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| A bridge in Siem Reap |
"Australia has the worst internet in the world, due to massive government incompetence," Old Alex repeated time and again in frustration. "Plunging backwards. Into a New Dark Age."
Ask yourself, why would a government force millions of its own citizens onto an inferior broadband network? In the 21st Century. Thereby immediately putting them at a disadvantage in contrast to the rest of the world, leading to a backward looking, poorly educated populace.
Could it be because they were afraid the public might start asking questions like: What the hell are we paying taxes to support this rabble for?
The oligarchy had plundered the population time and time and time again, protected by the so-called "rule of law", that is the rule of lawyers invariably motivated by their own self-interest and a contempt for the workers who laboured to pay their wages.
The country was going down the chute.
But in these dreaming spires, this place so far from academic expertise, where the herd mentality reigned supreme, where people were prepared to accept not just second rate but bottom rate internet, with all the dumbing down and manipulation of the public that involved, nothing would be resolved.
This was a government, as Old Alex had written before, which was afraid of ideas, and afraid of the people. The best they could do was threaten them, constantly, with new laws, new jail terms, including up to 20 years imprisonment for any journalist brave enough to expose the bastards, new levels of surveillance, intimidation and harassment. It was a government eating itself. It would die on the pillar of its own incompetence. Arrogance. And failure to provide the simplest of services, like, errrr, the internet.
Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom – poets, visionaries – realists of a larger reality.
Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.
Ursula Le Guin. 1929-2018.
Speech at the National Book Awards, 2014.
Nobody with two neurones to rub together had the slightest respect for the Australian government anymore. Bullies one and all.
"How can they betray their own country like that?" he heard one of the Watchers on the Watch puzzle, almost out loud, his thoughts loud enough to hear.
They betrayed their subjects, the people who had been persuaded to vote for them, and threatened with a fine if they did not, because they had a different God. An Evil God.
Or because they feathered their own nests and regarded the populace with indifference.
Because they simply didn't care. Their own futures were assured. Into the bosoms of boardrooms. As they sold the country down the drain.
Over the horizon, the gods were already roiled.
The spirits jangled.
A strange silver wash swept time and time again over the landscape, the streaming ocean, disturbed waves, the silence heralded in every shaft of refracted light.
"There may not be a God, not in the sense humans understand. It was always a concept designed for the people to comprehend. But there is Majesty. There is most certainly Majesty."
Old Alex looked out, across to the storms pouring out their dawn-lit rain far out to sea.
Yes. There was Majesty.
Already, they were being swept aside, these fragile beings, moments of sentience, neural networks, filaments, sub-atomic machines, an intelligence beyond anything born on this planet.
Those who created a climate of fear, those who were, blindly or deliberately, turning Australia into a totalitarian state, would face the ultimate revenge. Time would do more harm to them than he could ever do.
Those whose lives are fruitful to themselves, to their friends, or to the world are inspired by hope and sustained by joy: they see in imagination the things that might be and the way in which they are to be brought into existence... In politics, they do not spend time and passion defending unjust privileges of their class or nation, but they aim at making the world as a whole happier, less cruel, less full of conflict between rival greeds, and more full of human beings whose growth has not been dwarfed and stunted by oppression.
A life lived in this spirit – the spirit that aims at creating rather than possessing – has a certain fundamental happiness, of which it cannot be wholly robbed by adverse circumstances. This is the way of life recommended in the Gospels, and by all the great teachers of the world. Those who have found it are freed from the tyranny of fear, since what they value most in their lives is not at the mercy of outside power. Bertrand Russell, Proposed Roads to Freedom, Book Classic, 2015.
THE BIGGER STORY:
This story would be illegal and journalists involved would face up to 20 years jail if legislation put forward by this dreadful government passes into law.
There have already been rafts of anti-journalist anti-free speech legislation passed by the cowards in parliament, frightened their own malfeasance and coverups will be exposed.
It is a national disgrace and everyone involved, most notably the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, should hang their heads in shame.
Go to this address to see what the ABC did with these files.
'
If the truth was known, they should probably have done a whole lot more.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-31/cabinet-files-reveal-inner-government-decisions/9168442
I used to work with Michael McKinnon, who was for a time the Freedom of Information reporter at The Australian.
Brilliant guy.
AFP lost hundreds of national security files
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) lost nearly 400 national security files in five years, according to a secret government stocktake contained in The Cabinet Files.
The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet regularly audits all government departments and agencies that have access to the classified documents to ensure they are securely stored.
The missing documents are not the same files the ABC has obtained.
The classified documents lost by the AFP are from the powerful National Security Committee (NSC) of the cabinet, which controls the country's security, intelligence and defence agenda.
The secretive committee also deploys Australia's military and approves kill, capture or destroy missions.
