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Tag Archives: ASIO

ASIO bill reforms aren’t enough, say MEAA and Greens

Wedged between the recent passage of legislation expanding Australia’s spy agency’s powers and a date for a Senate inquiry into press freedom after the New Year, Attorney-General Christian Porter and the Morrison government announced on Wednesday a range of measures aimed at enhancing public interest journalism and the protection of whistle-blowers.

However, both the Greens and the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) have criticised the government’s announcement, claiming it doesn’t go far enough to prevent the persecution of journalists and others acting in the public interest.

And those bodies collectively warn that such persecution can ultimately lead to prosecutions unless further revisions are taken.

“Under the reforms proposed by the Attorney-General today, journalists can still have their homes or workplaces raided without prior knowledge,” said Sarah Hanson-Young, holder of the communications portfolio for the Greens, in a reaction to Porter’s announcement.

“Journalists and their employers will still not have the right to appear before a judge and contest a search warrant before it is executed.

“Journalism remains a crime and journalists can still be jailed under these reforms,” added Hanson-Young.

Marcus Strom, the MEAA’s media federal president, called for greater action to counter any shortcomings that a Peter Dutton-sponsored piece of legislation passed in Parliament’s final sitting fortnight contained in the way of oversights and transparencies.

“The impetus for this review was the raids on consecutive days in 2019 of the home of News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst and the ABC offices in Sydney,” Strom said.

“Government agencies can still obtain warrants to investigate journalists in secret, and journalists and their sources can still be jailed for truth-telling.

“There is an urgent need for much broader reform to remove laws that criminalise journalism,” Strom added.

Dutton’s piece of legislation was aimed at increasing the powers of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) to include investigations aimed at anyone from private citizens and residents, even as young as 14 years of age, to anyone acting in a public-interest capacity, such as journalists and whistle-blowers.

And while Hanson-Young and the Greens had already arranged and announced a Senate inquiry into media freedom in Australia to take place in February after Parliament reconvenes after its summer break, Porter defends his department’s announcements as being a step in the right direction.

 

 

“Transparency is a key foundation of a healthy democracy and these reforms support the right of journalists and whistle-blowers to hold governments at all levels to account by shining a light on issues that are genuinely in the public interest,” said Porter.

Specific to journalists and public-interest journalism, amendments to Dutton’s recently-passed legislation would include:

  • only Supreme or Federal Court judges would have the ability to issue search warrants against journalists for disclosure offences
  • warrants would only be issued against journalists for disclosure offences after consideration by a Public Interest Advocate
  • greater justifications would have to be given in relation to warrants exercised against journalists, and
  • the government would be required to consider additional defences for public interest journalism for secrecy offences

“Our reforms will ensure the [ASIO Amendment Bill] is clear and understandable and provides an effective legal framework that supports and protects public sector whistle-blowers, while balancing important national security considerations with regard to the unauthorised release of sensitive information,” said Porter.

However, bodies such as the Public Interest Journalism Initiative (PIJI) have said that the inquiry to be chaired by Hanson-Young must include press freedom areas among:

  • enshrining a positive protection for freedom of speech and freedom of the press in Australian law
  • with regard to broadening shield laws, Protection would have to be extended to all those involved in the newsgathering and publication process whose material or evidence may tend to reveal the identity of a source
  • journalists and their employers should be informed when enforcement agencies seek access to their metadata and journalist information warrants should be contestable by the subject of the warrant and their employer
  • and the public interest consideration required before issuing a journalist’s information warrant should be expanded to consider the potential harm that could be done by the issuance of the warrant and the public interest in a free press

“Journalists should not be charged for doing their jobs full stop. They should not have their homes raided. They should not be intimidated or threatened. They should not be attacked by the government for reporting what is in the public interest,” said Hanson-Young.

Hanson-Young also envisions areas of reporting that can be opened up without the government scrutiny which may theoretically be applied under the current legislation, should new press freedom laws become enacted.

“We have seen in recent months, vindication for those journalists whose homes and workplaces were raided over their reports on alleged war crimes and the government’s plans to spy on Australians. Public interest journalism is vital to our democracy,” she said.

“We need proper protections for journalists including a contested warrants process to be enshrined in a Media Freedom Act,” she added.

