Shouts from the desert

Senator Hill has responded to the allegations of misleading Parliament. His defence is:

when he brought this to the attention of Defence last year he didn't refer to interrogating - he said on one occasion he interviewed a prisoner...there's a clear distinction between interrogations and debriefing or interviewing.

Now this is not a distinction that would normally be apparent to somebody who is not in defence or law enforcement. As such, claiming that there were no interrogations, knowing that there were "interviews" is still misleading. It is still misleading if you give literally true information that gives a false impression without further qualification, and the impression given was that no Australian personnel were involved in questioning prisoners.

Accordingly, even if everything Senator Hill tells us is correct, it is clear he did in fact mislead Parliament. And if he did so intending to convey this false impression, then he set out to deceive Parliament, which is something that would normally require his resignation from the Government - at least in a functional system of responsible government (and I use the term "responsible government" in its technical sense).

Now when we take into account the fact that Mr Barton was a civilian rather than a member of the defence forces, there is also an issue as to whether there was any justification in Defence treating the word "interview" in its technical sense when used by Mr Barton.

As for whether Senator Hill intended to mislead, check out this passage from Hansard:

As a result of that, I sought further details, even though I knew that Australians had not monitored the prisons, had not administered the prisons, had not provided guards to the prisons and had not interrogated prisoners. As a result of my further inquiries, I found that some Australian lawyers had had some incidental contact with the detention system in Iraq

This is clearly intended to convey the impression that nobody had any contact with prisoners at all, and that the only contact Australian personnel had with the prison system was "incidental" contact on the part of some lawyers. The way it is phrased, the "incidental" contact looks like it is intended to qualify the other information, but surely "interviewing" prisoners would be a more important qualification.

This passage points more towards deception than inadvertent misleading. Given this, the pressure on Senator Hill is unlikely to go away quickly.