Sustain the rage

Robert Johnson writes: Re. “Rundle: proving the CIA-backed conspiracy that brought down Whitlam” (Wednesday). I had expected no shortage of comments in yesterday’s Crikey praising Guy Rundle’s superb three-part piece on the removal of the Whitlam government fully 40 years ago. So what to make of the solitary 56-word contribution from Ken Lambert except that it is a pre-emptive shot in dismissing rather than intelligently responding to the important recent revelations — including by Jenny Hocking — that thwart the persistent mainstream narrative.

Guy’s bringing together of what we have incrementally come to know about US-guided/directed anti-democratic machinations by a deeply flawed governor-general motivated by factors contradictory to constitutional provisions and/or conventional practices is not a “dead horse”, and nor has it been “terminally flogged”. It has simply been energised by new insights from reliable first-hand sources.

As Guy describes, Kerr’s subterfuge behind the elected government’s back, with active guidance by senior members of the judiciary, was driven by his desperation to safeguard his own position whilst also serving the demands of an arm of a foreign government to which our government — without the executive’s awareness — was being subverted. As Guy writes: “For the security agencies, it was clearly war with elected governments” and, in this regard, Kerr was simply a well-placed puppet, prepared to compromise his duties to the Crown — including the British monarch — in deference to his clearly greater allegiance to the US administration (or, at least, their espionage agencies).

The real problem for Kerr’s defenders is that they have for decades felt able to dismiss the ‘security crisis’ arguments that Guy describes as nothing more than conspiracy theory fantasy, and this is no longer tenable. Of course, it never was.

So now, it seems, the central argument in response is: “get over it”. To resort (as Lambert has done) to “rabid Labor”, Mao, “useful idiots” and “buffoons like Gough” simply indicates a fear of informed dialogue from those who feel a need to dismiss Hocking et al’s revelations as quickly as possible to avoid the necessary serious attention that is now imperative. Claims that it all worked out well, that the end justifies the means, leave our democratic foundations conditional, such that for those non-transparent and non-accountable arms of government (our elected rulers’ rulers) “the vibe of the thing” can overrule due process.

Thank you, Guy: sustain the rage.

The NBN is a lemon

John Bushell writes: Re:  “The truth behind Labor’s NBN beat-up” (yesterday). From the content of the story it is difficult to see how Labor “”beat-up” a story about the NBN paying $800 million for Optus infrastructure when it is clear that the purchaser did not carry out a due diligence investigation to find out if that infrastructure was suitable for its new purpose.

Since the name of a fruit is used for one well known supplier of communications technology may I respectfully suggest that “Lemon” might be a suitable name for the Coalition’s NBN.

Josh Taylor responds: There is no evidence that NBN did not carry out due diligence, and in any case as the original story states, NBN is not paying any additional money to acquire the network asset than it would have under the former government’s plans to shut down the network entirely.

Nancy v the ABC

Adam Rope writes: Re. “We’re sure this will end well” (yesterday). Whenever Gerard Henderson issues his rallying call for more conservative voices on the ABC, I always think the same thing. He never argues for more facts or information, just for the ABC to report news and information from a more conservative, i.e. ideological, point of view. So Gerard doesn’t want the ABC to be un-biased, and report the actual facts and information, he wants it to be biased to his ideology, where facts are pesky things that get in the way of dogma (please see Bush, Howard, Abbott).