We’re shallow, here in Australia. There are only 25 million of us, our media is thin, our academia poor due to relentless funding cuts, our lawyers mercenary, we have few potent civil society groups and few rights protections. Here, the powerful can act with a freedom and lack of scrutiny that the influential in other countries could only envy. Threaten that power or lack of scrutiny, however, and they’ll do whatever it takes to shut you down.
That shallowness is also why much — probably most — of the commentary, complaints and advocacy around the AFP’s raids last week missed the point — especially the demands for special protections for the media. The real story about the raids is how power is used in Australia by vested interests — in this case, the security services and their political masters — for their own benefit. Any rational assessment of what happened must start from the basis that that group — security officials, like Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo, Defence Secretary Greg Moriarty, Peter Dutton, the AFP itself — is not some disinterested group pursuing what it sees as the national interest, but a vested interest that is particularly well placed to manipulate the system of power in Australia for its own purposes — those purposes being to protect itself from scrutiny and subject anyone who threatens that to exemplary punishment. If the security establishment was ever about the national interest, it has long since turned into something far more self-serving, like an immune system that eventually starts attacking its host.
In demanding a special set of protections for the media, as the likes of Peter Greste have done, the media simply reinforces this exploitation of the system. One elite — the media — is asking another part of the elite — security officials — to be given power — in this case, the power that comes with being protected from the kinds of displays that the AFP engaged in. But that’s the way power works in Australia, and all the more so in recent decades under neoliberalism: vested interests use money, influence, intimidation, or all three, to manipulate our system of government to get what they want. From that point of view, there’s no difference between the big banks spending billions on donations to the Liberal Party to make laws for them, and treating the regulator as a joke and litigating it to a standstill, and bureaucrats like Pezzullo and Moriarty using their power to call in the coppers because they were embarrassed. It’s the way power is used in Australia.
And if you question that power, or try to disrupt it or expose it to scrutiny, the response can be shocking. Ask Witness K and Bernard Collaery, whom Christian Porter — another security official, albeit a wet-behind-the-ears one — is trying to railroad in a secret trial with secret documents and gag orders to prevent his victims from talking about what he’s doing. Or ATO whistleblower Richard Boyle, facing 160 years in prison, or defence whistleblower David McBride, the target of another of Porter’s gag orders. Or Annika Smethurst, subjected to the deliberate humiliation, designed to intimidate her and others, of having AFP goons spend hours in her house.
There is a malicious aggression on display here, the fuck-you mentality of the powerful who resent any questioning. You can see it every time time Peter Dutton opens his mouth, or whenever Mike Pezzullo fronts a Senate inquiry to be asked about the latest of dozens of screw-ups by his sublimely inept department, a hostility directed toward anyone who might criticise him — journalists (“bottom feeder” was how Pezzullo once described Fairfax’s Noel Towell), NGOs, the ANAO — anyone with the temerity to fail to defer to the security establishment. You could see it on display in the truculence of the AFP’s Neil Gaughan last week, determinedly threatening to use an old law to prosecute journalists. Powerful men, infuriated by scrutiny and embarrassment, out for blood, railing at anyone who might threaten them, eager to make an example of someone.
How apt that the AFP made a point of going through the most private possessions of a young female journalist, to illustrate how much control they can exercise over a woman who had failed to be sufficiently deferential to middle-aged white men. Wait, you think that’s going too far? Look at the aggression and vindictiveness on national display here, and the people wielding this power, and the people who have handed them that power over the last six years and for that matter sixteen years — middle-aged white men — and see if you can declare hand on heart that none of this has anything to do with the licence that Australia still gives to the aggression of influential males.
This is how power works in Australia. You threaten the powerful at your peril. Thinking this is just about freedom of the press is messing about at the margins of something far deeper and darker.
Yep. Those same vested interests are why the Meeja seem unable to give a half decent explanation regarding action on climate change and why we have seen the single worst Government in modern Australian history returned to power. If you think the news rooms of the telly stations and the senior management of newspapers are not part of the problem then you need to have a closer look.
Oh and you can drop the gender and ageist comments…we have more than enough evidence that a vast amount of young people, including women have been sold the neo liberal lie. The IPA has a veritable factory of young 20- something right wing shills being polished up for Liberal party pre-selection.
Yes, but we need to recognise something special here too. You might be right about the ranking of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government now that competitors like the Billy McMahon and Howard governments seem overtaken with the Trump inspired strategy of turning limited monarchical governments into absolute ruling powers.
The real threat is that parliamentary and fourth estate accountability is now being suppressed with all government matters that might be linked by government itself to national security fitting into Morrison’s “on water matters” model. Not for nothing was one of the moves to report boat turn backs threatened with possible legal action.
Most frightening is the refusal of Dutton to identify himself as the possible at least of the legal suppression policy but at least the one signing off on every Pazzulo referral to the AFP. Of course Paluzzo would not dare to act without Dutton’s approval. What matters is not the independence shown by the AFP in the creative timing and style of its raids-I can see the fierce denial that humiliation of a female journalist had nothing to do with thorough searches for USB sticks or such like, which might well be concealed in underwear-but the fact that they are ready to act on any bit of wartime legislation that parliament forgot to repeal to suppress exposure of government stuff ups and, most worryingly, abuses of power.
While Trump seeks his imperial Presidency the Coalition mob seek to emulate Henry VIII.
Yes – Julia Gillard anyone ??!!??