Most of its documents are marked "top secret" and "AUSTEO", which means they are to be seen by Australian eyes only.
An email exchange between the cabinet secretariat and the AFP reveals the documents were lost between 2008 and 2013, while Labor was in government.
The exchange does not reveal any investigation by either the secretariat or the AFP into how the documents were lost, who lost them, or where they might be now.
It also does not reveal the nature, nor the content of the missing NSC documents.
Troop deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, counter-terrorism operations, foreign relations and Australia's border protection were among the top-secret and sensitive issues decided in the five-year period.
The cabinet secretariat's general practice was to give up searching and write off lost documents if they could not be found after consecutive audits, according to another document in The Cabinet Files.
The ABC has contacted the AFP for comment.
Classified files left behind in Wong's office
Nearly 200 top-secret code word protected and sensitive documents were left in a safe in the office of senior minister Penny Wong when Labor lost the 2013 election.
The 195 documents included Middle East defence plans, national security briefs, Afghan war updates, intelligence on Australia's neighbours and details of counter-terrorism operations.
The sensitive documents found in Senator Wong's office should have been destroyed, according to a document in The Cabinet Files.
All the documents were security classified, with several marked "top secret" and code word protected, which is the highest level of classification in Australia.
The release of top-secret documents would cause "exceptionally grave damage to the national interest", according to the government's classification guide.
Senator Wong was the leader of the government in the Senate and a member of the powerful National Security Committee (NSC), which means she had access to the country's most secret and sensitive information.
The breach is revealed in a series of emails between the Department of Finance and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet from late 2013.
The emails reveal security staff found the documents left in a B-class safe in the office after the election and oversaw their destruction.
Westminster convention stipulates cabinet ministers bear the ultimate responsibility for the actions of their staff, which means Senator Wong is ultimately responsible for the breach even if she did not personally leave the documents in the office.
The documents found in Senator Wong's office include:
- Defence plans to protect the United Arab Emirates from Iranian hostilities
- National security intelligence priorities
- Counter-terrorism intelligence planning documents
- Details of missile upgrades
- Profiles of terror suspects
- Issues with Australian Defence Force operations in Afghanistan
- Deficiencies in Defence security vetting
The office of the new prime minister, Tony Abbott, was notified of the security breach in October 2013.
The Department of Finance investigated the security breach but took no further action because they had "no proof of who left them there".
Senator Wong told the ABC she had not been made aware of the matter until the release of The Cabinet Files.
"This is the first time I have ever been made aware of this matter, which relates to a change of government over four years ago," she said in a statement.
"As a former cabinet minister who participated in national security meetings, a senior member of shadow cabinet and a current member of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, I always take my responsibilities seriously."
Right to remain silent nearly removed under Howard
John Howard's National Security Committee (NSC) gave serious consideration to removing an individual's unfettered right to remain silent when questioned by police.
The powerful committee's debate on counter-terrorism laws came just after the arrest of Mohammed Haneef and is documented in files marked "secret" and "AUSTEO", which stands for Australian eyes only.
Dr Haneef was accused of providing assistance in the 2007 Glasgow terror attack, but amid huge public controversy, the allegations were later disproven and Dr Haneef was awarded compensation by the Australian government.
The cabinet documents reveal then-attorney-general Philip Ruddock pushed for a range of new offences while Dr Haneef was still under investigation.
Critically, one of the proposals was to modify the right to remain silent during a terrorism investigation.
"I would also like NSC to consider whether amendments should be made to a suspect's right to remain silent to allow a court to draw adverse inferences in a terrorism trial where an accused relies on evidence which he or she failed to mention when questioned by police," Mr Ruddock wrote in his NSC submission.
The proposal was supported by the Australian Federal Police and ASIO, but rejected by the majority of the senior ministers in the NSC.
Liberal MP Kevin Andrews is the only current politician who was a member of the NSC at that time.
Current ASIO director-general Duncan Lewis was then an adviser in the prime minister's National Security Division and along with a colleague, he argued strongly against Mr Ruddock's proposal.
"Implementing a new provision to allow adverse inferences to be drawn from a failure to mention something when questioned is likely to involve more risks than benefits and will engage lawyers much earlier on in any investigation," Mr Lewis wrote.
He also warned the raft of proposed changes would be controversial.
"Any strengthening of the counter-terrorism powers will attract significant media and public debate," Mr Lewis said.
A spokeswoman for Mr Howard told the ABC he did not comment on discussions in the NSC, but pointed out that no such change to the law was made.
The ABC has also contacted Mr Ruddock and Mr Andrews for comment.
Andrew Bolt consulted on changes to 18C
The divisive political commentator who breached section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act was consulted when the federal government moved to change it, according to the draft legislation contained in The Cabinet Files.
