Telegram, 21 February, 2016.

John Stapleton

For once the advertising logo is correct. The headline grabbing mobile app Telegram promotes itself as a “new era of messaging”. It uses military grade encryption to ensure the privacy of communications. That it is one of the most popular programmes for jihadists and Islamic State supporters is for some beside the point. You might as well criticise the mujahadeen for driving cars.

For others it is entirely the point.

A new era of encryption products has created a nightmare for security agencies worldwide.

In recent months Islamic State have claimed responsibility for the Paris massacre, the shooting down of a Russian airline and other attacks on Telegram, as well as using it as a major propaganda tool.

A terror plot can be hatched without leaving a whisper in cyberspace. Messages can be set up to self destruct within a second, while end-to-end encryption combined with the use of a Virtual Private Network, which scatters IP addresses around the globe, ensures that the user cannot be traced and the communications cannot be decoded.

So confident is Telegram that its messaging cannot be decrypted, last year it began offering a $US300,000 reward  for anyone who could do so. The prize remains unclaimed.

The company was founded two and a half years ago by Russian brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov, who fell out with Vladimir Putin and are now based in Berlin.

This week the company announced that the number of messages delivered every day has topped 15 billion, it has 100 million active users worldwide in any given month and 350,000 new users sign up every day.

When asked if he was losing sleep knowing terrorists were using his platform, Pavel Durov is reported to have said: “The right for privacy is more important than our fear of bad things happening, like terrorism.”

The Telegram app has been made even more appealing by the introduction of “channels” last September, which means anyone can broadcast anything they like to their chosen audience without revealing the identity or location of themselves or their followers.

Despite all the Australian government talk of making it more difficult to access Islamic State’s online propaganda, it takes only seconds, with the assistance of Google, to find the Islamic State Telegram channel English Nashir, under a banner displaying the Islamic State flag and logo and with the words: “Come Forth to Your State!”

If you do not have a Telegram account already interested parties are prompted to join.

There are also numerous links to online propaganda, from IS linked Twitter accounts to the latest copy of their expensively produced magazine Dabiq.

Once connected through Telegram, what people are watching, reading or listening to or who they are communicating with immediately becomes hidden from the authorities.

Technology expert and CEO of consulting firm Eye on the Future Morris Miselowski told The New Daily there was no solution.

“There is a dichotomy,” he said. “Consumers are screaming out for programs which can’t be hacked. We want the technology. we just don’t want the bad guys to use it.

“Humans will communicate, and we are increasingly doing it in digital spaces. We can’t yell at Telegram and Facebook, we might as well be yelling at humans for using it.”

Critics call apps such as Telegram the command and control centres of terrorism, while British Prime Minister David Cameron is pushing legislation through parliament stopping companies including Apple and Google from using encryption technology so sophisticated not even the companies themselves can decode it.

But many others warn against yet more futile legislation.

Laurie Patton, head of the peak body Internet Australia, told The New Daily that while they supported efforts to counter criminal activities, especially terrorism, knee-jerk reactions such as the Data Retention Act pushed through parliament by Tony Abbott were doomed to fail.

Ross Schulman, Senior Counsel for the Open Technology Institute in the US, told The New Daily that when it came to encryption the genie was already out of the bottle. “There is not much that can be done to stop the use of encryption, precisely because so much of these products are either open source, or produced by companies not within the jurisdiction of our various governments. Legal mandates are bad policy for privacy, commercial, and cyber security reasons, and are often times simply unenforceable.

“The rise in these types of apps can be put down to two forces: First is advances in technology and usability that make these sorts of tools more and more available and easier and easier to use. Second is a growing awareness among the public that our lives today are digital and lived largely online and on our phones. They are our digital homes, and people are seeking to protect these devices in the same way we all seek to protect our physical homes.”

1990 In the Herald, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 February, 2016.

ActivePaper Archive1990 In the Herald - Sydney Morning Herald, 19/02/2016

1990 In the Herald

BRIAN YATMAN

Mr Fraser blocks supply

The Herald spoke with Malcolm Fraser, aka ‘‘the Minister’’, a trucker who had instigated a blockade in Wodonga. ‘‘Asked why he was holding the protest, he said it was because of all the trouble interstate drivers are getting from NSW. He felt the public was behind their action and there was some evidence for this as shopkeepers across the road from the picket line were supplying meat and groceries.’’

Mardi Gras in the rain

‘‘The rain bucketed down, turning Oxford Street into a sea of umbrellas dotted with half-naked bodies dancing to disco, writhing to drums or pouting to opera,’’ wrote John Stapleton. ‘‘The night was full of disparate images: a group of 50 women in leather known as Dykes on Bikes revved their machines, wigs drooped and ran in the rain, and King Kong held aloft the woman of his dreams.’’

