In sum, resolution of the contradiction between foreign and defence policy can only come by exiting the alliance now by withdrawing from the AUKUS arrangements. However, many Australians would feel vulnerable and exposed following an alliance break-up. It would take a courageous government indeed to do that. But it is in Australia’s national interest.
Source: The courage to end the Alliance – Pearls and Irritations
the issue is serious.
It’s not just about wasting money, as Defence has so often done in the past. It’s now very much about making sure we can deter conflict, and deal with it if deterrence fails. When it all goes bad you take what you’ve got to the fight, and a handful of contracts with blown schedules and budgets are not much of a weapon.
Source: Rex Patrick: as US-China tensions rise Australia remains pitifully unprepared for war – Michael West
“The proposition from Beijing is very simple. If you want to go ahead and make policies according to your own national interests, and not ours, we will cut your income. Specifically, China’s official representative to Australia threatened boycotts of four Australian industries’ sales to China: those of the wine, beef, tourism and education sectors.
Sovereignty or money. Simple. What’s Australia’s choice?” Hartcher
If this inquiry was based on genuine medical and scientific grounds then Hartcher might have an argument but it’s not and what he calls China’s “talking points” are as valid as those he aims at it. It’s this politicized Cold War bullshit and our American aping that led us to Korea Vietnam Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Our assistance in the slaughter of a million Indonesians. Black and white choices like this are better understood by asking why are we so eager to be a developing American colony in the Pacific? We are afterall an American military base.
Put in context how many wars have we entered at America’s behest puffed up and acting as one of the USA deputies. War today is America’s economy out of which oligarchs make money and we have subsidized. Was Abbott protecting our national interest when he sent troops to bomb the crap out of the Middle East or America’s oil interests threatened by ISIS? He wanted us in Ukraine and to “shirtfront” Russia to be the “pillock of the Pacific” and an honorary member of NATO. That was a global ambition but Climate Change was not. Whose cost and interest was he serving? What substantial gains have we made historically for always being on America’s side while pretending to be independant? Over the years we have seen all our institutuions becoming less British and more American not independant like New Zealand’s has.
The fact is America has a military presence in 149 countries and is forcibly sanctioning those where it doesn’t but wants the governments changed. Even Australia has a presence in more countries beyond it’s borders than China which has only one.
Apparently we argued strongly against the discovery we were the biggest pp planet warmers? Apparently that’s not in our interest and should be ignored. But not so a global pandemic. Diseases can be discovered like the Spanish flu was in Kansas why wasn’t it called the American flu as the German measles origins unkown. We and Trump want Covid to be called the China virus but like the others it’s origins have never been specifically pinpointed. There was no urgency back then to do so because it was impossible. Why the urgency now? Because the lens through which this demanded inquiry is being made is not purely out of scientific curiosity.
If the blame game had cast a shadow over all previous pandemics there’d be greater reason of national interests not to publicize or warn anyone of any discovery and simply let “herd immunity” run it’s course. The very opposite of what the Chinese did. The demand for this inquiry is a very specific one and not exactly at arms length from Trump. It’s easily seen as part of his scapegoating blame game and desperate excuse for his personal mismanagement. Even the WHO has been blamed and it appears his Australian shadow the LNP has fallen in step behind him. This is in nobody’s national interest America’s or ours but it is in party political interest and very individually specific. (ODT
“Australia has arrived at its moment of truth. It is now presented with the explicit choice between sovereignty and money. It arrived this week when the Chinese Communist Party publicly threatened Australia with trade boycotts for proposing an international inquiry into the global pandemic.”
Canadian eavesdroppers drew the line at sharing bulk metadata. Australian ones didn’t.
The latest Snowden document, revealed by Guardian Australia today, increases concern that the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) is operating outside its legal mandate. The minutes of a policy meeting in Britain in 2008, with their US, Canadian, UK and New Zealand counterparts, reveal DSD representatives claiming that they were entitled to share the confidential data of Australians with these partners, and were even considering disclosing them to “non-intelligence agencies” without first obtaining a warrant.
This would be a breach of sections 8 and 12 of the Intelligence Services Act 2001. Snowden’s evidence that that DSD ignored this law (or was ignorant of its correct interpretation) raises the prospect that law-abiding Australians have had their personal data wrongfully collected and transmitted to bodies which may use it to damage them.
The Intelligence Services Act sets strict limits on any DSD (now ASD) activity “likely to have a direct effect on an Australian person or produce intelligence on an Australian person”. In such cases, ministerial authorisation is required (section 8) and before giving it, the minister must be satisfied that the Australian is “a person of interest” – ie involved in terrorism or espionage or serious crime. This is a vital safeguard and any unauthorised or unnecessary surveillance of an Australian is in breach of the Act (section 12).
The Snowden leak, however, suggests that in some circumstances DSD believes it can circumvent this safeguard and even offer up the fruit of its warrantless interceptions to foreign agencies.
