David McBride, the former military lawyer who exposed Australian war crimes in Afghanistan, will face trial next year after Commonwealth lawyers intervened to suppress the use of crucial evidence that reportedly would have granted him whistleblower protection.
McBride leaked documents to the ABC—known as the “Afghan Files”—detailing horrific acts carried out by Australian special forces (SAS) between 2009 and 2013, including several unlawful killings. One incident involved the shooting of an unarmed 14-year-old boy, Khan Mohammed, as he was collecting figs near his home in Kandahar province. Another was the shooting from a helicopter of three unarmed civilians in Jalbay after a suspected Taliban insurgent couldn’t be located. The documents also revealed evidence that Australian soldiers had been severing the hands of dead Afghans.
The leaks, which led to a police raid of the ABC headquarters, were central to the initiation of the Brereton Report—an investigation into the alleged war crimes. The report revealed a culture of brutality and cover-up among SAS soldiers in Afghanistan, including the unlawful killings of 39 Afghan civilians, the shooting of an unarmed intellectually disabled man in the back of the head, executions of unarmed or handcuffed detainees and the planting of AK-47s on dead bodies.
Whistleblowers such as McBride should be commended. Instead, the government is persecuting him. The Commonwealth argued for the suppression of McBride’s evidence on the basis that its release would go against the public interest. McBride told reporters outside the ACT supreme court: “The government played the national security card to the absolute hilt”.
It is within the power of the attorney-general to intervene and end McBride’s prosecution. But McBride told Michael West Media’s Callum Foote: “The attorney-general’s office never looks at the merits of the case, they just get told that this guy is an enemy of the department, go for it. The attorney-general only changes tack under public pressure, such as in the case of Bernard Collaery”.
Collaery was charged in 2018 with disclosing protected intelligence information. The case relates to the Australia–East Timor spying scandal, in which the Australian government bugged East Timor’s Cabinet offices to gain an advantage during commercial negotiations to carve up the resource-rich Timor Sea.
After concerns were raised by a deal struck between China and the Solomon Islands and after a public call by East Timor’s president to drop charges against Collaery, Foreign Minister Penny Wong visited the island. Soon after, the charges were dropped.
A similar situation appears unlikely for McBride.
“Considering [the government] has ongoing whistleblower cases, despite having promised further protections in the National Anti-Corruption Commission bill, they’ve suspiciously left out a whistleblower protection agency”, He told Foote. “Why wouldn’t they do that? What downside for the government in legislating one? It’s hard not to think that they have bad intentions by not doing it, given they haven’t even explained why.”
Whether the new Anti-Corruption Commission commits to protecting whistleblowers is yet to be seen. McBride’s situation makes clear, however, that the Albanese government’s commitment to transparency is skin deep.
McBride has performed a great service and should be protected.
In the latest outburst of national security hysteria, ASIO spy chief Mike Burgess declared, in a speech on 28 February, that an unnamed former Australian politician had betrayed our beloved country by clandestinely working for an evil foreign spy network—which he called “the A-team”—to provide secret information to a rival power.
Measured by the sheer volume of stuff produced, capitalism is a very successful system. According to World Bank data, in 1960 global gross domestic product (GDP)—which measures the monetary value of goods and services sold—was just under US$1.4 trillion. By 2022 it had risen to $101 trillion. The world’s population has increased a lot in that time, but the volume of stuff produced has increased by far more.
As Israel’s latest brutal war against the people of Gaza drags on, the need to challenge the Zionist state and all those who facilitate its genocidal campaign couldn’t be clearer.
Banyule City Council has become the eighth metro council in the Melbourne area to formally call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
In a monumental betrayal, Melbourne University’s Students’ Council last month voted to rescind a motion supporting the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and the global Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.
The year is 2070. A global catastrophe—climate change, nuclear winter, civil war: pick your poison—recently ended civilisation and opened a new chapter in your life. So far you’ve ridden it out smoothly in your luxury bunker, but one day you’re swimming laps in the pool, living out your Bond-villain dream, when an alert blinks on your home security console.