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Department of Defence: less than honest, less than decent

By Bruce Haigh - posted Monday, 19 December 2011


The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) recently conducted an inquiry, using FOI laws, to determine how the ADF treats prisoners in Afghanistan. It believes that the Australian public has been deliberately kept in the dark. Here are some of the things the chief executive of PIAC, Edward Santow, had to say:

"The documents disclose poor leadership and raise serious questions that Defence has failed to answer...The Australian public has a right to know what is done in our name."

Why is Defence misleading Stephen Smith, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott on the nature of our involvement in Afghanistan? Why do they believe what Defence is telling them? It has taken the Australian public some time to get there, having to wade through the dross of the Murdoch press, but they are there, so why not our political elite?

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The Department of Defence has become a key political player in the political vacuum created by the absence of different and varying policy and debate on issues, rather than personalities. Defence push the alliance with the United States and now we have a US base in Darwin with no debate on the security, diplomatic and social issues associated with that decision.

The Defence establishment takes us for fools. They treat us like they treat their poor troops – with disdain. They need to be pulled into line, they need to be pulled back into the mainstream of Australian society; they have become less than honest, less than decent. A spate of incomplete and unsatisfactory inquiries from Kovco, and ADFA into unauthorised deaths in Afghanistan ensures that the credibility of the Department of Defence has worn as thin as the second rate uniforms they provide.

They give the impression that they represent the values of mainstream Australia. They don't. Why did they refuse to provide the number of Afghan vets undergoing treatment in Australia? Why are reasonable requests for information refused on the basis of operational requirements? Why can't Australian journalists critically report the war on Afghanistan from within the protection of the ADF? What is there to hide?

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About the Author

Bruce Haigh is a political commentator and retired diplomat who served in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1972-73 and 1986-88, and in South Africa from 1976-1979

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