Comment by pessimizer

> And the best part for them, there is no repercussion for it. Everyone can turn around and publicly proclaim they just "did their job".

More than no repercussions; they all make a very good living from this. When Australia decides that they are going to ask to put him away for 10 years, they're saying that they're going to spend at least a million dollars on this incident. They know what happened, they know that it's a pointless expenditure, but they're still going to make it.

They're going to pay lawyers, use courtrooms and the time of judges, investigators and regular officers, all in the service of hopefully housing and feeding an unwilling adult for a decade. Triggered by a nerd importing an infinitesimal amount of plutonium for his nerd collection.

It will somehow be even more shameful when they go through all of this, and then the prosecutor drops the charges, or asks him to plead guilty for no time, no fine, and no record if not arrested for a similar thing outside of some time period. That will mean all of this was just makework.

My only conclusion is that either they don't have enough to do, or they are refusing to do things that are difficult. But either way this nonsense should be taken as an opportunity by management and the public which is currently highlighting government employees that it would be good to fire or replace. They don't have a problem with procedure, they have a problem with personnel.