TAFE strike called off

‘‘A 48-hour strike from tomorrow by TAFE teachers in NSW has been called off after the state government backed down on plans to average teachers’ overtime hours. The government would seek an urgent Industrial Commission hearing so TAFE teachers could be awarded a 3 per cent pay rise, a spokesman for the Minister for Education, Dr Metherell, said yesterday. Up to 17,000 TAFE teachers had planned to strike.’’

Prison Population in Australia has climbed 18 February 2016

http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2016/02/18/australian-prison-population/

Prison population in Australia has climbed

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Feb 18, 2016
JOHN STAPLETON

11


There’s a simple solution to the country’s growing prison population, one expert says.


There are 45 times more Aboriginal people in jail now than in the late 80s.


More Australians are in prison now than at any time in the nation’s history.

That’s the finding of one of Australia’s leading criminologists, Don Weatherburn, who delivered a paper on Australia’s ever-rising incarceration rates at a conference in Brisbane on Thursday.

Dr Weatherburn, director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, told The New Daily there’s one reason for the explosion in the number of prisoners held in the country.

• Local councils gouging on rates• Government won’t hold back on superannuation• Islamic State may create ‘dirty nuke’

He blamed the endless thumping of law and order issues by politicians, who he argued were exploiting public fear and ignorance.

Former deputy South Australian Premier Kevin Foley once famously declared: “Rack ‘em, pack ‘em and stack ‘em if that’s what it takes to keep our streets safe.”


Former South Australian politician Kevin Foley was blunt when it came to law and order. Photo: AAP

Fear and loathing now dominates the debate, a reversal from the 1970s when surveys showed most people supported rehabilitation and keeping people out of jail where possible.

During the past 30 years, politicians have enacted a series of policies that resulted in more people going to jail, being refused bail and staying in prison longer.

There are now 36,000 Australians in prison, costing taxpayers $2.6 billion a year, although in fact crime rates have been falling since the year 2000.

If the imprisonment rate in Australia continues to grow at the same rate, within three years there will be more than 43,000 people in prison, at a cost of $3.5 billion a year.

Australia’s incarceration rates are higher than Britain, Canada and much of Europe.

The costs of high imprisonment regimes is both personal and social.


“The moment you put someone in prison you substantially reduce their prospects of getting a job, they will be on social security on release, more taxpayer money down the tube,” Dr Weatherburn said. “The economy doesn’t grow as well as it could and the taxpayers are forking out more than they should.”

He argues the cheapest solution to the nation’s burgeoning prison population and associated costs is for politicians to stop beating the law and order drum, and show some compassion and common sense.

And to introduce social policies which put people into work, not into prison.
The heroin factor

Mr Weatherburn claims the fall in crime rates has nothing to do with increased imprisonment. Instead, he said it has been driven by the end of the heroin epidemic, a booming economy and high employment rates between 2000 and 2010.


The declining heroin problem led to lower crime rates, not the increase in prisoners, according to one academic.

Rising heroin use from the 1970s led to a situation where Australia had some of the highest property crime rates in the world, a situation which began to reverse in 2000.

“We started out with a genuine crime problem, which was huge in the 1980s and 1990s,” Dr Weatherburn said. “We got tough, as most societies would.

“That problem disappeared in 2000 but most people haven’t woken up to the fact we have had 15 years of falling crime rates.

“When we have surveyed the public it is amazing the number who have no idea what is going on. The public are ignorant and politicians are too nervous to do anything that looks like they are going soft on crime. Sections of the media are all too willing to exploit the situation. We are all involved.”
Indigenous prison population

Mr Weatherburn said high imprisonment rates were particularly impacting on Aboriginal people.

The number of indigenous Australians in prison is now 45 times higher than they were at the time of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, a four-year inquiry which began in 1987 and was equivalent in impact to the Bringing Them Home report or Reconciliation in terms of national soul searching.


Jobs could be the key to reducing the incarceration rate for Aboriginal people.

At the time, all Australian governments committed themselves to reducing the number of Aboriginals in custody. But however many well-intentioned government programs were spawned, matters only got worse.

“Aboriginal kids are so frequently picked up by police it is a case of not if but when,” he told The New Daily. “The stigma of incarceration falls away when so many of your uncles, brothers and relatives have all been to jail.

“There are no jobs, and too many Aboriginal people are lost in an endless cycle of substance abuse and crime.

“At some point you have to cut the Gordian knot. You have to give them the capacity to get out of that situation. For my money the starting point is to improve school retention and create jobs.”

