Skip to main content

The info Costello doesn't want you to have

"Details about the rise in the amount collected from income taxes or evidence of fraud in the first-home owner's grant were hardly the stuff of national security, High Court judge Michael Kirby suggested yesterday.

In a case challenging the secrecy surrounding public documents, Justice Kirby questioned why taxpayer-funded Treasury research on the effect of publicly announced policy should be kept secret from taxpayers.

"Why possibly in a nation like ours, in an open democracy with freedom of expression, could it be not in the public interest not to disclose a document made by public servants who are paid by the taxpayers of this country?" Justice Kirby asked.

The Government's right to keep information secret in the public interest under Freedom of Information laws is being tested in the High Court by The Australian."

This is what The Australian reported today.

How extraordinary that the PM-in-waiting [aka Treasurer Costello] is denying and preventing Australians [who are paying his salary and for his perks] from knowing about some pretty basic facts relating to the economy. Why? The ridiculous part of the situation is highlighted in this part of The Australian's article:

"Chief Justice Murray Gleeson said much of the evidence and legal argument put forward to support The Australian's case was very generalised and asked Dr Griffiths to use "concrete" examples about specific elements in the specific documents.

"We seem to be dealing with a high level of abstraction," the Chief Justice said.

Dr Griffiths said there was an "insurmountable difficulty" in showing Justice Gleeson the documents or describing them to him because no one in The Australian's legal team had seen them, as they were the very documents the Government had denied The Australian access to."

Read the full article here.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Reading the Chilcot Inquiry Report more closely

Most commentary on the Chilcot Inquiry Report of and associated with the Iraq War, has been "lifted" from the Executive Summary.   The Intercept has actually gone and dug into the Report, with these revelations : "THE CHILCOT REPORT, the U.K.’s official inquiry into its participation in the Iraq War, has finally been released after seven years of investigation. Its executive summary certainly makes former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who led the British push for war, look terrible. According to the report, Blair made statements about Iraq’s nonexistent chemical, biological, and nuclear programs based on “what Mr. Blair believed” rather than the intelligence he had been given. The U.K. went to war despite the fact that “diplomatic options had not been exhausted.” Blair was warned by British intelligence that terrorism would “increase in the event of war, reflecting intensified anti-US/anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the

An unpalatable truth!

Quinoa has for the last years been the "new" food on the block for foodies. Known for its health properties, foodies the world over have taken to it. Many restaurants have added it to their menu. But, as this piece " Can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa? " from The Guardian so clearly details, the cost to Bolivians and Peruvians - from where quinoa hails - has been substantial. "Not long ago, quinoa was just an obscure Peruvian grain you could only buy in wholefood shops. We struggled to pronounce it (it's keen-wa, not qui-no-a), yet it was feted by food lovers as a novel addition to the familiar ranks of couscous and rice. Dieticians clucked over quinoa approvingly because it ticked the low-fat box and fitted in with government healthy eating advice to "base your meals on starchy foods". Adventurous eaters liked its slightly bitter taste and the little white curls that formed around the grains. Vegans embraced quinoa as

Climate change: Well-organised hoax?

There are still some - all too sadly people with a voice who are listened to - who assert that climate change is a hoax. Try telling that to the people of Colorado who recently experienced horrendous bushfires, or the people of Croatia suffering with endless days of temps of 40 degrees (and not much less than 30 at night time) some 8-10 degrees above the norm. Bill McKibben, take up the issue of whether climate change is a hoax, on The Daily Beast : Please don’t sweat the 2,132 new high temperature marks in June—remember, climate change is a hoax. The first to figure this out was Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who in fact called it “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” apparently topping even the staged moon landing. But others have been catching on. Speaker of the House John Boehner pointed out that the idea that carbon dioxide is “harmful to the environment is almost comical.” The always cautious Mitt Romney scoffed at any damage too: “Scientists will fig