Terror links a cause for alarm in Australia

The Australian ^ | December 23 2003

[knighthawk]

Two Sydney brothers, Bilal and Maher Khazal, have been sentenced in absentia to 10 years' jail in Beirut for terrorist offences. So why is nothing happening?

The Lebanese Government says that it is considering whether to seek the brothers' extradition, while the Australian Government is saying that it can do nothing until such a request is forthcoming. But while the two governments execute their elaborate diplomatic dance, like debutantes at the ball, the Khazal brothers can do as they wish on the streets of Sydney. And we are supposed to be alert but not alarmed?

Bilal Khazal's passport was confiscated last year, after he was named in a CIA report as an al-Qa'ida operative. He was then named by Spanish authorities as a key contact for the alleged leader of an al-Qa'ida cell in Madrid. But even these black marks are overshadowed by the evidence that emerged before Beirut's Military Court, which detailed the financial involvement of the Khazals in a group called Khaliyat Trablus. The group planted a small bomb in a McDonald's outlet outside Beirut. It was only designed to drive customers out of the restaurant, where a massive car-bomb containing 65kg of TNT awaited them. Luckily, only the smaller bomb exploded, injuring five customers. The evidence of the unexploded bomb led to the capture of the terrorists.

For all of this, neither of the Khazals has been detained and questioned under the new powers that parliament earlier this year conferred on ASIO: if this is the "police state" the Greens and the rest of the Left warned us we would be living in under the new laws, then it must be the most free and easy police state in history. Despite this, many thousands of dollars have been spent as ASIO officers have travelled the globe over the past three years to gather evidence about Bilal Khazal's terrorist links. Mr Khazal, who worked as a Qantas baggage-handler at Sydney airport until six months before the Sydney Olympics - be afraid, be very afraid - continues to operate the Islamic Youth Movement from Lakemba, in Sydney's Muslim heartland. Despite its anodyne title, the Islamic Youth Movement is an extreme and distasteful organisation whose website warns of the "horrible torment" that will one day be unleashed upon the Jews.

If the Government is saying that it would respond promptly and positively to an extradition request from Lebanon, it follows that it accepts the validity of the finding against the Khazals - which, once they were back in Lebanon, they would be free to appeal against. If an extradition request is not forthcoming, the Australian Government should stop playing hard-to-get and elicit one.

Selective schools an aspirational triumph

The system of selective high schools - schools that accept students exclusively on the basis of an entrance test - that operates in NSW and, on a much smaller scale, in Victoria, has been the subject of endless controversy. To the teachers' unions and all those who sail with them, the selectives are elitist, and result in a "brain drain" from other government schools, lowering expectations there. Some critics complain that the mode of entry into selectives is susceptible to distortion by "cramming factories", while others make them the focus of ethnic anxieties that do not bear scrutiny.

Well, the results tell it all. Once again, seven of the 10 top-performing schools in the NSW Higher School Certificate this year were selectives, while the remaining three were independent schools. There are 28 selective and partly selective schools in the state. Meanwhile, in Victoria, there are only two selectives, Melbourne High and MacRobertson Girls High, and once again they have finished first and second in the Victorian Certificate of Education, with private schools accounting for the remainder of the top 10.

Like most things despised by the teachers' unions, the selectives are highly valued by parents, making it political dynamite for any government to tamper with them. Hence, last year's recommendation by the Vinson Inquiry that the selectives be cut back to just seven schools has been studiously ignored by the Carr Government.

And so it should be. The fact that 13,700 Year 6 students in NSW sat the test for selectives this year, competing for just 3375 places, amply demonstrates the commitment that parents have to the current system, which is highly successful and highly popular. Schools like Melbourne High and North Sydney Girls, which take students from every social demographic and churn out high-achievers year after year, are a testament to meritocracy, not elitism. Indeed, the extent of the system in NSW means that, there, selectives have a similar place in the creation of the next generation of business and academic leaders that private schools have in the other states. If the NSW and Victorian governments want to turn the movement of parents to the private system into an exodus, all they need do is tinker with the selective system. Meanwhile, the other states should look long and hard at a system that has traditionally rewarded high achievement and hard work, and been the channel that has led hundreds of thousands of students from poorer backgrounds into careers of excellence.

[knighthawk]

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