The cabinet documents reveal Andrew Bolt was asked how to stop the act's "unreasonably restrictive" reach that led to the successful claim against him in 2011.
Bolt denies he was consulted on changes to the act.
"I was not consulted but was once told what had been decided," he told the ABC.
"I had absolutely no role at all in drafting legislation. Concerns I expressed about the ambit of the proposed changes had no effect."
Justice Mordecai Bromberg found the articles were not written in good faith and contained factual errors.
Section 18C makes it illegal to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate someone on the basis of their ethnicity, race or colour.
Bolt led the charge of conservative politicians and commentators campaigning to change it, arguing it inhibited free speech because the threshold was too low.
He was the only person specifically named as having been consulted.
The draft cabinet submission states:
"All points of view were canvassed including those of ethnic community groups, Indigenous leaders, leaders of the Jewish community, Mr Andrew Bolt himself and backbench members of the government."
The cabinet also considered extending discrimination protection on the basis of "sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex status", but ultimately decided against it.
NBN Co's secret negotiation documents revealed
NBN Co's secret strategy for negotiating with potential investors reveals the initial lofty ambitions for the project Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has since labelled a "calamitous train wreck".
The 2009 strategy, a budget implications document and a plan for dealing with political attacks are among the trove of cabinet documents obtained by the ABC.
The documents reveal how desperate the then-Labor government was to have Telstra buy into the project on the government's terms.
"Telstra will initially approach the government with a number of proposals which the government will need to politely but firmly resist,"one document reads.
"The strategy is … [for Telstra to] ultimately approach government to invest or use NBN Co's network on the government's terms."
The Government is still the sole owner of NBN Co, which is classed as an asset for budget purposes.
But with cost blow-outs and delays the Government is now facing the prospect of having to write it into the budget, rather than persisting with privatisation.
The negotiating strategy shows the initial plans for NBN Co were very different.
"The government does not need to rush into negotiations with investors making early offers," another document reads.
"The government should keep interested parties engaged through consultation, rather than negotiation."
Among the documents are the financing options presented to the cabinet in 2009.
It costs the project at $43 billion and outlines the plan to finance it to completion in 2017, a deadline long since abandoned.
It canvases options to pay for the project, including "Aussie infrastructure bonds" marketed to mum and dad investors on generous terms.
NBN Co declined to comment.
Abbott ignored advice, breached confidentiality
Former prime minister Tony Abbott ignored the advice of his own department and the Australian Government Solicitor (AGS) when he ordered confidential cabinet documents be handed to the home insulation royal commission.
Mr Abbott promised the controversial inquiry into Labor's home insulation scheme during the 2013 election campaign.
Once in office, his decision to break the century-old doctrine of cabinet confidentiality and hand over Labor's cabinet documents sparked the alarm of the opposition and past prime ministers of both persuasions.
At the time, the attorney-general said the decision was based on the advice of the AGS.
But documents show both the AGS and the secretary of the prime minister's own department warned Mr Abbott against it.
"We think it would be highly undesirable (and legally confounding) if the Commonwealth were to simply produce cabinet-related documents to the royal commission on the basis of a purported waiver of public interest immunity," reads the undated advice from Tom Howe QC, chief counsel at the AGS.
"We consider that producing cabinet-related documents to any court or tribunal … would not accord with legal practice and principle.
"We are not aware of the Commonwealth ever having taken such an approach in relation to cabinet-related documents."
The secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Ian Watt, also warned Mr Abbott against handing over the documents in an unusually blunt and frank note sent to the prime minister and his chief of staff Peta Credlin.
"There is a longstanding and strong convention that deliberations and discussions within cabinet remain confidential and that one government does not seek access to the cabinet records of a previous government," the draft advice reads.
"This convention was reaffirmed by your government at its September 18, 2013 ministry meeting."
After the release of The Cabinet Files, Mr Abbott said his reasons for providing the documents to the royal commission were in the public interest.
"I did because it is the job of the government not just to passively and supinely accept public service advice," he said.
"It's the job of the government to do what it believes is in the nation's best interest.
"I thought we owed it to the country, we certainly owed it to the grieving parents of the four young men that were killed … to get to the bottom of it."
Rudd was warned of home insulation 'critical risks'
Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and two senior Labor ministers were warned about "critical risks" of the home insulation scheme before the deaths of four young installers, according to a report in The Cabinet Files.
The infamous Energy Efficient Homes Package rolled out subsidised insulation as part of an economic stimulus package, but was scrapped after the installers' deaths.
Mr Rudd told a royal commission into the program the rollout would have been delayed had cabinet been warned of the safety risks.
"Right through until February 2010 … each of the monthly reports said that the Energy Efficiency program of the government was on track," he said.
He said he did not know why public servants had not raised safety concerns.
But a report to cabinet from April 6, 2009 does warn of "critical risks" associated with the program. It does not specify whether any of these were safety concerns.
