Put bipartisan, corrupt power on trial

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Lead Editorial

15 November 2023
Vol. 25 No. 46

Walking into court on 13 November, Afghan war crimes whistleblower David McBride addressed the assembled media and crowd: “Today I serve my country”, he said. “The question I have for you, Anthony Albanese, is who do you serve?”

As David McBride told the Australian Citizens Party’s Citizens Insight YouTube program on 12 October 2022, he wanted to go to trial so he could in turn put on trial the corrupt political system that covered up war crimes in Afghanistan, all the way to the head of the Australian Defence Force, General David Hurley, now Governor-General, and complicit government ministers. That’s why he saw fronting court as an act of service to his country.

However, since David was first charged, there has been a change of government, from Scott Morrison and his Attorney-General Christian Porter, to Anthony Albanese and his Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus. In Opposition, similar to Albanese’s advocacy for Julian Assange, Dreyfus promised to reform the way Australia treats whistleblowers, which has been uniformly appalling. But in government, when he has the power to simply drop the charges against the man who exposed the war crimes and has since been vindicated by the Brereton Report and a court ruling, Dreyfus has refused to act. In an 8 November letter to McBride’s lawyers Xenophon Davis, the Attorney-General’s Department’s excuse was that “ministerial intervention is reserved for very unusual and exceptional circumstances”. Sadly, this formulation reflects the shameful reality in Australia that while David McBride’s case is the very definition of exceptional, it is not unusual. Australia viciously persecutes all whistleblowers, to make an example of them to the rest of the public service, so others who know of wrongdoing are too frightened to ever reveal it.

This system of terrorising potential whistleblowers serves to entrench the corrupt power structure that really runs Australia behind the scenes. And on the issues which the power establishment has determined are too important to be democratically accountable and transparent, such as defence and foreign policy, and banking, the major parties are always bipartisan. On Monday, the major parties combined in the House of Representatives to outvote the Greens, “Teal” independents, and other crossbenchers on a motion for Dreyfus to drop the charges against McBride, and in the Senate the ALP and Liberals-Nationals combined to block Greens Senator David Shoebridge from moving a similar motion. Shoebridge nailed the major parties as “the War Coalition”.

We may be about to witness a similarly bipartisan enforcement of corrupt power with the government’s bill to implement the recommendations of the Reserve Bank Review, including the removal of the Treasurer’s veto over the RBA which is the only mechanism that ensures any form of democratic accountability over the RBA and banking system (p.5). The usual process for any bill is to start with an “exposure” draft, allowing a few weeks for the relevant department to get feedback from interested parties, and only then is the bill introduced into Parliament. However, Treasury has not released any draft of a bill to implement the RBA Review recommendations, yet Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced on 5 November he intends to introduce a bill into Parliament in the last week of November. He claimed to ABC Insiders that the bill “comes after a long period of consultation with the RBA, with the Opposition and with others”—except, that’s not a description of a public consultation, but of the typical conspiring behind the scenes that the major parties do when it comes to perpetuating the real power that controls Australia. All while sanctimoniously invoking the “rule of law”.

Back in May, the ACP exposed the agenda behind the RBA Review in a YouTube video titled: “Giving up authority over the RBA—The ultimate BETRAYAL of the Australian people”. Share it everywhere, because, as with David McBride, only citizens acting on their conscience can defeat this policy and the corrupt power it protects.

Inside this issue:

• Flood Optus outage inquiry 
• Who is funding has-been Scott Morrison to stoke war? 
• Don’t hand power to private bankers! 
• Will major parties sneak through RBA Review demands? 
• The Senators vs. the banks 
• Even experienced neoliberals warn against RBA Review 
• Private banks rake in $1 billion from rate rise 
• Senator demands infrastructure bank to build the nation 
• Senator Rennick quizzes Treasury 
• American politicians advocate for Julian Assange 
• Pine Gap makes Australia complicit in Israel’s atrocities 
• Who do you serve Prime Minister? 
• A new Peace of Westphalia is needed now! 
• The untold story of the US-Soviet manned Moon mission (Part 1)

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