John Stapleton has worked as a journalist at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian. His most recent book, Terror in Australia: Workers’ Paradise Lost is available in digital format at all major outlets, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Google Books and at Australia’s major online bookstore Booktopia

Blood Year, David Kilcullen, 17 February, 2016

John Stapleton

The result of Western intervention in the Middle East has been the creation of battle hardened terrorist groups wealthier and more dangerous than ever before.

A new book by internationally acclaimed Australian-born terror expert David Kilcullen, Blood Year: The Failures of the War on Terror, released this week, slams President George Bush’s invasion of Iraq as a diabolical mistake. But the author is no more complimentary towards President Barack Obama, who, he says has mistaken brave talk for effective action and

increased the terror threat worldwide. Tens of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives have been wasted.

As Mr Kilcullen puts it so eloquently, Western countries now face severely reduced international credibility and a larger, more unified, capable, experienced and savage enemy in a far less stable world.

The terror threat has metastasized across the Middle East, and both al-Qaída and Islamic State are back in the game everywhere, including in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Syria, Somalia and Yemen.

The biggest question from an Australian standpoint is: how did we get involved in this mess?

Mr Kilcullen told The New Daily: “It was a mad f...ing idea to go into Iraq in the first place. It is an American screwup, but we are all participants. There’s plenty of blame to go around.”

He said back in 2002, while working at Army Headquarters, he received a background briefing on the invasion of Iraq with a group including a very senior politician, presumably Prime Minister John Howard, although Mr Kilcullen refuses to confirm his identity.

“I thought, ‘I will never get the chance to ask this again’. So I asked, ‘why are we doing it?’ This person said: ‘You are asking the wrong question. The Americans are invading, should we be in it or not?”

But by failing to urge caution and encourage broader approaches to the disaster of Iraq, Australia proved a very poor ally indeed.

Mr Kilcullen, who now lives in the US but is in Australia this week for lectures and interviews,  is unique among commentators for his insider knowledge, both as a former military officer and as a counterterror adviser at the highest reaches of the American government, including as Chief Strategist at the US State Department.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott made national security his signature tune, but Kilcullen says politicians of all stripes have an interest in exploiting terror to attack opponents in the trench warfare that passes for political process. “You may as well criticise a dog for barking,” he says. “Politicians manipulate public opinion. It is what it is. All sides are trying to spin up the terror threat.”

Kilcullen says one of the reasons he wrote Blood Year was to force a rethink: “What are we trying to protect?”

Ways to defeat Islamic State being rolled out in the West, including Australia, involve pre-emptively detaining people on the suspicion they may be planning to commit a crime, mass surveillance and treating all Muslims as a threat. “We are destroying society to save it,” he says. “There is a real risk of that happening.”

Some parts of Blood Year are deeply shocking, including the extreme barbarity perpetrated by all sides in a collapsing Iraq. It records, for instance, how, under the noses of Coalition forces, commercial kidnapping gangs auctioned off terrified children for slaughter in a makeshift night market. “A whole underground industry grew up around the making of sectarian snuff videos… like any drug, blood-lust demands progressively bigger hits to satisfy its addicts.”

Blood Year contains a very apt quote from German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”

Of the war fatigue that has settled on Australia, even as increasing numbers of bombs paid for by Australian taxpayers rain down on the Middle East, Mr Kilcullen, puts it down to the length of the conflict. He expects “this enormous slow-motion train wreck” to last at least another five years.

Mr Kilcullen is the first to argue that America, and Australia, should never have invaded Iraq in the first place. Now that intervention has spawned the escalating threat of Islamic State the questions have changed. “What is the end game?” he asks.

Islamic State believe they are key agents in a coming Apocalypse, and many, including Mr Kilcullen, fear that 2016 may prove to be a escalating disaster far worse than anything that has gone before.

Unbelievable things your tax dollars are funding The New Daily 12 February, 2016

http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2016/02/12/government-waste-australia-ridiculous/

Unbelievable things your tax dollars are funding

Feb 12, 2016
JOHN STAPLETON

14


Before politicians talk about taxing you more, they might want to get their own house in order.


Some government expenditure beggars belief. Photo: Getty


From statues of Mary Poppins to entirely useless multibillion dollar desalination plants, outlandishly indulgent study tours and helicopter trips by politicians, Australians have become increasingly angry over massive government waste.

So there was little surprise at this week’s news the Tony Abbott-appointed National Wind Farm Commissioner Andrew Dyer is being paid more than $200,000 for a part-time position and investigating only a handful of complaints.

The brief boost in optimism that came with the arrival of Malcolm Turnbull is being undermined by the view that the only difference is the bureaucrats now have a more articulate frontman.

