Once you discern a pattern of actions that are intended to establish a specific kind of anti-dissent police state, the next question is who is responsible, and why. Merely asserting it’s the fault of “the government” or of individual politicians, doesn’t help. There will always be ambitious or power-hungry politicians, or politicians who value control and authority over freedom. The question is what has failed to restrain them, or why systemic factors have enabled them to have their way.
The actions we itemised yesterday derive from three separate sources.
Ambitious officials and politicians
The approaches of some individuals have indeed played an important role. The Immigration portfolio under Peter Dutton and his secretary Mike Pezzullo has been given dramatically greater power and resourcing by Malcolm Turnbull, even at the cost of humiliating his then Attorney-General George Brandis, to placate Dutton and keep him onside. That’s despite Dutton and Pezzullo presiding over the single least competent department or agency, large or small, in the Commonwealth. The result is — as the new “papers please” proposal shows — a major institution dedicated to destroying basic liberties within the Commonwealth government, with a powerful urge to prevent scrutiny of itself because of its ineptitude.
Partisanship and ideology
The Coalition’s loathing of the ABC may seem unrelated to a national security-based move to a police state, but it is a fundamental part of it. The government has little direct power over the commercial media and generally prefers not to get major outlets offside. However, it controls the pursestrings and the board of the ABC and it thus has options for punishing the basic journalistic scrutiny that it perceives as hostility. And as the commercial media shrinks and its capacity to undertake public interest journalism diminishes accordingly, the ABC’s relative importance as an engine of transparency and scrutiny, however flawed, grows proportionately, making it a bigger target for the Coalition.
Hostility to an existing form of scrutiny also means resistance to establishing any other form of scrutiny. Despite an Independent Commission Against Corruption being a proud part of the Liberal tradition and one of the great achievements — however ironic — of Nick Greiner’s NSW government, the government is now isolated as the only major party opposed to establishing an independent federal anti-corruption and misconduct body.
Systems
However the biggest force for the extension of state powers is the bureaucratic system. Unchecked and without intervention, bureaucratic institutions will expand, homogenise, attack transparency and extend their own powers. No conscious decisions are required for these processes — they are generated naturally. Bureaucracies do not plan for their own shutdown — they devise continuing reasons to exist. They clone themselves, recruiting people like themselves — a key reason why the Canberra bureaucracy is so white and European compared to the Australian public it notionally serves. They seek to avoid scrutiny both out of fear of embarrassment for themselves and for their ministers. That’s why senior public servants have been pushing for a rollback of Freedom of Information laws in recent years, and why it is opposed to a federal ICAC. And because bureaucracies have access to the legislative process, they can change the law to make life easier for themselves, by giving themselves greater power or curbing the rights of those who would scrutinise or otherwise make life difficult for them.
There’s little malice in these actions — they reflect how bureaucratic systems “think”. Governments are needed to intervene and block these tendencies — most frequently by reducing the size of the overall bureaucracy — but if a government also benefits from them, it won’t do so. Transparency and scrutiny are clearly an area of shared interest between bureaucrats and politicians. Even independent statutory bodies can be affected when the office holders are decided by government — John Lloyd at the APSC; Gary Johns at the ACNC; trade union royal commission counsel Sarah McNaughton’s appointment as Commonwealth DPP.
If politicians won’t check these tendencies to attack dissent and diminish freedoms on the part of bureaucrats, an institutional structure is needed to curb it. Australia has none because our spinning-jenny-era constitution doesn’t even comprehend the basic idea of individual rights and governments have refused to pursue a genuinely effective bill of rights. Despite the efforts of a number of groups and good people, Australia also lacks any sort of well-funded civil society institutions that could take advantage of such a civil rights framework. Some thinktanks exist that notionally oppose bureaucratic empire-building, but they can prove fair-weather friends of freedom because of partisanship or the interests of corporate sponsors.
The result, to labour the metaphor, is that we’re being taken down the road to a police state in an autonomous vehicle, and those who could intervene refuse to do so because they have an interest in making sure we get there.
Next: why now?
Some may remember when the conservatives displaced actual defence force personnel from the defence force headquarters in Canberra, and replaced then with bureaucrats, bureaucrats not necessarily burdened with any oath of allegiance to the Crown, and so any commitment to defend the actual people of Australia.
A subtle act of treachery?
Was this the beginning of the unfolding situation described in the article?
Well, Bernard we are becoming a police state in my view. What has alarmed me is that writing dissent about Peter Dutton and his grab for power using legislation rammed through parliament has no chance of public debate is being quelled. I was stunned when Dutton spoke on this a week or so ago where he said that greater police powers to be given under national security included ‘preserving the culture’ of Australia and no one said boo!
I mean think about it, Australia is per capita one of the dumbest — preferentially remaining ignorant, oblivious — in the western world. Meaning ignorant of anything that would begat a deep understanding and daily knowledge of why we are in the world. Worse, we don’t want to know. It is always too damn difficult.
