in this thread has raised the institution from which she debunked, her family that didn’t report her missing for 5 months, or the Queensland Police? Everything is focussed on the Howard Government and nothing on the others.
It is my opinion that they are equally,if not more responsible for what happened to her.
David Tiley – where is your evidence that medical treatment was blocked? She was, in fact, placed in an institution for a week in SA and they declared her weird but not nuts!
this episode was a mistake but one that is understandable given the circumstances. The simmering moral outrage is misplaced as is the hysteria.
Harry, you have no problem with a person displaying psychotic behaviour being held in non-medical detention? What about if they are known to be Australian? And if their status is unknown? I’m guessing your own perceived position in life is so secure that you’re empathy for those on the margins of comfortable existence is flabbily unexercised.
And why do many these days insist on being more provoked by the moral outrage of others rather than the incidents occasioning it? Has compassion fatigue become endemic and terminal?
No WBB I just dislike intensely the labels people fling at people: Psychotic, crazy etc. If someone says they are a foreign national without passport my presumption is that this should be taken seriously. I was unsure Rau could readily be identified as psychotic or as an illegal resident who was distressed because they were in detention. Are illegal residents who sow their lips together psychotic? I don’t think so.
Again what do you know about my position in life and whether I am secure or not? You are jumping to conclusions again.
I don’t resent moral outrage per se but reject entirely the idea that the left has a monopoly on compassion. Sometimes it seems to me its outrage at the world’s injustices are less an expression of compassion than of ego. More importantly, in this instance moral outrage is overwhelming the ability to see what is in front of your eyes.
There were no storm-troopers ripping innocent civilians off the streets and incarcerating them. There were no nazi prison guards trying to torment a troubled woman. Just a mistake. Simple story but not one that gives anyone the opportunity to pursue adolescent fantasies of tracking down and exposing injustice.
Harry, sometimes reality puts on a pretty good show of validating an adversarial approach to these issues.
What happens if an English-speaking Australian citizen gives a name, suspected of being false, to a police officer? Presumably they can’t be held indefinitely – and it they’re turned over to anyone else for detention, it’s likely to be a psychiatric facility.
The treatment meted out to suspected illegal immigrants may be ‘old ground’, but …
WBB Ms Rau was assessed over a six day period by psychiatrists and declared sane. While you may be able to diagnose her illnes from press reports as apparently Dr Neuman can, I would have said that the authorities don’t have the same luxury of telling psychiatrists they are wrong. Dr Neuman would be quick to object. This sad episode rather enforces the view that the mental health doctors are just a step away from witchdoctors.
Senator Vanstone mounted a vigorous defence of the Queensland police yesterday. Their boss, Beattie appears to be missing in action.
Just a mistake. Simple story but not one that gives anyone the opportunity to pursue adolescent fantasies of tracking down and exposing injustice.
This misses the point that the treatment Rau received is standard for other asylum seekers at Baxter and other detention centres, and is only in the spotlight because of this detainee’s unusual status. The disastrous effect of the Australian detention system on the psychiatric health of its inmates have been documented by psychiatrists, doctors, HREOC and others for years now but it is only now that a person “like us” has fallen into the net that the system is under the spotlight. Mistake, stuffup, call it what you will, the system she was put in as it stands should not be in existence. Especially for the babies and children in there.
Poor Ms Rau, her life is being played out in the press for the titillation of all. At the same time the compassion industry seeks to use her for their moral ambitions. With all the argument about whether the inquiry should be open or closed and whether witnesses should be compelled, nobody wonders what Ms Rau herself may want, or is it not relevant?. If she had her rights abused before, it is nothing to what is awaiting her. If she was paranoid as part of her illness what must she be thinking now. Do the clamouring voices think that she is incapable of reading papers or watching TV. With “friends ” such as hers who needs enemies.
Harry said, I don’t resent moral outrage per se but reject entirely the idea that the left has a monopoly on compassion
And rightly so Harry. I’m not of the Left and I care about the people in those centres. So where’s your campassion? Money. Mouth. Please.
One question for all of you. And this is not rhetorical – I’d really like to know. Since you are all so eager to express an opinion about the exact details of another person’s anguish, how many of you have actually visited an actual detainee inside an actual detention centre? Just curious.
Well said Ros. You got my attitude towards all this pathetic bantering in a nutshell. Pathetic.
“Since you are all so eager to express an opinion about the exact details of another person’s anguish, how many of you have actually visited an actual detainee inside an actual detention centre? Just curious”
I’m not sure I understand your point. Is it that we should just accept the media take without question? Sadly, the exact details of Ms Rau’s anguish are absolutely central to this issue and further examination of that detail is inevitable. The media narrative continues to unfold from a variety of anything but disinterested perspectives: the government(s), her family, the Refugee Advocacy lobby, the media etc.
I just want to know where you are all coming from. I want to know how to weight all your opinions in my own mind. Do you care about the people inside those centres, or is this just partisan hackery? I want a credibility test.
