Queensland MP Graham Perrett has finally broken federal Labor’s stolid silence on the government’s persecution and harassment of Witness K and Bernard Collaery, labelling the Howard government’s bugging of the Timor-Leste cabinet room a “dog act” and lauding K and Collaery for revealing it
Perrett rose in the House of Reps adjournment debate on Wednesday night to condemn the Howard government’s spying, its diversion of precious counter-terrorism resources to do it, the restraints on parliament’s intelligence committee to investigate it, and the current government’s attempt to keep K and Collaery quiet.
“We would never have known about this dog act if not for the valiant ASIS officer now known as Witness K,” Perrett said. “Witness K tried to do the right thing. Witness K obtained permission to talk to an approved lawyer. Witness K and that lawyer, Bernard Collaery, are now both on trial. These are trials the Morrison government wants to hold in secret. What message does this trumped-up harassment send to whistleblowers? Shut up or else.
“I asked the Attorney-General, ‘What possible purpose is there in pursuing these prosecutions if not to send a message to future whistleblowers?’ Sometimes standing up and speaking out is just the right thing to do, but this coalition government doesn’t like it.”
Perrett is only the second Labor MP anywhere, after NSW MP Paul Lynch, to depart from Labor’s policy of refusing to say anything about either the prosecution of K and Collaery or Attorney-General Christian Porter’s interference in the case.
Kudos to him: at least someone in the major parties has finally found their voice on the greatest Australian political scandal in decades.
Hallelujah. FInally we have a Labor politician ready to deal with this sort of LNP disgraceful act and bring it into the open. Normally, you have to be a reader of Crikey or the Guardian to know anything of this appalling example of totalitarianism from the most utterly appalling government this country has ever seen. A dead fish rots from the head and the stench of Morrison and his determination to advance his personal power-crazed agenda is overwhelming. I suppose that this is a good thing in one sense, and that is the true character of the LNP government is on rich and glorious display, virtually on a weekly basis. Even allowing for that, I am fearful the next election is too far away for comfort and the capacity of the LNP’s supporters to rationalise the incompetence, corruption and secrecy of this government is boundless, so I would not rule out that Morrison could still be re-elected in 2022. My wife is an intelligent woman and an LNP diehard and whilst she is seeing some of the utterly vile behaviours of the LNP and Morrison in particular and has concerns, she still thinks Labor would be worse! Moreover, even if the Nationals are deserted by the bush, the votes will go to the Liberals or to independents. We really should have major concerns about where this country is going and how many of us are either comfortable with the lies being spouted, or still think the Liberals are the better economic managers and the party who can lead this country forward. The reality is that this country is only moulding itself to Morrison’s perverted image of the Australia he wants – an Australia that gives him the unbridled veneration he thinks he deserves and that God wants him to have. He doesn’t care if he alienates a large chunk of Australians, in fact he welcomes the growth of rampant tribalism, as long as his “cult” of quiet Australians is the bigger group.
whew
Whew! I hope you feel better after writing all that because I sure loved reading it. Could not have said it better myself.
Labor has taken too long to separate itself from the fingerprints Gillard left all over Collaery’s case.
Perrett’s statements are welcome in finally speaking some sense from Labor benches.
This comes after years of disgraceful silence in which Labor left the heavy lifting to the cross benches. Bless the Members who did that job!
OK, the next step is for Morrison and Porter to be isolated in their support for this monstrous scandal. They need to be the casualties for their misjudgements.
The prosecutions of K and Collaery are unconscionable and must be withdrawn. (We will never be told what that costs us, just as we were denied the settlement details for Dr Haneef. How can it be that we who pay can be denied knowledge of the price?)
And the step after that is for the real culprits to be prosecuted and they are Howard, Downer and Brandis, those who ordered the illegal bugging and took benefits from its outcomes to our national shame.
Labour has taken even longer to ‘separate itself from the fingerprints Gillard left all over Julian Assange’s case!’
Let this Perrett properly recognise the most disgraceful of all treatments, and then I might consider what he has to say.
Otherwise, forgetabardit.
BTW, the ABC has finally lifted their blackout on the National Press Club address, on Tuesday, by the Wikileaks Editor – in- Chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson, and made it available at iView, this morning.
A tour de force from a fair dinkum journalist.
