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December 22, 2010
In a post on the ABC's Unleashed entitled Life in the WikiLeaks twilight zone Russell Trood, the Liberal Senator from Queensland and Deputy Chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee, launches an attack on Wikileaks. He says:
perhaps what is most objectionable about the whole affair is the suggestion that Assange and WikiLeaks represent the triumph of pure democracy. At best the WikiLeaks philosophy is grounded in a naive conviction that complete transparency at every level will result in better government. At worst, it represents an anarchistic desire to hobble the institutions of liberal democracy. That it comes dressed up in the sort of sanctimonious anti-American, anti-capitalist rhetoric one might generally expect from first year arts students, washed up flower children and parliamentary members of the Australian Greens, merely adds insult to injury.
This is quite rich coming from a member of the political class in a liberal democracy whose background leaking to the media is standard operating procedure. It is also offensive, given the way that Australia, as a national security state after 9/11 is becoming a surveillance state in the context of the hysteria about Muslims (Islamophobia), the fixation on the supposed spread of Muslim influence in Australia and the frame of an apocalyptic clash of civilizations.
This is a state that endeavours to hide everything it does behind a wall of secrecy while simultaneously spinning and lying to citizens about its activities (eg., the Iraq war) as well as putting in place a system of monitoring, invading and collecting files on ordinary citizens suspected of no wrongdoing. This is a state that sees terrorism everywhere.
Trood says:
Ironically, by attempting to impose transparency by force, WikiLeaks has probably set back the cause of open government by at least 10 years, and the cause of international diplomacy even further. Frank, fearless and candid diplomacy may be only an ideal, but it is one worth pursuing as a precondition for mutual understanding and respect between nations. It is also likely to be the first casualty of the inevitable crackdown on information sharing between governments.
So how does accountability of liberal democratic Australia government work given the above actions and deceptions of the national security state premised on the protection of secrecy in governments? Exactly how is the national security state in the process of becoming an open government?
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Surely that bloke didn't give a even moment's thought to what he was writing!
Ah... if you've done nothing wrong, then you should have nothing to hide.
I've heard all manner of politicians and bureaucrats using that line of argument for years! So what do THEY have to hide. And why?