A Hastie is displaying signs of advanced paranoia. The Chinese aren’t out to get us, they’re objective is to do what’s best for the Chinese. Just like what we do.
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Australia’s shame: Witness K punished for his service, while the guilty go free
After years of relentless pressure, Witness K has pleaded guilty to revealing information about ASIS’ criminal conduct in Timor Leste. It is a shameful reward for a man who diligently served his country.
AUG 07, 2019
SUPPORTERS OF LAWYER BERNARD COLLAERY AND WITNESS K (IMAGE: AAP /LUKAS COCH)
The government’s strategy of deliberately prolonging the prosecution of Witness K and Bernard Coallery for exposing ASIS’ crimes in Timor Leste bore fruit yesterday with K agreeing to plead guilty to a charge of revealing secret information under the Intelligence Services Act .
K is the former senior ASIS officer whose career was stymied by his opposition to the misdirection of counter-terrorism resources from Indonesia, where Australians were being targeted by Islamist terrorists, to bugging the cabinet rooms of Timor Leste in order to benefit Woodside in treaty negotiations between Australia and the fledgling state in 2004. The minister who ordered the bugging, Alexander Downer, later took a job with Woodside, while then-DFAT secretary Ashton Calvert later became a director of the company. The bugging remains Australia’s greatest intelligence scandal and successive governments, including the Gillard-Labor government, have colluded to cover it up.
As Crikey detailed in March, Attorney-General Christian Porter, who authorised the prosecution of K and Collaery, has pursued a deliberate strategy of delaying proceedings. Porter is represented separately from the Director of Public Prosecutions in proceedings due to the government’s insistence that the case relates to national security, and has used his involvement to prevent the trial from moving at anything faster than glacial pace. Porter’s tactics have included last-minute changes and prohibitions, the late introduction of documents that not even Collaery and K, let alone their lawyers, would be allowed to see, and using national security legislation to ban Collaery from instructing his lawyers. Porter’s tactics around refusing to allow Collaery to instruct his lawyers were so egregious they drew a rebuke from the presiding magistrate that “a finger needs to be pulled out to make it happen as quickly as possible.”
Government goes all out to hide the trial of K and Collaery from public
Porter has used the delay strategy because of the pressure it exerts on Collaery’s own legal practice — he has refrained from taking anything other than minor cases while he is being prosecuted — and on K’s health. K has been under extraordinary pressure for more than six years, having been placed under surveillance along with Collaery by Labor’s Mark Dreyfus in 2013 (so much for legal privilege between a lawyer and his client), raided by ASIO and the AFP and then having his passport taken and, despite ASIO saying it had no concerns about K, not returned to him (K’s appeal against that vindictive decision by DFAT was halted — conveniently — by his prosecution). Then came last year’s prosecution, five years after the alleged leaking of information about ASIS’ illegal activities.
No information identifying K can be published, but he is a distinguished, long-serving intelligence officer who served Australia diligently over decades, and who served it at great personal cost when he revealed that his own agency had engaged in criminal conduct to benefit a corporation, at the cost of Australia’s counter-terrorism effort at a time when lives were being lost. His reward is years of harassment, the humiliation of prosecution and the full weight of a government hell-bent on covering up its crimes and making sure anyone tempted to expose it gets the message about what will be done to them.
It’s a deeply shameful moment for Australia, and a continuation of the cover-up of a shocking scandal in which those responsible for a reckless and deeply immoral act face no consequences while the patriots who exposed them endure misery.
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Yeah, … Politicians aren’t corrupt, and they are certainly not bought & paid for.
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Hastie is more right than wrong here, but because he’s a hamfisted belligerent blunderer who sees everything in black and white the news will be all about his nazi analogy rather than his actual message.
True, the Chinese aren’t out to get us, and true they’re just trying to do what’s best for the Chinese, but under the current regime in Beijing, China’s interpretation of ‘what’s best for the chinese’ Is going to leave us roadkill under their boots.
There’s plenty of problems with a world dominated by American superpower, but it’s shitloads better than a Chinese-dominated world would be, unless Chinese politics changes an awful lot in a big hurry.
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China has never looked to have an extra-territorial empire or hegemony and their official policy is to continue with this. Their main priority is the security and unification of China.
They see what the US does - establish a leading trade position with many countries and get rich that way. This has worked extremely well for them.
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Yes and no. Hastie must realise that inflammatory rhetoric like today’s effort can have a negative impact on the country’s wellbeing. Does he not realise that China is our biggest trade customer? One way to have influence on China is through trade and dialogue. He’s portraying them through an antiquated view of his preferred world order where Western countries were in control and everyone else did what they were told. Hastie risks turning Australia into an enemy of China and actually helping create what he fears most. Someone needs to remind Hastie that we can be friends with China and the US concurrently.
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Might as well slap a Lib / Nat logo on this.
Witness K and Collaery are heroes. Those involved in the bugging of Timor-Leste are ■■■■■■■ despicable. Imagine trying to swindle an already impoverished nation out of oil revenues. That’s seriously scum of the highest magnitude.
That line right there is literally US State Dept talking point. There is no basis in fact thor that statement. The last time I checked, China doesn’t cover the planet with close to 1,000 military bases nor does it threaten the sovereignty of other nations who dare to seek alternate pathways outside of U.S dictates. The U.S is the biggest obstacle to world peace this planet has ever seen.