We have mental massaging providing the footie happens throughout the week and/or cricket on the weekends and cooking and “finding true love” shows occupy primetime reality tv, Australians by enlarge are oblivious what is happening beyond our borders. In short, this is the culture of the dumb and stupid. That this culture is what we want preserve to prevent change especially social change should be alarming. This culture ensures that public debate about issues that matter to our national interest is kept obscure on the margins of the mainstream like Crikey. And rather than be mindful of what is going on we are just too happy to hand over our concerns and cede protections to our security services whose agenda is that Australia should be run like a military base.
Dutton’s power grab reminds me of the time when US Airforce General Curtis LeMay the Vice Presidential candidate with Republican Presidential Alabama Governor George Wallace in 1968 stated that the US should be run like a SAC base. General LeMay was in charge of the Strategic Air Command which controlled and still controls the B1, B2 Stealth bombers that fly nuclear weapons across the world as we sleep. It was General LeMay who during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 wanted to nuke Cuba.
Similarly, Dutton has his agenda — an extreme right wing agenda — which he hints at and should Turnbull be rolled as is likely if he loses the next general election, he will gain control of the LNP. In short if ever the LNP became a government again with him in charge, the police state is assured. Anti-dissent will be looked upon as a luxury.
Too far off in the future to worry about? The future comes up faster than we think. Daily immediate gratification which dominates in cultural conversations is no substitute for being informed of what can kill us. Or am I wrong?
Exactly so. You say Turnbull is a barrier to Dutton? Hard to see Turnbull in that light. In any case I agree that Dutton is the anointed one and will roll right over Turnbull. Dutton will be Commissar (whether he is PM or not) and then the saying ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet’ will take on a whole new meaning; these are the good days. I share your frustration regarding the lack of clarity in the mainstream regarding how deeply our way of life is being altered to our detriment.
I wish that I could think of something useful to suggest but, apart from air strikes on the Hole under the Hill, I can’t.
As BK, an ex civil servant, has pointed out passim, bureaucrats breed and swarm.
When any agglomeration reaches a certain size, an increasing proportion of its energy goes to perpetuating the entity rather than serving the function for which it was created.
Yes indeed. We are looking at it now.
The ABC has been under attack since its inception, by the Murdoch family hypocritical evil proselytizers of the free market and competition!
Keith Murdoch, father of Rupert, was a newspaper proprietor with interests in several commercial radio stations.
When, by 1936, the ABC had begun to develop an independent news service, Murdoch was greatly displeased.
His newspapers demanded a reduction in the ABC’s income from licence fees so that it would, in Inglis’ summary, ”stop competing improperly with private enterprise”.
Keith Murdoch and other newspaper owners insisted that the ABC be restricted to no more than 200 words a day of overseas news, and limited its presentation of news bulletins to five minutes in the evening – but not before 7.50pm, by which time it was thought people would have finished reading their newspapers.
In an early show of defiance, the vice-chairman of the ABC, Herbert Brookes – a leading conservative and son-in-law of Alfred Deakin, Australia’s second prime minister – attacked Murdoch for his self-interest and his attempts to cripple the ABC’s news service, as well as his ”conspiracy of silence” about the success of the ABC.
Private commercial interests were not the only enemies. At its inception and for many years later, the ABC was the responsibility of the Postmaster-General’s department.
A politician to hold the office of Postmaster-General in 1938 was a South Australian Country Party man with a military background, A.G.Cameron.
When the chairman of the [ABC] commission and two of its members first met him, Cameron did not mince his words:
”’I know nothing about broadcasting. I’m not interested in it. If I had my way I would stop all broadcasting. No time for these mechanical things. Don’t know anything about music. As for people who give talks and commentaries over the air, if I had my way I would poison the blank blanks – would bring them under the Vermin Act.”
Thanks for that Cameron quote – scary as.
The ABC has been under attack since its inception, by the Murdoch family hypocritical evil proselytizers of the free market and competition!
In 1936, the ABC ha begun to develop an independent news service, Murdoch was greatly displeased.
His newspapers demanded a reduction in the ABC’s income from licence fees so that it would, in Inglis’ summary, ”stop competing improperly with private enterprise”.
Keith Murdoch and other newspaper owners insisted that the ABC be restricted to no more than 200 words a day of overseas news, and limited its presentation of news bulletins to five minutes in the evening – but not before 7.50pm, by which time it was thought people would have finished reading their newspapers.
In an early show of defiance, the vice-chairman of the ABC, Herbert Brookes – a leading conservative and son-in-law of Alfred Deakin, Australia’s second prime minister – attacked Murdoch for his self-interest and his attempts to cripple the ABC’s news service, as well as his ”conspiracy of silence” about the success of the ABC.