When you’ve been spending the last 8 weeks trying to raise money for a good friend of yours who’s been stuck in a prison for 5 years so he can present an adequate case to the RRT since they changed the rules making you pay for all your court costs, you’d be a little peaved to when a bunch of know-it-all keyboard commandos (Left and Right) squabble over who’s set the limbo bar lowest.
Lawrence is about the only one here who has actually demonstrated that he cares. Show me your works.
And if you don’t care, then fine. I can respect that.
“Lawrence is about the only one here who has actually demonstrated that he cares. Show me your works.”
Whether or not people “care” – according to some unknown criteria set by you – is neither here nor there. John’s proposition was the initiator of the comment thread and it’s to that – and to comments made therein – that responses are made.
In my experience the overwhelming majority of those who visit here could be termed “caring” in the broad sense but they’re obviously under no obligation to satisfy you on the point as the corollary to contining discussion. I don’t want to appear overly critical – and I appreciate the personal aspects you’ve revealed – but you do risk being seen as a bit presumptuous.
Presumptuous. Maybe. Prove me wrong.
John’s proposition was the initiator of the comment thread and it’s to that – and to comments made therein – that responses are made
And I have made comments. And responses are being made.
…but they’re obviously under no obligation to satisfy you on the point as the corollary to contining discussion.
No you are not under any obligation to satisfy me. Very right.
And that’s how a discussion works. Someone initiates. Others respond. It may go in certain directions. It may not. You obviously don’t want it to go down this path do you?
Fair enough. If you don’t want to answer my simple question and either validate or invalidate my own prejudices about keyboard commandos – fine.
I just want to know who has talked to a detainee in detention.
Can someone confirm/deny what Simon says above – that the firm running Baxter (GSL?) has a incentive to deny access to medical treatment?
And the only reason we are now aware/care about this is because it turns out this women has the divine right of being Australian?
Beyond arguments about how much moral outrage is proportionate and what kind of moral outrage is appropriate, the following questions require answers:
1. What did Vanstone know about Rau?
2. When did she find out?
3. What did she do after she found out?
4. Does the possibility that one or more of Vanstone’s advisory staff knew but decided not to pass that information on to Vanstone constitute a breach of the principle of “frank and fearless” departmental advice?
5. Will Vanstone allow her non-public service staff to testify to the forthcoming enquiry?
6. Will Vanstone allow disclosure of all documentation relevant to this case?
7. Will the public be satisfied with Vanstone’s assurance that this closed enquiry has had access to all material witnesses and all relevant documentation?
8. How will the public know if access to the above has not been granted?
9. Are the preceedings engineered by Vanstone designed more to reveal the truth or to cover it up?
I can’t confirm or deny – I haven’t seen the contract – but I don’t believe that DIMIA would contract an immigration detention facility contractor to with-hold medical care for those detained. It’s possible that there may be incentivation for maintaining a high standard of physical health and wellbeing onsite (I think Simon’s point related to people being referred offsite for treatment) which might be usefully interpreted as encouragement to deliberately with-hold treatment by those disposed to do so, but I guess we’d need to see the detail.
“All that is new is the discovery that an ‘illegal’ is anyone the government chooses to detain.”
The same might be said for the mentally incompetent or the insane.
Ms Rau is of course now ‘residing’ in a mental institution at Glenside. Somehow she is now a completely free citizen, no longer under lock and key, discussing the pros and cons of particular medications and treatments with the physicians of her choice. Perhaps she’ll go shopping down Unley Road at the boutiques this afternoon, if a new dress takes her fancy. Can she take a friend?
Unfortunately, the debate over Ms Rau’s appalling situation has, as this thread indicates, got caught up in the wider debate over detention centres. It is a pity that this case is not being used more to focus greater attention on our societies appalling neglect of the medically and physically disabled.
I will say it again:
How come nobody in this thread has raised the institution from which she debunked, her family that didn’t report her missing for 5 months, or the Queensland Police? Everything is focussed on the Howard Government and nothing on the others.
It is my opinion that they are equally,if not more responsible for what happened to her.
Are the criticisers of the Immigration Detention Process going to ignore all other parties involved? At the moment it appears so.
Pr Q’s post, as with most liberal-progressive commentary on the govt civic policies, contains a grain of truth, which is weighed down by an almighty husk of misleading rhetoric and dodgy arugments.
Pr Q’s post contains at least one blatant contradiction, one invalid inference and one unsupported accusation.
Proposition 1.
…test]
This is a true in that it specifies the govts. constraining legal conditions for designation of a person as an illegal alien. But this admirably succinct statement of the govts. attitude towards illegal aliens is clearly in contradiction with Pr Q’s Proposition 2.
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This proposition implies that the govt acknowledges no legal constraints on its designation (or treatment) of illegal aliens.
