Transfield’s restrictions on what its staff can and can’t do in relation to the company’s work enforcing the government’s asylum seeker detention policies go beyond the draconian, into a level of Kafkaesque stupidity rarely seen in Australia.
According to The Guardian‘s Ben Doherty, Transfield has banned its Nauru and Manus Island staff from joining any political party, church or group that does not support Transfield’s actions, and from revealing anything that might “embarrass” Transfield. The company has also made it a sackable offence to be followed on Twitter by an asylum seeker, even unknowingly.
A government that has so publicly and so often professed to support free speech would of course demand that Transfield abandon such utterly absurd and outrageous restrictions. But not this government.
For all its rhetoric about freedom, free speech and a free press, this government’s record is one of unremitting censorship and suppression: silencing public servants on social media, including Stasi-like demands that bureaucrats inform on each other, the suppression of traditional parliamentary scrutiny of its treatment of asylum seekers under the fig leaf of national security, the demonisation of those who revealed the sexual assault and abuse of children under Australia’s care, Australia’s biggest ever mass surveillance scheme, laws that would jail journalists for revealing intelligence operations or that they were under investigation, and the most recent addition, a new bill to enable the copyright cartel to order the online blocking by ISPs of websites they object to.
Compared to this government’s actions, Transfield’s ludicrous policies are an amateur effort.
Words are cheap and actions speak louder.
Never thought it would take long – our very own Blackwater – on ya team straya
The only surprise would be if anyone was a surprised. For all their rhetoric the Tories are at heart believers that only they have the right to govern.
Transfield’s alleged restrictions imposed on employees may, or may not, be stupidity.
However, suppression of an employees right to worship, exercise free speech or to hold a contrary view to that of their employer, is an extension of Morrison’s Sovereign Borders doctrine. The Guardian’s report if accurate, indicts the Federal Govt’s “lead” on secrecy, surveillance, abuse and incarceration of innocents. Transfield’s alleged repression of employees but reflects a deepening malaise.
No Australian should accept!
I would have thought that such restrictions would be illegal in law, anti discrimination at a minimum – they are certainly in breach of the presumed right to political association in Constitution.