As far as most reasonable people are concerned, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck & walks like a duck, there’s a pretty good chance it’s a duck (‘Committee recommends (marginally) reining in new security laws – but media still face jail’, various newspapers, 17 Sept 2014).
That our spymasters & their corrupt political enablers want our spooks to be able to break the law with impunity is surely beyond the pale. To compound the affront, these same agents of totalitarianism would render journalists accessories to such crimes, by making it illegal to report them.
Whilst Australians might be desperate to trust their political leaders & those who would allegedly keep us safe is one thing but it doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to figure out that the day the fox is put in charge of the henhouse, it won’t be long before we’ll be right out of the chicken business.
If the cynical manipulation of public opinion by the Abbott government in recent days hasn’t convinced Australians of the dangers of allowing our intelligence agencies to become a law unto themselves, then maybe they should reflect on the level of criminal abuse already being visited on our so-called democracy by those we entrust with its defence?
Whether it’s the scandalous attempts to cover-up our government’s illegal spying activities against the government of East Timor, arguably conducted to corruptly enrich private sector interests, gross abuses of human rights, the criminal activities condoned by the leadership of our central bank or any of the other 1500 high level matters deemed too ‘sensitive’ for the Australian people to know about & concealed by ‘superinjunctions’ imposed by the Victorian Supreme Court over the past five years (almost one a day), surely we shouldn’t need convincing.
The successful passage of the legislation containing the benignly termed ‘national security reforms’ will surely transform Australia’s status as a liberal democracy to that in name only, whilst we will have become true ‘sheeple’.
– John Richardson, CLA member, Wallagoot NSW
Ahem my friend brilliantly written and composed lovely to see other Australians don’t believe the hype and bullshit we are being thrust daily.