Submitted by Dr. Binoy Kampmark
Australian society relishes secrecy and surveillance. Forget the laid-back, relaxed demeanour that remains the great fiction of a confected identity; like all such creations, the trace should not be mistaken as the tendency. The political culture of Australia remains shaped by penal paranoia and an indifference to transparency. The citizen is not to be trusted; rather, the subject is to be policed and regulated into apathetic submission.
The statute books of the federal parliament are larded with provisions of secrecy that make doing credible journalism in the country nigh impossible. Journalists are left to their own devices, inventive as these might be, assisted by the odd prized leak.
The Australian Federal Police raids executed last month on the home of a News Corp journalist and the Sydney headquarters of the ABC had, for the clandestine community operating in the capitals of Australia, a surprise. A usually divided fraternity came together in one voice, attempting to challenge the warrants and seek reform on matters related to press freedoms.
Media organisations would like to see parliament perform its functions, namely in the field of passing legislation that would enhance Freedom of Information provisions, arm press outlets with the means to contest warrants aimed at journalists, furnish whistleblowers with credible protections, and tilt the balance away from the national security grand inquisitor that seems to prevail in Canberra.
Understanding Canberra and the public service, however, is to understand a form of studied stasis, an effort to stymy change. Ideas tend to go there to find cold storage if not expire altogether. The way to keep them in cold storage and throw away the key is to set up an inquiry, with all the baubles and tinsels of cheap accountability.
This is the preferred approach of the Morrison government, knowing that such an inquiry will be guaranteed to kill off any reform drive. (Four months should do it: the inquiry is due to report on October 17.) In his letter to the opposition leader Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister Scott Morrison informed is counterpart that, “The Government is committed to ensuring our democracy strikes the right balance between a free press and keeping Australians safe – two fundamental tenets of our democracy.”
Knowing the hostility this government, and its predecessors, have had to the only press freedom that matters – exposing abuses of state and corporate power – the limitations have already been inked.
One way of ensuring a smidgen of reform, if at all, is to use the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS), a body of approved politicians who can be trusted to do the right thing by secrecy and security. Independents are excluded; contrarians are barred. Morrison claims the PJCIS is “well placed to conduct this inquiry given its responsibility for, and experience in, handling issues concerning national security information and legislation”. Whatever qualifications the sitting members will have, their most valued pre-requisite is the capacity for premature adjudication of the problem, adjusted to satisfy the security apologists.
Andrew Wilkie, the independent MP more qualified than most to sit on the committee, makes the point starkly. “The Labor and Liberal-dominated PJCIS is part of the problem because it’s signed off on every unnecessary security reform in recent history.”
To permit the committee the means and latitude to decide that balance on press freedom and security would be the equivalent of granting full powers of determination to a taxidermist over your favourite pet. Denis Muller sees this as foxes guarding henhouses or poachers overseeing game-keeping.
The PJCIS has been one of the most important entities behind approving the shabby Australian national security state, a clumsy creation that does nothing to improve security let alone preserve freedoms. Its members are terrified by technology and the Internet, and see any effort to restrain their reach as necessary to protect Australians.
Wilkie reminds us of the dubious resume of the PJCIS. “Who could forget the controversial data retention bill of 2015 and just last year the encryption bill? In both cases the PJCIS recommended some tweaks around the edges, but… recommended the bills be passed, despite the serious concerns about both.” While the European Union makes strides against such inefficient and dangerous policies as data retention, Australian governments embrace them with a relish for anachronism.
The inquiry hopes to assess, in part, “Whether and in what circumstances there could be contested hearings in relation to warrants authorising investigative action in relation to journalists and media organisations; (and) the appropriateness of thresholds of law enforcement for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to access electronic data on devices used by … media organisations.” A full agenda for reform is guaranteed to be avoided.
Labor, in turn, is trying to shore up its poor parliamentary performance of late in attempting to set up a second, separate inquiry free of the clutches of the PJCIS. That inquiry makes explicit reference to the “public’s right to know and press freedom”. Senator Kristina Keneally, shadow minister for home affairs, notes a prevailing “culture of secrecy and perverting the public’s right to know that has been making its way through this government for too long.” In unwittingly casting such stones in the glass house, she ignores the record of previous Labor governments with similar leanings towards the national security state.
The parliamentary committee has its defenders in the Canberra set, relieved that the matter will be contained. Jacinta Carroll, as director of national security policy at the National Security College at ANU, can be relied upon to sing the appropriate, pro-secrecy tune. “The PJCIS is the appropriate body to undertake this review, as it’s made up of elected representatives of the people in Australia, and it’s also an established and expert body in the matter at hand.” Any praise for such committees should be met with scepticism, and her willingness to accept the supposedly useful function it performs suggests capitulation rather than engagement.