Meanwhile, Mike Burgess, ASIO’s director-general of security, feels that any reforms to the ASIO Amendment Bill – even at the reward of protecting public interest journalism, journalists, and whistle-blowers – need to be taken within the agenda of the nation’s greater interests.

“I acknowledge ASIO is granted extraordinary powers – but they are rightly subject to strict safeguards and oversight. Australians should be confident that ASIO acts in a targeted, proportionate, ethical way, and wherever possible, uses the least intrusive method available to collect security intelligence,” Burgess said in reaction to the bill’s passage last week.

“We do not just do what is legal, we do what is right,” Burgess added.

 

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A Whale of a Taylor – too.

“People aren’t spending” sighs Fran Kelly at the end of ABC Insiders Sunday, blaming us for the government’s epic failure to manage the economy. It’s always the victim’s fault. Yet if you don’t have it, you can’t spend it.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) records a snail’s pace in the latest increase in household incomes. ABS data shows a healthy increase from 1995 through until 2012, the period of the Howard and then Rudd/Gillard governments. Then it collapses in 2013. It is yet to recover. No wonder 9,300 retail stores will close their doors this year.

Average wealth per adult Australian, also fell by $US28,670 in 2018-2019 reports Credit Suisse in its annual global wealth report. Although Credit Suisse’s calculation includes falling house prices and a falling Australian dollar – and despite Australians remaining among the wealthiest in the world, the report confirms economic mismanagement.

We are one of a tiny minority of countries with wealth per adult lower in 2019 than back in 2012.

Vast amounts of wealth are being shunted offshore with little or no benefit to the people of Australia.

“There is no mineral resources rent tax, no other scheme to retain wealth in Australia, tax avoidance and evasion are rife, the Tax Office’s audit and enforcement divisions are severely understaffed and the Government keeps giving handouts to its foreign corporate mates,” writes Alan Austin.

What is improving is the Coalition’s strangle-hold on the media, helped in the ABC’s case by $84 million budget cuts, intimidating calls to head office, stacking of the board and a PM’s captain’s pick of Ita Buttrose as ABC Chair. AFP raids on working journalists help to increase the state’s pressure on everyone not to criticise; step out of line.

Journos pick up the vibe. Last week, Kelly’s love-in with work experience kid, Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg aids and abets Coalition’s lies about its comprehensive, colossal failure to manage the Australian economy.

“When we came to government, unemployment was 5.7%. Today it’s 5.3%. We have a record number of Australians in jobs. We have just produced the first current account surplus since 1975 … the budget is back in balance, already delivered, for the first time in 11 years. And we’re going to deliver a surplus. That means paying down Labor’s debt. Right now we have an interest bill of around $19 billion a year …”

“So what we need to do is build the resilience of the Australian economy and face those domestic and global economic headwinds that all countries are facing, particularly the trade tensions,” Frydenberg lies.

OK, Josh. Perhaps you’d like to take credit for at least half of that debt and rising interest yourself. Hey Big Spender, your government spends like a drunken sailor. Since March, Australia’s gross debt was $543,409,430,000. Double all debt accumulated by every government from Federation to the 2013 election. Just tell the truth.

Global headwinds? Mathias Cormann – who’s never been the same since his arithmetic failed him as Dutton’s numbers man in the Liberals’ last leadership coup – has been wearing out this excuse since he become finance minister. Luckily, he need suffer no longer. He’ll quit politics at the end of this parliamentary session according to Paul Bongiorno. Cormann should go. Ten years ago, the nation was praised for its success during the GFC.

Now we lag the field. Global wealth grew during the past year as the five-year international boom in trade, jobs, investment, corporate profits and government revenue continues, although Alan Austin reports some easing with the new record high adult wealth reaching $70,850 or just 1.2% below last year’s record.

There are no global headwinds. The excuse is invoked whenever jobless figures rise, interest rates are cut, GDP per capita is lower than last year and declining productivity, among other factors, show our local economy stalling.

We’re all at sea. The mutinous dog in the captain’s rig may have seized the helm in last year’s dirty double, double-crossing of Turnbull. But the usurper has no charter; no vision. His first mate can’t read a compass and the crew are frigging in the rigging or sleeping in a cabin far below. No wonder Chief Purser Cormann is about to jump ship.