China’s technological and economic advancement directly threatens U.S global hegemony, this is why they are demonised by the West. Look at what Trump is doing right now to Huawei, the U.S are pulling out all the stops to halt the advancement of Chinese tech, although it’s already too late. Huawei are the leaders in 5G tech and of course as lackeys of the U.S we dutifully banned Huawei from bidding in the 5G process here, to our detriment.
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Dunno. Seems more likely, now that the US has destabilised its alliances, that Australia needs/will develop far closer alliances to the regional counter-powers, like India, Japan etc. Which we’ve already begun doing, especially with Japan. Don’t have to choose between either the US or China at that point.
I’d be interested in Hastie’s views on the impact of Australia’s national security as a consequence of Trump starting a trade war with China.
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Why would anyone vote Liberal Lite into government, when they can elect Liberal Full Strength for the same price ?
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We all know that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, thereby bringing the Seppoes into WWII. What the Seppoes like to forget is the reason for Japan’s attack. For some years the Seppoes had been conducting a trade war with Japan, raising tariffs against their products and refusing to trade with them for a bunch of spurious reasons. At last Japan was driven to breaking point and bombed Pearl Harbor.
Look at what Trump is now doing with China — and think very hard…
Will the Seppoes ever learn the lessons of their own history ? Nah. It doesn’t suit their ruling class and ultimately they’re too damned stupid.
“Japan invading China and slaughtering literal millions of people in a sort of master-race manifest-destiny death cult fever dream” is damn near the top of the list of ‘spurious reasons’ that you’re talking about here. Holy crap, painting the 1941 Japanese as poor victims of mean and arrogant US trade policy is extraordinary historical revisionism. By 1938 they’d already invaded Manchuria, China, (they’d ruled Korea for years already), Mongolia and Russia, and the big internal policy debate was about whether or not to invade Siberia or the islands of SE Asia next. They’d already sunk a US warship (and promoted the guy who did it) and slaughtered hundreds of thousands in Nanking in an extraordinary binge of gleeful mass murder. I honestly can’t believe I’m having to argue this.
A lot of people are very very naive about China here, which is quite extraordinary given they’ve right now got millions of Uyghurs locked up in prison camps, run panopticon-level surveillance over their own population, etc etc etc. I wonder if that’ll change if the tanks roll into Hong Kong sometimes over the next few months.
I’m no fan of US foreign policy, but when compared to China they are the lesser evil by so far that it isn’t funny.
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Not sure how you can credulously believe what you’re typing here. China doesn’t cover the planet with military bases, China hasn’t invaded and scorched the Middle East, parts of Africa, and in particular Latin America. China doesn’t place sanctions on nations which overwhelmingly affect impoverished people - Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Syria are just examples off the top of my head.
As for surveillance - are you kidding me? After what we now know from the likes of Snowden and WikiLeaks? The NSA and CIA have ensured that there are no civil liberties while the country is the most incarcerated nation on Earth with a twisted for-profit prison system.
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Perce, you are being a naughty little boy again.
Labor looked nothing like Liberal Lite at the last election with a full policy agenda that was not only well conceived but would actually work. But the Australian Electorate rejected it in favour of a Christian Conservative Do-nothing Agenda.
So why try to be a democratic socialist party when you are not wanted.
While I agree with your summation on Japan and their conquest at taking over the World pre-WW2, I think you are paranoid to think that Chinese Foreign policy is as aggressive and war-like as that of the USA.
Next you will telling us that there is red under every bed.
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Except they only lost by the small margin of lack of personality.
Same agenda, … (except less of the complicated exploitable stuff up front in the Election campaign), … and a leader with at least some semblance of a personality, … and they win in a fkn landslide.
So that statement simply does not hold water.
They liked most of the stuff before it got too complex, … and in the end they just didn’t like Bill, … and he was hopeless trying to sell it
He was just too big a target for the Murfuch press, and way too soiled and open for mileage taking by the Squibs.
What a sh*t choice.
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I’m obviously no expert, but I can’t help but think Australia’s future strategy is way more complicated than just choosing a US-led or Chinese-led world. In some ways, I wonder if the 25-50 year end game is regional cooperation to placate both US and China until SE Asia/South Asia are able to develop a bit more.
If Trump (or let’s be honest, any future Administration at this point) ever actually does end up making a trade deal with China, and it’s highly ‘transactional’ and impedes our trade with China in some fashion, that might be the tipping point in AU-US relations. Not much point being a first and foremost ally if they are going to destabilise your region, force you into conflicts that have little to do with you except importing oil, and cut you out of trade for their own gain so transparently.
Our future regional strategy will be really interesting to watch. We might have to rely on military cooperation that would have seemed unthinkable (to some) decades ago (Japan, India, Vietnam etc), but much of our influence will still come from minerals, speaking english in the Asian time zones and the trillions in superannuation money that’s being thrown around the globe.
So if you ever contemplate being a thief and stealing, … make sure you’re a Politician and you steal via fraud.
Seems it’s not really a serious Crime at all.
Off you go you naughty little Pollie. tut tut tut. …
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