David,
I’m not sure it helps deal with Collaery or K to put them in the same column as Assange. Though you and I see the similarities, the differences just muddy the waters on this matter.
There’s a nice report on Hrafnsson’s address here:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/dec/03/us-bid-to-extradite-julian-assange-akin-to-forced-rendition-wikileaks-editor-says.
Nah, CEO, completely disagree – Assange has been differentiated for far too long, with all sorts of ‘commentators’ DISINFORMING anyone within earshot, so as to demonise by design, and distract from the egregious treatment he has received for nigh on 10 years.
The abuses of human rights, international law, the rule of law, and legal process are legion.
As for Katherine Murphy’s ‘nice report’, spare me. I read it yesterday, and that was after I’d seen the address replayed on Tuesday night (not on the ABC; on Murdoch’s ‘Sky News Extra’!! ).
Ergo, when I read Murphy’s ‘nice report’, I’d already seen to 2 part question she put to Hrafnsson, and how he despatched it.
Her part B was about ‘influencing’ the election, in favour of Trump, by publishing the DNC emails, and, in effect, whether there were any regrets.
I’ve seen a fair bit of Hrafnsson, and he’s a calm fella. He was almost aghast that a journalist would ask it.
What Murphy doesn’t mention, among a lot she doesn’t mention, was the killer line from Hrafnsson to show he was not only involved in the decision to publish the emails, but was completely committed to it.
He said to Murphy that he had discussed it with Assange, and that “if we had have withheld…….journalistic crime………….I would have left the organisation..”.
Masterful.
100 percent agree with both your posts DT.
Finally another Labor MP has spoken out. My letters to Dreyfus and my local member, Tanya Plibersek, on this issue remain unanswered.
I’ve only sent two or three emails to my Labor MP since he was elected in 2016. Response? Even the crickets were silent. No doubt he’s quietly working for us.
Oz appears to have a great many secrets currently ie: Witness J, Witness K, Bernard Collaery, Medevac deal/no deal with Lambie with ‘national security implications’ – this is a country I never countenanced & no longer recognise.
We have allowed our representatives to pass police state legislation inder the guise of keeping us ‘safe’. Safe from what precisely? I have never been more fearful.
And congratulations to Perrett for having a backbone, something increasingly rare in the House of Reps on the opposition benches. What is Labor afraid of, they have nothing to lose – that’s already occurred in May.
“Safe from what precisely?”
Pedos and terrorists of course. Just mention those two words and there’s a slack jawed Pavlovian reaction rendering critical thought impossible. Happens on Crikey at select times too. Fortunately not in this case where it’s hard to shoehorn P’s and T’s into the story.
Thank you Graham Perrett! Someone who has some guts to stand up for what is the most horrific case anyone could imagine in this country. I wrote to Bill Shorten when he was Labor leader on this subject and my letter was not acknowledged. Labor is letting all this go on and not a word has been spoken except from this man. Does the electorate really think this case is ok? I despair if that is the case.
I wrote to Gillard and, after she was gone, Shorten, Plibersek, Dreyfus, and about half a dozen others in the ALP, about Assange and, similarly, not one single reply.
The only ‘representatives of the people’ who ever deigned to reply were Andrew Wilkie and Scott Ludlam.
I was silly enough to think those ‘labour’ representatives might consider the welfare of an Australian citizen, who had been (and coniinues to be) railroaded by 3 Western ‘liberal democratic’ governments, ahead of maintaining their ‘official passes’ through the backdoor of the US Embassy.
Any last vestiges of that silliness were wiped away by reading Brian Toohey’s; “Secret: The Making of Australia’s Security State”.
That book should be compulsory reading for every man, woman and child.
I wrote to Gillard too. And I got a response from then A-G Robert McClelland. I wish I had kept it as it was one of those missives that Don Watson has mocked so effectively – though Lewis Carroll also wrote about the same problem, more than a century earlier: Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter’s remark seemed to her to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English.
Andrew Wilkie deserves a shout-out for using parliamentary privilege to bring the secrecy surrounding this case to public attention.
And it is well past time we heard from the ALP on this matter.
Andrew Wilkie deserves the Order of Australia, for services to the integrity and safety of the Australian people.
He bravely stood up to Howard and his Weapons of mass destruction imaginings and was on the receiving end of the same abuse of power as is now being focused on Witness K and Bernard Collaery.
These exercises of abuse of power and intimidation need to stop.