With Fran’s help, Frydenberg’s farrago of lies includes his party’s whopper that it has a record number of Australians in jobs. Yet Australia’s population growth of 1.7 million people (over 15 years old) during the same period, “created” those jobs. And a record number of deaths, too, not that you hear any boasting on that score.

Even if you take figures at face value, ABC, you could query the quality of those jobs. As in the US, many Australian workers are waiting up to a decade for a pay rise, income inequality is at record levels, working hours are long or unpredictable and penalty rates are being cut or do not exist. Conditions are also rapidly getting worse.

Wage theft is becoming the new normal as every month another corporation is found underpaying its workers.

“For many workers, there is no on-the-job training or chance for career progression, stress related illnesses due to intense work pressures are common and large sections of the workforce live in fear of being sacked without notice or redundancy pay because employment security provisions have been eroded,” reports the ACTU.

Above all, as The Australia Institute’s Richard Denniss asks, “… if the Coalition is managing the economy, why did they grow the population rather than create jobs for those who were already unemployed?” We need to explode the pernicious myth of the coalition as good economic managers. And as Denniss puts it, the economy’s effect on the budget vastly outweighs the effect of any budget on any economy.

Budgets are important but budgets are not central to the management of the economy.

Context matters. Unemployment was indeed 5.7% at the end of the financial crisis or global recession of 2013 but that rate still put us eighth in OECD rankings – as contrasted with our 21st place today at 5.3% as shown in last month’s ABS data. That’s our lowest ranking since records have been kept. But no-one holds Josh to account.

The budget is not back in balance. As Finance Dept data reveals, the deficit at the end of October is around $14.7 billion. A surplus is predicted for next June. Alan Austin spells it out, that’s seven months away.

Above all, as Ross Gittins and others point out, any surplus requires a series of heroic assumptions which include expecting government spending to grow by just 0.1% in real terms – as opposed to 4.9% last financial year.

Then there are the decidedly unheroic calculations and assumptions of this government. Helping create a sacred surplus are cuts to NDIS, although the preferred term is “underspend”. Chief amongst these is the $4.6bn that has not been spent on NDIS, or to use the bureaucrats’ jargon, the “… slower than expected transition of participants into the NDIS and lower utilisation of participants’ individual support packages”.

In other words, our most vulnerable experience delay or denial as more stringent assessments reduce the numbers who qualify for NDIS. Wheelchair Basketball and Tennis, Paralympian Dylan Alcott is disgusted.

“I see the heartbroken families of people who try and try to get funding but can’t, robbing them to be independent, contributing members of society. Fix it.”

Then there’s the timing of receipts. Bringing forward the collection of tobacco excise collections, for example, Shane Wright reminds us, boosts the bottom line by several billions in the new financial year. But wait!

Look over there! In an “explosive allegation”, a Chinese spy ring, exposed by Nine’s 60 Minutes, Sunday, may involve the late Bo “Nick” Zhao, (32) a former luxury car-dealer in leafy Glen Iris in Melbourne’s sleepy eastern suburbs who was offered one million dollars to be a Chinese agent of influence in Australian federal politics.

Or so the self-professed Manchurian candidate, Bo told ASIO a year ago. Is Glen Iris the den of sedition, our ex-pat local sage and dramaturge Barry Humphries, has always warned us about? Sandy Stone now a suburban guerrilla?

A nation is shocked to learn of the plot to parachute Bo into the Liberal seat of Chisholm. Bo would then be injected like a bacillus into the fibrillating heart of our body politic, our parliament, like Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) in the train to the Finland Station in April 1917. Seriously? More panic from Canning MP, Andrew Hastie.

“I heard that he was a 32-year-old Melbourne resident cultivated by the Chinese Government to run as a Liberal Party candidate,” Chair of Parliamentary Joint Subcommittee on Intelligence and Security Hastie breathlessly tells Channel Nine whose chairman is former Liberal Treasurer and current chair of the Board of Guardians of our $148 billion (that won’t be invested in education, health or welfare) Future Fund, nest-egg, Peter Costello.

Sadly, it turns out Bo’s in jail awaiting trial for fraud in October when Chisholm’s preselection takes place. Gladys Liu, who also boasted she could raise a million dollars for the cause, takes his place. Bo’s bid would be a Chinese Communist Party long-term strategy, helpfully suggests Alex Joske, Australian Strategic Policy Institute analyst.

