by Rex Patrick 

When MWM’s Transparency Warrior Rex Patrick got a Freedom of Information request back, he was shocked to find nothing had been redacted. What’s the scam with all this unusual transparency?

The scam is the Freedom of Information (FOI) process is being deployed for political purposes.

There were no rectangles of blacked-out text. Instead, every word was released. Was it a bureaucratic mistake? Or was the Albanese Government, troubled by the polls, turning over a new transparency leaf? Or was it something else?

The answer was ‘something else’. But back to the scam later.

When I first looked at the document, I thought, “I’ll have some fun with it.” It was a ‘nuclear’ brief. Through the brief were words and phrases that could equally apply to AUKUS submarine waste or nuclear power plant waste.

Words and phrases like ‘nuclear’, ‘gamble’, ‘cost taxpayers billions’, ‘with no plan’, ‘+15 years from the decision date’ and more.

There were some ‘controversial’ words missing from the nuclear word salad in the brief – words like ‘safety’, ‘waste dump’ or ‘ half-life’ – but, hey, I had to work with what I had. I compressed and redacted the brief so that it would fit on X (formerly known as Twitter), and I  did a Twitter poll to find out what subject people thought the brief might actually be about.

Here’s the picture I used … have a guess at whether it’s Anthony Albanese’s AUKUS submarine scheme or Peter Dutton’s Power Plan … without looking at the real brief below.

The answer to yesterday’s quiz will be revealed today via Michael West Media, along with an #FOI reverse-secrecy scam. #auspol @MichaelWestBiz https://t.co/i0kHgH8Kgc pic.twitter.com/7oUw47eTC6

— Rex Patrick (@MrRexPatrick) July 28, 2024

Most folks thought the brief was about AUKUS submarines or couldn’t decide.

In actual fact, the brief was about Peter Dutton’s nuclear power plans.

And that illustrates the pickle which AUKUS has created Albo who embraced his Coalition predecessor Scott Morrison’s AUKUS nuclear scheme and plans to home port at least eight nuclear submarines next to Australian cities.

It’s hard to criticise power reactors when you’re the man who stamped approval on the $368B AUKUS program as you swung by the political Kabuki show in San Diego last year.

The fact is that people readily recognise that many of the problems with nuclear options apply equally to AUKUS and nuclear power plants, which

leaves the Prime Minister exposed as a hypocrite on an issue he would like to put at the centre of his election campaign.

But what’s the scam?

The scam is that if you request a document that’s even a little bit controversial for government, out comes the black marker pens and you’ll get given very little, if anything at all. Secrecy reigns!

If, on the other hand, the government thinks a document’s release would serve its political interests by pulling apart an opposition plan, you’ll see an abundance of expedient trans … transpar … (oh, Rex can’t type the good word ‘transparency’ in the context of a cynical scam) … you’ll see an absolute abundance of ‘reverse-secrecy’.

https://michaelwest.com.au/reverse-nuclear-secrecy-albo-or-dutton-whats-the-scam/

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Richard Marles has the Navy out in force firing torpedoes at AUKUS critics.

On Friday last, Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead claimed the critics need to produce evidence of any challenges to AUKUS being realised, then on Saturday, Vice Admiral Hammond, Chief of Navy, raised his periscope claiming the AUKUS debate was being ‘hijacked’ by people with ‘specific agendas’ without indicating what these agendas might be or who was likely making them.

The fact is, what clearly is being ‘hijacked’ is national accountability – accountability for the most wayward strategic and financial decision any government has taken since Federation.

Despite AUKUS’s half trillion of budgetary cost and its dangerous strategic implications there has not been one Ministerial Statement explaining its rationale, its strategic policy objective or defending its hugely distorting impact on government expenditures.

Not a coherent or persuasive word has come from the Minister for Defence or for that matter, the Prime Minister, let alone from a parliamentary debate on what is significantly a seminal turn in the country’s strategic and defence policy settings.

Vice Admiral Hammond, ignoring Australia’s geography – its residence among populous and prosperous Asian states, fell back on the old Anglo glee-club adage ‘three developed nations who have over 100 years of shared history, heritage, values and sense of purpose.’

The likelihood is that Australia will not come into possession of nuclear submarines of its own making, but what it will certainly become is landlord and host to American nuclear submarines as the United States appropriates Australian real estate in its attempts, against all odds, to maintain strategic primacy in Asia. Odds that carry the likelihood of Australia being dragged into military skirmishes with China, or indeed, worse.

So irresponsible, secretive and smug has the government been in making its decision, that no amount of ‘hijacking’ by anyone else is likely to disrupt Australia from its current path of effectively falling into American hands, or at least, being abjectly at America’s beck and call.

Republished from Australian Financial Review, July 30, 2024

https://johnmenadue.com/aukus-servility-just-one-facet-of-poor-governance/

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