Antinuclear

The #RighttoKnow movement barely touches on the intensity of media manipulation by the conservatives since they regained power in 2013; from blocking popular Facebook sites to harassing little-read authors like me.

Imagine you’re writing something critical of the government. You know there are cameras in your home, a keylogger on your computer – every keystroke is observed or recorded. And then you hear cries of derision from a neighbouring house.

I experienced this while completing the third and final book in a series on Australian life, Dark Dark Policing. The first two, Terror in Australia: Workers’ Paradise Lost and Hideout in the Apocalypse, may not have set the bestseller lists alight, but that is not the point.

My lifetime in journalism never prepared me for so much abusive surveillance.

My epiphany came post-retirement. Returning from years in Asia, I was jarred by the dilapidated state of Australia in contrast to the dynamic societies I had been in. And so began my work on a book initially titled Workers’ Paradise Lost.

But it was impossible to ignore the biggest story of the day, terror, with the then Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, abandoning good government in favour of terrifying the population, pounding on about “the death cult” at every opportunity. This was despite repeated warnings from terror-messaging experts that his terminology was counterproductive, actually attracting recruits to Islamic State…….

Among the most egregious laws passed by the Abbott and Turnbull governments were Journalist Information Warrants, issued entirely in secret. Journalists are not informed if a warrant is taken out against them and face jail if they publicise the fact.

The laws have become so strict that journalists cannot write about security operations, or even surveillance of their reporting, without the risk of prison.

I chose to use novelistic techniques. ……..

The tranches of anti-journalist legislation introduced jail terms of up to ten years for journalists who disclose what are known as SIOs, Secret Intelligence Operations. Who decides what an SIO is? ASIO does……

The point is, the public narrative  – thereby, the nation’s culture – is being controlled: from barely read authors like me, to the mainstream media, to Facebook warriors.

Suppress dissent and you foment revolution.

Thanks to the blizzard of poorly drafted legislation that the Liberals introduced to exploit the fear of terror, we now live in a country where, as the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security recently pointed out, you can be jailed for five years for breaching orders you didn’t know existed; where children as young as ten can be incarcerated without charge.

It doesn’t take the gift of prophecy to know that future historians will see the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison era as the worst period of governance in Australia’s history, when totalitarian instincts were unleashed. The targeting of journalists is just the beginning of a much greater disaster.  https://www.michaelwest.com.au/australia-the-surveillance-state-with-journalists-now-pois-under-the-asio-act/