Did Bo know too much? Tragically, he is found dead of a drug overdose in a Mount Waverly motel after tipping off ASIO that Chinese intelligence operatives would give him a million dollars to run for Chisholm. What could possibly have gone wrong? The party would even have given him a hand with the odd fake AEC polling booth or two.

Mandarin language electoral booths in Chisholm and Kooyong and in several other electorates with Chinese speakers instruct unwary voters to unwittingly tick the box to elect the Liberal candidate. These appear to be authorised by the Australian Electoral Commission. Prove they affected one vote say government lawyers.

Cases have been brought against the two candidates by climate campaigner Vanessa Garbett and unsuccessful independent Kooyong candidate Oliver Yates. The fake poll booth case is currently before the full federal court.

Former acting Victorian Liberal party state director, Simon Frost, has testified that signs written in Chinese at polling booths on election day were designed to look like official Australian Electoral Commission signage. Preliminary comments from the bench are not encouraging. At least the spy scandal gets our PM’s attention.

“Deeply disturbing”, Scott Morrison finds the spy claims, he says, while Liberal MP for Canning, first talent-spotted by Greg Sheridan, and an Abbott, captain’s pick, former SAS Captain, Andrew Hastie, cranks up the hysteria.

A state-sponsored attempt to infiltrate our Parliament using an Australian citizen and basically run them as an agent of foreign influence in our democratic system,” cries Andrew “handy Andy” Hastie, who chairs the Australian Parliament’s oxymoron – its intelligence and security committee.

It seems to give Hastie a lot of prominence if not power.

Incredibly, another self-proclaimed Chinese spy, Wang Liqiang, who also comes to Hastie’s attention, is the star of a 60 Minutes’ show when he comes forward with sensational allegations. Wang claims he worked as a secret Chinese operative for five years. Worse, Beijing has directed overseas assassinations, including on Australian soil.

Yet barely a week passes before our spooks conclude the self-proclaimed Chinese spy is not a highly trained intelligence operative dispatched by Beijing to wreak havoc on China’s enemies. At most, they suggest, he may be a bit player on the fringes of the espionage community. But what a star. Let’s hope he’s awarded asylum.

“We develop friendly co-operation with Australia and other countries based on mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit,” a foreign ministry spokesman says. “We have not interfered and are never interested in interfering in other countries’ domestic affairs.”

That settles that, then. Meanwhile, it seems Wang may have some charges to face should he return to China. The Chinese Embassy insists he is merely a “self-proclaimed intelligence agent” and a convicted fraudster who was sentenced to one year and three months in prison, with a suspended sentence of a year and a half.

The embassy cites a Shanghai police statement of an investigation into Mr Wang they opened in April, after he allegedly cheated 4.6 million yuan ($960,000), in a “fake investment project”, involving car imports in February.

Chinese spies is the latest episode of Morrison’s Police State which stars our fearless anti-hero the PM as daggy-Dad, a NSW copper’s son, making yet another dud judgement call. Rather than get his Minister for Energy, Emissions, water-rorts and Round-Up, Angus Taylor, to explain who cooked up the dodgy document Taylor used to falsely impugn Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore – he rings Mick’s mobile. Is Mick’s number on Scott’s speed dial?

So our PM phones a friend; his former neighbour and bin brother, top cop, Mick Fuller. Mick’s NSW Police Commissioner, a passionate advocate of strip-searching minors, the separation of powers and augmenting the rule of law with a little bit of fear.

Young people should have a “little bit of fear” of police he tells the fear-mongering Sydney tabloid The Daily Telegraph. It’s a view which former AFP chief Mick Palmer does not share. He says it is frankly frightening.

Morrison tells parliament that Strike Force Garrad (SFG) won’t be going anywhere. He implies Mick’s told him.

SFG is the NSW police investigation of Gus Taylor’s use of doctored documents to ridicule Sydney’s Lord Mayor, Clover Moore for declaring a state of climate emergency over some forged travel figures, Gus swears were downloaded from Sydney City Council’s website, a claim contradicted by the council’s website metadata.

Doubtless, no crime will be found to have been committed but no-one will believe Morrison hasn’t leaned on Fuller to back off.