If the press truly cared, they would screaming for real whistleblower protections!
Perhaps Melania could lend them that $59 coat she wore when embarking on some “caring mission”?
The problem is that the media is ” hand in pocket” with the Federal govt..
After the absolute debacle before the election, its very clear that Alan Jones is just another toady that thinks that if he gives the likes of Abbott et al, all the back scratching & schmoozing that he thinks is necessary, (he makes my stomach churn) he’s got some bizarre idea that he can influence how Australians vote..
In this regard the AEC needs to be able to fine him, ( a huge amount so that he gets what this is all about) as really he shouldn’t be able to make threats in respect of who gets voted in, (also who doesn’t) he holds way too much power & this needs to be diluted or limited so that he loses this influence over people who may not necessarily understand the machinations of how the political/media system or beast really works….
And yet, oddly, he was absolutely excoriating on Tuesday morning after his 7.15 editorial of, not just the current schemozzle masquerading as a government, but the Sainted Rodent over his treatment of the Sydney airport Customs W/B and that is ancient history.
Go figure, as they don’t say in the classics.
LOL was in the car with a mate this and heard that Jones sesh…he is infuriating, just when you think he’s irredeemably beyond the pale he says something that makes sense.
Worth a listen also for the interview, I had forgotten how Labor totally screwed that guy (Albo, no less). And that was a legit national security whistle blow, from memory. Mascot got a total security make over from Howard afterwards.
https://www.2gb.com/former-whistleblower-calls-out-labor-hypocrisy-after-abc-raids/
Hypocrisy flying everywhere over all this. From all parties, all insiders, all media…who’d be a whistle blower.
Thanks for nailing your colours Bernard, not easy when you are in the front line of Canberra.
2nded. & OMG thankyou for saying it. If we don’t say this now we will lose any chance to live in a sane & decent world. Is there really a choice? or just leaders followed by others reaching the same conclusions- we stand and fall as one, or we say yes to being picked off & stolen from one by one by cabals of arseholes
Dear Bernard, I object to the terminology you use to describe AFP officers carrying out their duties. You can of course object to the fact that the search warrant was granted and executed, or that a forensic search was part of that process, but these were just officers doing the job they are assigned. They neither sought the particular complaint they are investigating, nor (I believe) setting out as police officers to do any more or less than a professional investigation. It may be fascinating to those who are unfamiliar with the execution of search warrants that such a particular examination is undertaken, however, it’s very common. Police know that a search warrant is likely to issued only once and that a thorough search is needed to ensure evidence is not missed, as you are very unlikely to get a judge to authorise a second visit without strong grounds (“Oh, we forgot to look there!” Do not constitute such grounds). Rail against the making of the complaint in the first instance by all means, but once made the officers concerned are required to make a professional and thorough investigation of the matter. To call them ‘goons’ is to besmirch people for simply doing their job, one required by the oath they took.
It is to be hoped that the coppers who went through Ms Smethurst’s drawers (looking for briefs?) were females, although I only saw men on the TV footage outside her Kingston apartment, which was easily identifiable for any denizens of Canberra’s inner south.
Well some say apparently some frilly things went missing. There must have been a snarf amongst the searchers.
Perhaps so Richard, but I wonder if any if those innocent officers just going about their job would have the courage to blow the whistle to an investigative journalist if they felt a tinge of remorse, or felt they should reveal where the orders came from if the politicians involved continue to lie and obfuscate….
Taking the Dutton line in this post. See his “debate” with Albanese on Nine Network’s Today. Shoals of red herrings.
Dutton vs Emerson (Lateline some years ago) – backed into a corner “Potato blight” sneered about Emerson’s “closeness to Gillard”….. the grub’s a politican.
Exactly so Richard and highlights the moral dilemma that those who serve may find they have to face. As Lieutenant General (Retired) John Caligari said in evidence to a Senate enquiry “there is no such thing as Informed Consent in the ADF.”
Fairmind in a contribution queries what prospects any of those involved would have should they choose to ‘whistleblow’ on those who initiated the orders to be followed which takes us back to the point Bernard is making with clarity, there is no current way to hold those responsible to account, an election doesn’t license every action a Govt, a Minister or an official may make. There has to be Law administered by an independent judiciary and currently the law is lacking.
This is exactly the line that Uber goon Jim Molan took on RN last Sunday.
Beloved of the Border Force troglodytes, On Water Matters Jim has taken many an oath, for what it’s worth.
Molan was the back-room “Sod the boarders” architect with Abbott and Morrison.
I seem to recall another group of uniformed thugs who tried the defence of “just following orders” – can’t quite remember whether it worked out well for them.
That is the excuse of lackeys from time out of mind the world over – the Evil of Banality.
Sorry mate. The social contract which keeps the lumpens restrained relies on a certain restraint on the part of the authorities.
Bernard was entirely correct to use those terms. Adults are expected to take responsibility for their choices. Certainly the police are eager to lecture us on that point. Agreed, we are not yet the United States, where “officers doing the job they are assigned” is taken to mean permitting them to gun down a thousand non-threatening civilians a year.
Obviously the raid was all about intimidation. After all, the law itself is all about intimidation.
Annika Smethurst will probably find that her name now appears on all sorts of watch lists, plus facial recognition surveillance. If she has dual nationality, Border Generalissimo-MP dutton might be considering stripping her of her Australian citizenship, citing national security concerns, which Richard would presumably take at face value.