Cone of Silence. Is secret Aussie spy in Rex Patrick case a man or a woman?
The government’s costly efforts to keep an Australian spy’s gender identity secret keep the number at 1 in 18 million. Hymie or Agent 99? What is fraud?
I won the fight for access to documents relating to the history of the Australian Defense Force in Timor. The Information Commissioner has ruled that I and the public can have the documents.
The government challenged this transparency decision in the Administrative Review Tribunal and put forward new secrecy excuses; Excuses that were not discussed at the Information Commissioner’s review stage.
They bought a spy (someone I believed to be) to give evidence; They claim there is top secret evidence.
All of this is a fraud in itself.
But there is more. There is another layer of fraud on top of this.
I insisted that the spy be allowed to cross-examine. At the insistence of the government, I did this through ‘chat’.
I asked a question. The government typed the question into a secure chat app. ‘Spy’ wrote back. I was then told the answer (assuming the Government’s senior counsel did not object).
Talk about absurd theater.
Personally, I would be happy to see the spy sitting in Court with a paper bag over his head. This has been done before.
But it looks like that would give the game away – apparently.
The government mistakenly revealed the gender of the spy at the hearing, and now they claim that national security would be compromised if you knew male or female.
Government lawyer’s email to the Court
After all, there are only 18 million adults in Australia (assuming their witness isn’t a child spy), and if you know the gender, that means you can narrow the field of possible identities to 1 in nine million men or women.
But apparently this is too risky.
I objected and will let you know where things go. But at least for now you understand the problematic and unhealthy nature of this secret addition by the Albanian government.
FOI amendment bill. Transparency counter-revolution.
Rex Patrick is a former South Australian Senator and formerly a submariner in the armed forces. Known as an anti-corruption and transparency warrior, Rex is also known as “Transparency Warrior“