But, as Pr Q inititally acknowledges, proof of legitimate passage or residency would constrain the govts powers to deem a person an “illegal”.
t…test]
Pr Q’s rhetorical tactic seems to be to “bad apple pick” a few of the more extreme examples (Rau, Al-Kateb and Al Khafaj) of govt bastardry towards detainees and treat these as normal. Exceptional cases do not prove the badness of general rules. Australian national law and statute gives detainees (whether assylum-seekers or fleers!) some civil rights. They get more rights than are granted to criminal/arrestees, less rights than are the entitlements of citizens.
t…test]
The govts rejection, evasion or obfuscation of some parts of international law and statute regarding the treatment of assylum seekers does not imply that such persons have “no civil or human rights” in AUS. A detainee could be said to have no civil rights if he is being locked up indefinitely at the Ministers pleasure with no legal recourse and no civil constraints on ill-treatment. Apart from the exceptional & anomolous cases (in which I think that the Minister & Courts overstepped the mark) this does not seem to be the general rule for detainees.
I am unaware of any commnentators, bloggers or pundits who have advocated making such draconian policies the norm for treatment of illegal aliens. Would Pr Q care to enlighten us as to their identities?
Also, slightly off-topic, is Pr Q pleased that the govt border-protection “crimes against humanity” policy has stopped the illegal and unsafe people-smuggling industry around these shores? A utilitarian would have to prefer temporary detention of some undocumented or illegitimate assylum-seekers in order to constrain an activity that resulted in scores of people drowning per annum?
The starting point of this discussion was, quite validly, the observation that Australia knee-jerked into imposing an inhumane regime of detention on suspected illegal immigrants. The suspension of human rights implicit in that regime was not justified by the existence of any state of emergency posed by uncontrolled immigration of illegals. And you don’t have to have visited a centre in order to hold that opinion, just as you don’t have to have had children in order to comment on child welfare issues.
Razor – I have no responsibility for her family – for our gov I do feel I have a say. And it is the gov detention aspect of the incident I thought we were discussing.
To go back to Razer and Ros at 24 and 28: the Age and SMH have covered this extensively over the last week. However, my basic framework for the time frame was established here and here. So there is my evidence. I am interested in your claim that “placed in an institution for a week in SA and they declared her weird but not nuts!”(24) and “Ms Rau was assessed over a six day period by psychiatrists and declared sane”(28). Can you provide the evidence for this? I presume it is actually the Princess Alexandra Hospital time in Brisbane, for which they will be examined in Vanstone’s secret enquiry.
Razer – we have actually raised the five month gap, and on this thread, even though it answers many of the initial problems raised about the case. But I think it is unfair to hold the family responsible – aside from anything else, family blaming is something the carers of psychiatrically disabled people have campaigned passionately about for a generation. It is a truly disgraceful refuge of bad governments.
We do not know what happened in that five months. When did they first go to the police? What were they actually told? How long did she have to be missing before the police formally responded? How closely were the family able to follow her movements before she was admitted to hospital in Manly?
After all, Ms Rau has a right to move around the society without turning up on a missing persons’ list as soon as she can’t be contacted. The family had no evidence of foul play and she was about to be released anyway, and someone was said to be looking after her.
I am a bit stunned by the canard that we have no right to become active about this case unless we have had actual experience of it. As in JC at 31. If anyone who comments on anything is a “keyboard commando”, democracy is impossible and presumably JC must fall silent too.
Observa and Michael are truly trying to divert the issue into the general treatment of mental illness. Yes, Ms Rau is now in Glenside and being treated. She is no longer screaming, taking her clothes off, eating dirt and saying she wants to be dead. Of course she is still detained – it is just that she is not be tortured any more, by deprivation of medical care and the alleged mockery by the staff.
paul2 — 9/2/2005 @ 12:36 pm operates on standard progressive-liberal assumptions and therefore compeletly misses the point:
mid-way point of the debate. Ms Rau is unfortunate because her case became entangled in a broader political struggle about AUS’s cultural identity.
Australia was not “knee-jerked into imposing an inhumane regime of detention on suspected illegal immigrants.” The 800 lb gorilla that squats in the midst of this whole debate is the knowledge that AUS has experienced nearly two decades of immigration law being flouting by both people-smugglers and their accomplices in the domestic multi-cult industry. Plus we have had to put up with the rest of the post-Whitlamite New Left pee-cee nonsense. This apparat got a well-deserved kick in the pants after the Keating Kulturkampf went belly up in 1996.
Underlying that question is a still deeper one: is the AUS Broad Left more interested in progressivity for the cultural elite or industrial populus? The US Democrat party shows the way for a party that chooses the former path. As a life long supporter of the Labour movement I will fight till my last breath to prevent the prevent the ALP from suffering this fate.
I am a bit stunned by the canard that we have no right to become active about this case unless we have had actual experience of it.
Good. Of course I never said that. You have an opinion. Good for you. I just want to know in what context you form it.
Now go talk to Harry Clarke about his objection to the Left claiming a monopoly on compassion. Which is fine unless you have shown none yourself. So I ask the question to both sides.
David, I wasn’t trying to divert anything just simply suggesting that a more productive outcome from this sad episode would be a renewed focus on the lack of resources allocated to the treatment of mental health. I see little point in opponents of a harsh detention regime focussing on this issue in an attempt to win their case – it seems to me to be marginal to the issue of whether or not such a harsh detention regime is justified (and I don’t think it is) and to divert attention from the real issues at stake in this particular case.