Well, it’s quite simple. Let’s imagine for a moment that I’m working for a highly sensitive department… Say something to do with stopping the boats. As we all know, “on water” matters are highly confidential… Or at least they became highly confidential after Scott Morrison became Immigration Monster; before that, everyone was free to publicise any information at all about boats arriving whether they were real or only imagined. Anyway, let’s imagine that I’m working in the department that’s in charge of stopping the boats and I discover that, in fact, the boats haven’t stopped and that there are boats arriving, sometimes carrying as many as twenty people. I quickly work out the realm is under threat because the government is secretly sneaking these so-called asylum seekers into the community and nobody has noticed even though we know have as many as three or four hundred happily minding their own business and enjoying their new life in Australia.

As a patriotic Australian, I’m outraged. I make copies of the necessary evidence and I smuggle it home where I… suddenly remember the AFP raids. And then it hits me. I can’t go to the media because I’ll almost certainly be exposed. No, I decide. I can’t take the personal risk.

See, it’s not the press that will have the problems. It’s the whistleblowers themselves. There’s no need for concern because in the future, the press won’t get the information so we won’t know whatever it is the we should be concerned about so we can all just keep going in blissful ignorance, happy that the government knows best and is having a go and helping me with my aspirations.

How good is Australia, eh?

*Just for clarification, AFP stands for Australian Federal Police and not Anti-Free Press.
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Let’s Stop The Hysteria, The Press Are Still Free! – » The Australian Independent Media Network