Keystone Cartographers. It was a kind of grace note to what has been one long series of bungles and stumbles: yesterday, to cap off the introduction of the government’s citizenship-stripping bill — that’s the one to stop from coming back the people that last year’s foreign fighters legislation was supposed to stop from going to join Islamic State — the Prime Minister, Justice Minister Michael Keenan, George “where did I put that letter from that terrorist” Brandis and his partner in incompetence, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, visited ASIO headquarters for a photo opp. During the course of the media event, ASIO, the people notionally charged with protecting us from terrorism, cleverly placed within view confidential maps that they shouldn’t have, which were then promptly filmed and photographed by the media brought along for the event. Later, ASIO insisted there was nothing secret about the maps — but this morning, inconveniently, the ABC circulated ASIO Media’s initial response to a request from the ABC for an electronic copy of the maps. The maps were for “official use only”, the ABC was told, and ASIO would appreciate it if the national broadcaster did not publish them.
A govt that can’t even organise an ASIO photo opp
If you're doing to do a photo op at ASIO, you should probably keep sensitive documents and maps away from the camera.
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One supposes that any potentially dual nationality Muslim journalist linked to the Australian Intelligence-enabled broadcast of this “official use only”, Commonwealth-owned secret information related to national security from terrorism would be a candidate for citizenship stripping under the draconian proposed anti-terror laws.
In contrast to police state Australia under the proposed new draconian anti-terror laws, in the UK anti-terror legal action would be taken via the courts but would fail due to Australian Intelligence complicity. Thus the Guardian reports: “The prosecution of a Swedish national accused of terrorist activities in Syria has collapsed at the Old Bailey after it became clear Britain’s security and intelligence agencies would have been deeply embarrassed had a trial gone ahead, the Guardian can reveal. His lawyers argued that British intelligence agencies were supporting the same Syrian opposition groups as he was, and were party to a secret operation providing weapons and non-lethal help to the groups, including the Free Syrian Army (Richard Norton-Taylor, “Terror trial collapses after fears of deep embarrassment to security services”, Guardian, 1 June 2015: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/01/trial-swedish-man-accused-terrorism-offences-collapse-bherlin-gildo ).
I thought this was an inter-portfolio masterstroke. A clever ploy to deflate Sydney and Melbourne house prices in suburbs where Abbott and his cronies aren’t heavily exposed.