"[The Department of Environment] has undertaken a risk assessment which reveals a large number of critical risks for the Energy Efficient Homes Package," the report reads.
Many of these risks cannot be adequately managed in the lead-up to the July 1 start date. The timeline is extremely tight.
In a written submission to the royal commission into the insulation program, Mr Rudd stated that he had only received two implementation reports, written in February 2009, and that he had "no record of receipt of others subsequent to that".
The implementation report from April, contained in The Cabinet Files, was prepared weekly by the Office of the Coordinator-General for the Strategic Priorities and Budget Committee (SPBC).
Mr Rudd, his deputy Ms Gillard, then-treasurer Wayne Swan and then-finance minister Lindsay Tanner made up the SPBC, or so-called 'Gang of Four'.
At the royal commission, when Mr Rudd was asked specifically about the risk assessment undertaken by the Department of Environment, he said:
"I have no familiarity with that other than that I would assume that's the normal thing a department would do."
"The Royal Commission into the Home Insulation Program had unprecedented access to cabinet material and made no adverse finding against Mr Rudd," he said in a statement.
"Any assertion Mr Rudd was warned about safety risks to installers, or failed to act on such warnings, is completely baseless and untrue, as determined by the commission."
Morrison asked ASIO to slow down asylum seekers' visas
Scott Morrison agreed his department should intervene in ASIO security checks to try to prevent asylum seekers from being granted permanent protection visas.
In late 2013, the then-immigration minister was rushing through changes that would prevent any asylum seekers who arrived by boat from ever being granted permanent protection in Australia.
The Department of Immigration and Border Protection advised Mr Morrison that up to 700 asylum seekers "must" be granted permanent protection under the existing legislation.
The minister was clearly concerned, requesting the exact number and advice on whether he could confer an alternative visa.
The department wrote back with a range of "mitigation strategies" and the minister signed up.
In an unorthodox move, Mr Morrison agreed his secretary should write to the director-general of security to request ASIO delay security checks so that people close to being granted permanent protection would miss the deadline.
The document states that if ASIO did not comply with Mr Morrison's request, 30 extra asylum seekers would likely be granted permanent protection each week.
It meant refugees about to start a new, permanent life in Australia would only be allowed to stay for three years.
He also agreed to reissue an order to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and Refugee Review Tribunal to hear cases in a particular order to further slow down processing.
The initial order was sent to the two tribunals by former Labor immigration minister Brendan O'Connor months earlier.
The advice prepared for Mr Morrison notes that ASIO is not formally bound by the request, but the two tribunals are.
The secretary of the Immigration Department wrote to ASIO, but it is unclear whether ASIO complied with Mr Morrison's request.
Razor gang considered welfare cut for under-30s
Tony Abbott's "razor gang" considered banning anyone under 30 from accessing income support in a radical proposal ahead of the 2014 budget.
The expenditure review committee, or razor gang, was made up of then-prime minister Mr Abbott, then-treasurer Joe Hockey and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann.
It requested then-social services minister Kevin Andrews look at how to ban "job snobs" from receiving the welfare payments.
In a document marked "protected", "sensitive" and "cabinet in confidence", Mr Andrews proposed three options to permanently or temporarily halt income support for job seekers under 30.
They included cutting off under-30s entirely, cutting off under-30s in areas with employment opportunities, and limiting income support to young people with a work history.
There was also an option to roll out an income-managed basics card to "lessen the harshness of the measure".
The most extreme proposal would have saved the government nearly $9 billion over four years.
But Mr Andrews, who is a strong factional ally of Mr Abbott, also anticipated a backlash.
The documents reveal he may have been responsible for killing off the plan.
In a draft letter to Mr Abbott and copied to then-employment minister Eric Abetz and then-human services minister Marise Payne, he expressed "significant concerns" about the razor gang's request.
"This is a fundamental change to Australia's universal social security system … it is not clear that there is a strong evidence base for this approach," he wrote in the attached proposal.
"Young people in financial hardship could experience homelessness, be driven to crime and other antisocial behaviour, family breakdown and possible criminal flow-on resulting from removing the social security safety net."
He noted that there was already a crackdown on youth welfare factored into the 2014 budget and suggested any further changes be part of a broader review of welfare.
The ABC has handed over to ASIO more than a thousand cabinet documents it obtained after they were accidentally sold off at an op-shop for $20.
The national broadcaster has published a series of reports based on the documents revealing the inner workings of previous Labor and Coalition governments.
This week, it sensationally revealed they had obtained the documents after they were left inside a locked filing cabinet which had been sold at a used government furniture store in Canberra.
The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet has launched an investigation into the extraordinary breach. Cabinet papers are usually sealed for 20 years to allow ministers to speak fearlessly in their decision making.
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