Happily, our spooks are up to snuff. The Australian even suggests that Morrison could learn from their approach. Don’t turn crisis into catastrophe. Spymaster, ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess looms up late Sunday night to assure all loyal Australians that not only is ASIO aware of the matters but is “actively investigating them“.

A former Telstra information security chief, Mike’s a top bloke says Peter Dutton. Last August Mike “moved across” to head ASIO after heading the Australian Signals Directorate, (ASD). He was on deck to News Corp Annika Smethurst whose scoop, April last year busted an ASD plan to spy on all Australians. Mike says it’s bollocks.

Mike Burgess and two departmental heads, (always better than one) issued a rare public statement disputing the report. Later Smethurst’s home was raided by the Australian Federal Police, reports Michelle Grattan, looking for anything which would lead them to her source.

Since then, there’s been a lot of fuss and bother about the role of the free press, a debate in which News Corp is handicapped by the baggage of having urged Coalition governments to increase state powers to spy on us all.

News of the Chinese plot is enough to put a nation off its Uncle Toby’s Weeties, Monday morning and quite upstages Evangelical Stuart Robert’s frantic attempts to hose down the government’s dumpster fire which erupts when, as it knew would happen, its Robodebt assessment or extortion of the poor is ruled illegal Wednesday by the Federal Court. The Morrison government may have to repay hundreds of millions of dollars.

While MSM faithfully report that it’s a shocker of a week for Morrison, it is, in fact, a very positive week for the Australian worker. Bill Shorten also is in top form. He raises the following matter in parliament. He asks

“Given that the government has now suspended robodebt after three years of operation, is it because the Coalition government at the time of creating it either, a) didn’t seek legal advice, or b) had inaccurate legal advice or c) received legal advice but just didn’t think that Australians would notice the government unjustly enriching itself at the expense of the most vulnerable in Australian society.”

It’s a bad week for Scott Morrison chorus Nine Newspapers following News Corp’s lead. But it’s far from that. It’s a good week or at least a hopeful week for ordinary Australians. What is bad is that Ensuring Integrity and repeal of Medevac are not remotely necessary.

Worse, Jacqui Lambie and Pauline Hanson note the hypocrisy, the double standard applied to workers and Westpac bankers who have just been called out by AUSTRAC on twenty-three million counts of money-laundering.

“The Prime Minister himself came out and said ‘it’s not up to us to deal with it, it’s up to the board to deal with the banks’ – but that’s not good enough,” senator Hanson says.

In the end, the Morrison government’s just not good enough, Pauline Hanson nails it. Or big enough.

One bill before the senate extends the government’s campaign to cripple unions; reduce further the power of workers to organise and exercise industrial action while the other is more a fit of pique – a sure sign that petty political point-scoring matters more than the human rights of asylum-seekers – or our compassion, humanity – or our doctors’ Hippocratic oath. Morrison’s government hates any law that Labor may have had a hand in.

Finally, there’s the robodebt debacle. The government has been happy to connive at extortion but even when called on it’s illegal averaging to raise a debt, all its Government Services Minister Stuart Robert can offer is;

“This government does not apologise -” Yet apologise it must. And fitting restitution must soon follow. No government can treat its people with such contempt; nor in reversing the onus of proof put itself above the law.

As for Yellow Peril 2.0, its spy drama, cooler, wiser heads must prevail. Andrew Hastie’s Sinophobia has all the hallmarks of an orchestrated diversion, designed to distract us from a government in deep trouble.

This week Scott Morrison reveals he understands neither the separation of powers nor the rule of law in our democracy; he acts the can-do PM; markets himself as a man of action. Yet this does not give him permission to ring the NSW Commissioner of Police in the midst of a parliamentary sitting to seek details of an investigation it is not his business to ask nor the Commissioner’s business to tell. Both parties are now irrevocably impugned.

Viewed in conjunction with his eagerness to silence dissent and his government’s passage of at least eighty laws increasing the powers of the state to spy on its citizens, his behaviour is not only entirely inappropriate it is truly alarming. The road toward a police state is paved with such incursions into liberty, democracy and justice.

Just as the incessant repetition of party propaganda and lies mask a grave unwillingness to consult others, let alone fairly and effectively manage our nation’s economy and resources whilst elevating illusion over truth.

Yet this tyranny is not inevitable. Armed with knowledge we can resist. We must. Our democracy depends upon it.

