Law & Crime

You do not face a crisis of democracy unless the ordinary mechanism of democratic accountability has failed.

Protecting whistleblowers is not optional. It is foundational to democracy, and it begins with a simple truth. Without them, many of the most important public interest stories – and scandals exposed – in this country would never have been told.

It’s December 30, 2021. Life is good. Harri and I have had a fabulous family Christmas and we’re excited, loading our cars full of gardening and building equipment. We’re heading to our new home in a town and community we love just north of Merimbula, where we plan to retire.

For years, we told ourselves creativity would be the last thing artificial intelligence could take. Now, almost overnight, it feels like the first.

I am furious. Angry, certainly, about the federal government’s proposed freedom of information laws, which mock the very idea of transparency, but seething especially about the justification for them, a continuation of the rhetorical trickery that allows grotesque and nasty policy like robodebt to be born and survive inquiry.

Late last month, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used a speech at the British Labour Party’s yearly conference to define himself as a defender of ‘democracy itself’. He placed himself in this category alongside his ‘mate’, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.