The meeting of the five national electronic spying representatives was called in 2008 to consider whether and how to share the remarkably intimate intelligence that can be gathered from “metadata” – the log of electronic signals sent and received by individuals. “Metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life” says the NSA’s general counsel. It told, for example, that General Petraeus was having an affair with his biographer, so he could not, in puritan America, remain head of the CIA. There are doubtless quite a few Australians whom metadata tales might dob in (think Bob Hawke and Blanche d’Alpuget) without any suggestion that they have been involved in crime. It is this prospect that makes it important to ensure that DSD operates scrupulously within the law.
The minutes of the policy convention show DSD representatives insouciant about sharing metadata on Australians – so long as it had been hoovered up “unintentionally” they were happy to store and to disclose it without obtaining a warrant. This is a misinterpretation of section 8. If it has been collected unintentionally it must be destroyed. Significantly, the Canadian eavesdroppers drew the line at sharing this “bulk metadata” precisely because of Canada’s privacy laws.
There are other disquieting details in the minutes of this spooks’ convention. The parties all agreed that as a result of electronic spying breakthroughs they appear to be now collecting “medical, legal and religious, or restricted business information, which may be regarded as an intrusion of privacy (my italics)”. But there is no “may” about it – obtaining details of personal medical history counts as an invasion of privacy under every human rights treaty, whilst theft of professionally privileged legal advice is contrary to the common law. These minutes are further evidence we are slipping into an Orwellian world where the state can scoop up any electronic communication, and in which DSD thinks it can lawfully tittle-tattle on Australians to foreign agencies and is even considering disclosure to “non-intelligence agencies” – police, professional associations, employers and perhaps even to newspapers.
Snowden’s earlier revelations, in Guardian Australia and the ABC, that DSD had in 2009 targeted the mobile phones of top Indonesians, including the president’s wife, raise the question of whether it had exceeded its powers to gather information of relevance to national security, as distinct from gossip and intimate personal data. His latest revelations are more serious, raising the question of whether DSD has, since 2008, been exceeding its powers in relation to disclosing data collected on Australian citizens who are not suspected of crime. It calls for an answer to the Quis Custodiet question: who guards the guardians?
In Australia there is a parliamentary committee on intelligence and security. But it can only review matters referred by a minister or by the houses of parliament – it cannot act on its own initiative to ensure that DSD is operating within the law. There is however an inspector general of intelligence and security, a position established by special legislation in 1986 who may of her own initiative “inquire into any matter that relates to the compliance by (DSD) with the laws of the Commonwealth … or the propriety of particular activities of the agency… or a practice of that agency that is or may be inconsistent with or contrary to any human right”.
The guardian who must now guard the DSD is the current inspector general Dr Vivienne Thom, a legal academic. So far she has remained silent on the Snowden revelations and as far as the public is aware, she has not investigated the organisation for privacy invasion or excess of power in respect of those allegations. If she hasn’t, she must do so urgently and immediately, or her office will not live up to its statutory duty. The answer to the Quis Custodiet question, in Australia, will be Nemo – nobody.
• Geoffrey Robertson QC is the author of Dreaming too Loud – Reflections on a Race Apart, published this month by Random House
“Regrettably, for some time to come, Australians will have to endure more security than we’re used to, and more inconvenience than we would like,” he said.
“There may be more restrictions on some, so that there can be more protection for others.
“The potential is there for a journalist or a blogger who writes about a special intelligence operation to go to jail for 10 years,”
From the Iraq war to terrorism laws, politicians are using the idea of an irrefutable “national interest” to avoid community debate and parliamentary scrutiny, writes Danielle Chubb.
Before you do that, you must tell me what the national interest is.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop seems unwilling to entertain the idea that the national interest might be open for debate. “We would only act in our national interest.” Whatever the government decides, it will be “in the national interest”.
The idea that foreign policy is an elite decision-making arena, beyond the ken of the average Australian, and should not be submitted to the vagaries of Parliament, is one that serves governments well. Labor in opposition knows it too will benefit from such a formulation when in power. It is in the Opposition’s interest to continue the myth.
Why should complex legislation regarding carbon trading regulations be considered by Parliament and not questions of national security? The argument that intelligence briefings provide the clarity required to inform such decision-making is a smokescreen. We learned this back in 2003, after we had been told that reliable and sensitive intelligence pointed to the possession of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Today John Howard is saying sorry but….
When we submit to these arguments, we sacrifice exactly the democratic values we profess to defend. A functioning and responsive parliament is at the core of this
The Australian public deserves to be part of the conversation. Once troops are committed, it is difficult for politicians to properly represent the views of their constituents, for fear of appearing to denigrate the work of those Australians putting their lives on the line. It is imperative that we allow such opinions to be aired – through the democratic mechanisms we are so fortunate to have at our disposal – before we embark on military adventures.
olddogthoughts 