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Cynical? Moi?

The Abbott government’s insistence on secrecy regarding boats carrying asylum seekers has been justified as “not wanting to act as a news service for people smugglers.” We can’t tell them our tactics even though the size of our army and details of its weapons, the number and capability of naval ships and air force planes are widely publicised and reports and photos of towbacks and orange life rafts are all over the Indonesian press.

One wonders why they would not want to publicise intercepts as surely this would act as a deterrent both to the people smugglers and their clients. The excuse wears thinner when one remembers them posing in front of billboards and giving a daily commentary whilst in opposition. How come defence didn’t tell them to stop divulging information?

Is it so we can keep up the pretence that the boats have stopped? Is it so we don’t get busted breaking maritime laws? Is it so Indonesia doesn’t get cross with us for making it their problem?

And why this secrecy should extend to offshore detention camps is even more mystifying. Not only are we not allowed to know, the government doesn’t want to know. The few people who have authority to oversee the well-being of these innocent people who are seeking our help have been ridiculed, threatened, silenced, sacked, deported or ignored.

Government departments have been instructed to dehumanise asylum seekers. This is a very deliberate strategy.

We mustn’t think of them as people just like us who have already endured horrors beyond our imagining. We mustn’t see the children behind razor wire. We mustn’t think of them learning to trade sexual favours for better treatment from those we employ to supposedly protect them. We mustn’t hear about the children in Adelaide who are doing well at school and have endeared themselves to their community. They must be whisked away in the dead of night. We mustn’t hear of babies separated from their families and children denied medication.

Because if we did, we might wonder what we have become.

When the human rights commission published the report on children in detention, Tony Abbott called it “a blatantly partisan politicised exercise” and that “the human rights commission should be ashamed of itself.” He said the government had lost confidence in Gillian Triggs in what he called “a political stitch-up”

When, in Senate estimates in February last year, shadow defence minister Stephen Conroy told the head of Operation Sovereign Borders, General Angus Campbell, that he was ”engaged in a political cover-up” all hell broke loose. Julie Bishop said it was an ”outrageous slur, indeed libel”. The fact that this is a civilian coastguard peacetime exercise seems to have escaped them.

Which brings me to my question for today.

If we agree that operations need to be kept secret when dealing with asylum seekers (which I don’t, but let’s move on), why does that not apply even more so to our “war on terror”?

Before any invitation had been issued or agreement signed, Tony Abbott was announcing to the Australian media exactly how many planes and personnel we were sending to the Middle East, where they would be stationed and when they were arriving. He released details of how many flights were flown, how many bombs dropped, how many targets hit with film to accompany the daily commentary.

On the domestic scene, when hundreds of police carried out pre-dawn raids on a few houses, they filmed the whole thing including homes and handcuffed kids who were later let go with no charge, then gave this footage to the television stations and newspapers despite the innocence of these people. A plastic sword was taken out in a clear plastic evidence bag for all to see.

And why was the Sydney siege on live TV? Isn’t that giving a platform to a terrorist in a far greater way than Q&A did by allowing a person of and with interest to ask a relevant question? Did I hear anyone saying Monis is attention seeking which he clearly was. He wanted to speak to Tony Abbott who did as Ciobo did. He wouldn’t even take the call which is when the hostages got really scared.

“It was then that I knew that there was not going to be any negotiation and we were just left there. No-one was coming for us.” But they were certainly filming you, and filming those who escaped showing exactly where they were leaving the building. This apparently infuriated Monis. Where is the inquiry into the role this uninterrupted news coverage played both in the outcome of the siege and in promoting Monis’ message?

What about the newspapers that published the photo of the child holding a severed head – isn’t this crossing a line in giving the father attention and also very damaging for the child who they had no hesitation in identifying.

And how about Tony Abbott reading out in Parliament details from a video that had been made by two young men threatening to stab the kidneys and necks of a white person.

A high-ranking counter-terrorism officer said they had no idea Mr Abbott would reveal so much detail about the video and that it could potentially prejudice the court case.

NSW Bar Association president Jane Needham, SC, said if the matter went to trial, the court might find it “impossible” to empanel a jury unaffected by the comments.

“That could even mean the men would not receive a fair trial because the jury has already made up its mind,” she told ABC Radio.