Carroll’s they-know-best tone is schoolmarmish and characterises the befuddlement of the security hacks. She accepts, in tokenistic fashion, that, “A functioning and vibrant democracy is characterised by engaged civil society and informed debate.” As Australian democracy is not vibrant, and lacks oxygen for a civil society struggling to fend off the regulators and spooks, her observation has little bearing on reality.
Given all that, she still insists, as the inquiry takes place, that all “maintain the focus on being informed about the complexities, nuances and competing interests at play, and not be lured into an oversimplified debate.” Read: let bought parliamentarians seduced by national security briefs and their promoters dictate the balance. The parents know best.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
The increasing desperation to control through authoritarian/police state mechanisms is the product of fear. And they have cause to be afraid. Situations of conflict harden attitudes (and state policies). But these conflicts are the product of Western bloc aggressive and globally expanding militarism. The staged application of successive wars of aggression obscure understanding of what is more broadly unfolding. In time when the many wars progress to more advanced stages (as is gradually occurring), there shall be broad recognition that the many wars are developing into one.
The Australians are welcome to follow their allies into increasingly aggressive and authoritarian policies and actions as such behaviour will soon become irrelevant. Illegal mass surveillance architecture, the persecution of whistleblowers (such as Julian Assange) as a warning to others, actions of collective punishment through economic strangulation (qualifying as genocide in the case of sanctions against Iraq), the impoverishment of perceived strategic adversaries, the effective destruction of successive nations (involving fabricated intelligence to manufacture a pretext for offensive military actions/a casus belli and/or proxy warfare operations), etc., will be insignificant in comparison to likely approaching events. Indeed, forms of warfare against the Russian Federation, Iran, the DPRK, China, Venezuela, etc. are active and will in time intensify such is the logic of those who seek global primacy and the subjugation of others through aggressive mechanisms.
Hybrid/unconventional/irregular warfare involving economic strangulation/economic warfare, proxy warfare, sabotage operations, cyber warfare, etc. precede kinetic stages of conflict (despite efforts by parties to prevent this outcome, escalation is the logical progression of conflict while U.S.-NATO-allied bloc actions and policies remain confrontational).
– “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe” [A. Einstein].
If I am wrong the Australian authorities have little to fear. If I am correct, they will have cause for concern. I am comfortable and confident I am correct.
The greatest threat to many are the consequences of their own actions. This concept shall become very clear to the Australian authorities in time. Indeed, at the logical conclusion of unfolding developments (recognising atomic warfare and total warfare were features of the previous world war), many from the U.S.-NATO-allied bloc who may survive the likely approaching horror would only do so to envy the dead, such would be the level of retribution and demand for justice. If this occurs (and it is likely only a matter of time), after such a horror it should be self-evident the hunters will become the hunted.
References: – “The US military-intelligence complex is engaged in systematic preparations for World War III. As far as the Pentagon is concerned, a military conflict with China and/or Russia is inevitable, and this prospect has become the driving force of its tactical and strategic planning…. Each of the hearings presumed a major US conflict with another great power (sometimes unnamed, sometimes explicitly designated as China or Russia) within a relatively short time frame, years rather than decades.” (Washington prepares for World War III, WSWS, 5 November 2015)
– Report: One Click Closer to Annihilation, by Philip Giraldi (a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer), October 2, 2018: [Excerpt] “Last week Washington threatened Iran, Syria, China, Venezuela and Russia…… The nuclear war doomsday clock maintained on the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists website has advanced to two minutes before midnight, the closest point to possible atomic apocalypse since the end of the Cold War. In 1995 the clock was at fourteen minutes to midnight, but the opportunity to set it back even further was lost as the United States and its European allies took advantage of a weakened Russia to advance NATO into Eastern Europe, setting the stage for a new cold war, which is now underway.
It is difficult to imagine how the United States might avoid a new war in the Middle East given the recent statements that have come out of Washington….. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators, who were carefully briefed on what to think by the Israeli government, warned after a trip to the Middle East that war between the United States and Iranian proxies is “imminent.”….. America is in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan to stay while nearly all agree a war with Iran is coming soon. Everyone is the enemy and everyone hates the United States, mostly for good reasons.” [End] (See also: The Path to World War III, by Philip Giraldi, 25/09/2018),
– “if data on Russia-NATO power balance at the Western direction is analyzed, as well as military activity build-up rate at our borders, scale of combat equipment deployment, if the grade of Russia’s demonization is estimated, one can say that preparation to a real war is taking place. [Such] acts are usually undertaken at the forefront of a war [and it is evident] the US is preparing for a [potential] nuclear conflict……” [Colonel General Leonid Ivashov, President of the International Centre of Geopolitical Analysis]
– “We know what will happen year after year, and they know that we know… Russia will no longer play games with the USA and get involved in deals in the dark. Russia is ready for serious negotiations, only if they contribute to collective security. All aspects of global security now lie in ruins. There are no more international guarantees for security and the country responsible for the destruction of the global security is the USA. Russia does not intend to reform the world according to its own views, and will not allow itself to be reformed according to foreign views. Russia will not close itself for the world, but anyone who tries to close it to the world will harvest storms. Russia will not act as the savior of the world either, as in the past. Russia does not want war and does not intend to start a war. But today, Russia can see that the explosion of a global war is almost unavoidable and is prepared and will continue preparing. Russia does not want a war but is not afraid of a war. Those who get Russia involved in this process will learn the real meaning of pain”. [Vladimir Putin] (At the Threshold of a Third World War, Southfront, 12/09/2016), etc…..
