What's it got to do with the Government
It is a very sad thing that a young Australian woman on her grand tour of Europe died while visiting the Croatian town of Dubrovnik. Every death in suspicious circumstances is a very sad thing for someone.
What I fail to understand is why this particular death is so special that the Australian Government got involved in the investigation in the first place. Even harder to understand is why the Opposition has decided to give Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty a hard time over his force's minor role.
Now I know we have consular officers in embassies around the world and that one of their functions is to help travelling Australians in trouble but they are not meant to be some kind of super nanny. Yet increasingly the politicians are reacting to every slightest bit of public pressure to make them so.
The Lapthorne family are clearly very skilled at the public pressure business and have attracted considerable media attention as they try and find out what happened to Britt. Good luck to them and I hope they eventually find out the cause of death and that a villain, if there is one, is brought to justice.
But I must say I find some of their comments quite over the top. I don't think our Government should have even sent a Federal policeman to Croatia just to appease a grieving family and to give the television networks another angle for a story that attracted them. I certainly would not regard playing grief counsellor to family members as one of that policeman's duties as Liberal Senator George Brandis by his questions at a Senate committee last night seemed to be suggesting.
That being said, I did find it odd that when the silly decision to send an officer was made that the man chosen had a Serbian heritage. We in Australia might be multi cultural in these matters involving the former Yugoslavia but Serbs and Croats in their home lands are not.
What I fail to understand is why this particular death is so special that the Australian Government got involved in the investigation in the first place. Even harder to understand is why the Opposition has decided to give Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty a hard time over his force's minor role.
Now I know we have consular officers in embassies around the world and that one of their functions is to help travelling Australians in trouble but they are not meant to be some kind of super nanny. Yet increasingly the politicians are reacting to every slightest bit of public pressure to make them so.
The Lapthorne family are clearly very skilled at the public pressure business and have attracted considerable media attention as they try and find out what happened to Britt. Good luck to them and I hope they eventually find out the cause of death and that a villain, if there is one, is brought to justice.
But I must say I find some of their comments quite over the top. I don't think our Government should have even sent a Federal policeman to Croatia just to appease a grieving family and to give the television networks another angle for a story that attracted them. I certainly would not regard playing grief counsellor to family members as one of that policeman's duties as Liberal Senator George Brandis by his questions at a Senate committee last night seemed to be suggesting.
That being said, I did find it odd that when the silly decision to send an officer was made that the man chosen had a Serbian heritage. We in Australia might be multi cultural in these matters involving the former Yugoslavia but Serbs and Croats in their home lands are not.
Comments
That is the first comment I have ever received!