Every day we are told exactly what the government is doing. How many passports have been cancelled, how many are fighting overseas, how many are suspected of aiding and abetting them, up to the point of showing maps of where they live during a photo shoot at ASIO headquarters. Since when did intelligence and police headquarters become television sets and photographic studios?

The Murdoch papers are full of photos of terrorists and their actions. Abbott and his chorus line are daily telling us everything they can think of about national security and terrorism even to the point of making stuff up. Abbott feeds into the mystique by his refusal to temper his language despite being advised that he is adding to the problem. He likes the sound of “apocalyptic death cult” – bugger the consequences.

Tony Abbott’s hysteria over Zaky Mallah has made him a household name. His public condemnation of the ABC has led to death threats and ABC employees being put in real danger.

So back to my question.

Why are we giving a very public platform to terrorists and detailing in the media every move we are making to combat them? Perhaps our newly appointed (by Abbott) Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Angus Campbell, could explain why talking about asylum seekers is forbidden but telling IS our every move is OK. Or newly appointed (by Abbott) head of the AFP, Andrew Colvin, in one of his many press conferences standing in front of flags with the PM, could explain why they have taken to filming covert operations to supply to the media and are happy to release the details of suspects, their families and addresses to the press before any charges are laid let alone trials concluded. Or newly appointed (by Abbott) head of ASIO, Duncan Lewis, could discuss the advisability of engaging in photo shoots at intelligence headquarters with sensitive documents on display when the alert level is high.

Cynical? Moi?

 

Be Alert – Your Country Needs More Lerts!

Let me begin by saying that it’s just as well that Essendon were put out of the AFL Finals last week because apparently ASIO have joined the Labor/AFL/ASADA conspiracy against them and have announced that they’re not letting any Bombers into the game tonight.

(Let me also seriously say that I believe that there is a real possibility that there’ll be a terrorist attack on Australian soil at some future point. So my pathetic joke is in poor taste and I’ll look as silly as Andrew Bolt should something happen.)

However, I have a couple of concerns that have nothing to do with Tony Abbott or poor jokes. For a change, I’m prepared to let him off the hook. After all, he only announced the threat. He was – rather unusually – taking the advice of experts.

A few days ago, David Irvine, the head of ASIO announced that he was thinking of raising the threat level from medium to high. I found it strange that he’d publicly speculate about such a thing. After all, a terrorist attack might occur at any time and should one occur after a statement like that, he could hardly say, “Wasn’t I clever to be thinking about raising the alert level!” Nobody would say that he was clever for thinking about it, but those naughty terrorists went ahead and did something before he made up his mind.

But I guess here’s the next point: What does it mean when the terrorist threat is lifted? I mean, am I meant to stay indoors? Spy on my neighbours? Wear a bullet proof vest? Am I meant to change my behaviour in any way?

And if the answer is no, I’m just being informed that there’ll be more overtime for those members of the public service that are there to protect us, then why do I need to know at all. After all, it’s not as if I would have ignored a group of people asking if I knew a flight school that would give them a discount if the lessons didn’t include making a landing. And it’s not as if this government thinks we need to be told about things. Usually, it’s just the old Joh Bjelke-Petersen, “Don’t you worry about that!” or “It’s Operational Commercial in Confidence Privacy Cabinet Briefing Paper That -If Released – Would Help The Enemy”!

If the threat is specific and they know about it, I don’t see that we’re in any more danger than the other day. If the threat is unspecific and it’s just because of all the things that Andrew Bolt writes, then surely I could have worked it that the threat is higher because we don’t send everyone back where they came from. (Including the Aborigines under 56, because, after all, Bolt was here first!)

Yep, I guess that’s why Abbott needed to give an extra $630 million to the make us more secure.

Mm, so why just a few weeks AFTER that happens do we find that the level of threat is HIGHER? Surely, after committing all that money it should be lower. I mean, if they’d raised the threat and then got the money, that’d make more sense to me.

Oh!

Of course, it was already higher. They just forgot to tell us.

Ah, good old national security. It distracted me from praising Abbott for strengthening our borders from those queue jumping asylum seekers. If they want to get here quickly without a lot of paper work why don’t they just apply for a 457 Visa?

I didn’t even write about Mark Kenny’s sycophantic article which appeared just two days after Abbott demanded more praise from the media . . .

 

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