The logic of those who seek global primacy (‘full spectrum dominance’/world domination) is to expand global military architecture, weaken/partition strategic opponents and engineer client states. Following successive wars of aggression (against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc. conducted under pretexts that involved the manufacture of a casus belli to facilitate planned military ‘intervention’), confrontation with Iran, Venezuela, the DPRK, Russia, China, etc., is gradually progressing to more advanced stages. Brinkmanship is evident and limits of restraint are being approached. As the U.S.-NATO-allied bloc continues in the direction of confrontation (including the build-up/deployment of military forces and missile architecture that at a certain stage will necessitate a more robust response from Russia and China), in time these limits will likely be exceeded.
Related information: – “[NATO is] a tripwire that could lead to World War 3….. [Gorbachev] tried to negotiate with the West…… an understanding was reached [that] the NATO alliance would not expand eastward. That promise was not kept. Instead, the lobbyists, both foreign and domestic, went into overdrive in a campaign to extend NATO to the very gates of Moscow. (NATO: Worse Than ‘Obsolete’, April 01, 2016)
– “the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the [Ukraine] crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West [EU (economic) and NATO (military) bloc]… Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement…” (Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault, Foreign Affairs, 20/08/2014)
– “NATO should’ve been buried at the end of the cold war: instead, the NATO-crats went on the offensive – breaching the understanding reached by Western leaders with then Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev – and expanded into most of eastern Europe….. The seeds of World War III are being planted…” (Our Cold War With Russia Could Turn Hot, by Justin Raimondo, September 03, 2014)
– “Apparently they [US and EU officials] have dedicated themselves, and continue to do so, to deeply and thoroughly studying the doctrine of Dr. Goebbels. . . They present everything backwards from reality. It is one of the formulas which Nazi propaganda employed most successfully: . . . They accuse the party that is defending itself, of aggression. What is happening in Ukraine and Syria is a project of the West, a new type of war: … wars today begin with psychological and information warfare operations. . . under the cover of information commotion, U.S. ships are entering the Black Sea, that is, near Ukraine. They are sending marines, and they have also begun to deploy more tanks in Europe. . . We see that on the heels of the disinformation operation a land-sea, and possibly air operation is being prepared.” (Russian General [Leonid Ivashov]: ‘We Are At War’, February 22, 2014)
– “The U.S. and NATO are preparing Ukraine [integrated into NATO standards subsequent to a U.S.-NATO sponsored coup that installed aligned political assets] for a local war with Russia” (If a Russia-Ukraine War Breaks Out Over Sea of Azov It Will Make War in Syria Look Like a Tea Party, Lyle J. Goldstein, 25/10/2018)
– “According to a report in China Military Online, escalations between the two superpowers will lead to the inevitable. “The problem is not whether the war will break out, but when,” the report said.” (New Arms Race: China, US Prepare for Missile Warfare, Sputnik, 24/08/2016)
The U.S.-NATO-Israel-allied bloc is intensifying actions against Iran. Indeed, a broader conflagration in the Middle East is approaching as Israel continues its military aggressions and land theft in the region inviting an eventual military response from its adversaries (reports reveal such preparations are in advanced stages).
Importantly, the U.S.-NATO bloc expansion project (replicating the former Soviet economic/military bloc model but in opposition to the Russian Federation) is progressing towards a direct kinetic stage of conflict with the Russian Federation (the U.S.-NATO coup installed Ukrainian regime is escalating provocations and preparing major offensive operations against ethnic Russians in the Donbass while the build-up of military/missile architecture indicates pre-war preparations). The U.S. is increasing military and political ties with Taiwan (including the planned staged development of missile architecture and close proximity fast strike capabilities through proxies acting as integrated military projection platforms) towards the objective of partition (which would trigger war with China [as outlined in the Anti-Secession Law]). War against Iran is progressing towards a direct kinetic stage of conflict. Expanding U.S. demands against the DPRK will also likely lead to an eventual war.
There are also various other conflicts that constitute tripwires for a broader conflagration (Cyprus, Israel – Hezbollah/Lebanon, India – Pakistan, China – Japan, Kosovo – Serbia with reports of another approaching regional war, etc.). What is more broadly occurring (the many globally expanding wars, now involving opposing nuclear armed powers in preliminary stages of conflict, will likely in time be recognised as one) is obscured by the staged application of U.S.-NATO-allied bloc operations.