• Stuart Robert cut from ministry• Barnaby Joyce: the rise of the Nationals leader• Stunning wedding photos snapped in war-torn Syria

If the Prime Minister wants to know why his $1 billion innovation agenda, including a $23 million advertising campaign, had a lukewarm reception he doesn’t have to look far.

In 2015 the Australian taxpayer, gouged at the petrol pump, gouged at every turn by the Australian Tax Office and, if they have the courage to attempt to establish a business, gouged with multiple compliance costs, forked out millions of dollars in research grants for projects which will provide them with zero benefit.
Here’s what taxpayers are paying for…

Amongst 252 grants from the Australian Research Council last year was $191,394 to assess strategies on how winemakers use websites and share information.


Catherine de Medici an Italian noblewoman who became queen consort of King Henry II of Valois (1519-1559), King of France. Photo: Getty

Another $215,378 went to a project which sought to “understand how communities mobilise in Melanesia through the integration of digital media, mobile phones and music” and $166,442 to investigate how art-science collaboration generates “new modes of intradisciplinary knowledge”.

The Centre for Independent Studies through its Waste Watch project, documented numerous excesses of government: $850,784 for a study of Italy’s Catherine de Medici through her correspondence promising an “exciting new analysis” and $451,000 to a marketing research company to undertake formative research for the national Binge Drinking Strategy.

It has become a standard part of electioneering for each party to criticise the other about government waste.

In 2013 the Liberal Party produced The Little Book of Big Labor Waste as part of its campaign, with examples including a blowout in the Immigration Department’s budget by more than $1billion.

Labor are just as good at the game.

Pat Conroy, head of Labor’s Waste Watch Committee, told The New Daily the Liberal Party had announced a budget emergency, then proceeded to squander money.

“My personal favourite is the $125,000 Julie Bishop spent taking foreign diplomats to Kangaroo Island, along with seven of her staff including the office receptionist,” he said.
‘Incentive to inflate costs’

Former Treasury official and Senior Fellow at the CIS Robert Carling told The New Daily public cynicism was driven by historically high Federal Government expenditure and large deficits.

“Governments are trying to do too many things,” he said. “They end up doing none of them very well.”


Secretary to the Treasury John Fraser and Treasurer Scott Morrison discuss money making plans ahead of December’s COAG leaders’ meeting. Photo: AAP

Chris Berg, Senior Fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs, told The New Daily government waste is endemic.

“They are not spending their own money,” he said. “They are not responsive to the profit motive which keeps businesses in line and are not responsive to competition.

“This creates incentives for everyone who works in the public service to inflate costs, protect existing government programs whether they are working or not and to game the budget process to maximise their income.”
An expensive gag

The jokes are everywhere: “Let’s have a meeting to develop a plan to have a meeting to discuss a pathway to arriving at a goal to create a plan…”

From the small to the large, the trivial to the deadly serious, the general public are told almost nothing about how, for instance, the $31.9 billion Defence budget is spent.

This week’s news showed pictures of a young Syrian boy whose legs had been blown off being bundled into the back of an ambulance. But try to find out if the bombs which the government so proudly announced it had dropped on Syria have killed civilians and you will be whistling in the dark.

As the saying goes: “See no evil, hear no evil.”

All we do is pay for it.

The Government is Reading What You Post Online The New Daily 9 February 2016

http://thenewdaily.com.au/life/2016/02/09/governments-crackdown-cheats-affect/

The govt is reading what you post online


Feb 9, 2016
JOHN STAPLETON

THE ADVISOR
10


Agencies are trawling through social media sites to uncover more than $2 million in fraud. But at what cost?


More than 60 government agencies want access to your metadata. Photo: ABC


The net is tightening for all Australians.

Last week the government proudly announced that it was monitoring social media websites, including Facebook, to crack down on welfare fraud.

Centrelink is trawling not just Facebook but Twitter accounts and eBay.

The revelations came on top of the introduction of metadata laws in October, which critics saw as the biggest invasion of privacy in Australia’s history.

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• The government just learned a lot more about you
• Malcolm Turnbull’s doublespeak on encryption

The mass surveillance is already altering behaviour through self-censorship and the inhibition of normal behaviour, the so-called “chilling effect”, and has greatly expanded the reach of the state into the personal lives of individuals.


Welfare cheats were caught out on sites like Facebook, Instagram and eBay. Photo: AP

One of the world’s leading international security experts, author of Data and Goliath Bruce Schneier, said mass surveillance has profound effects on liberty and justice, fairness and equality, and freedom.

“When we are observed at all times we become conformist, and creativity suffers,” he told The New Daily. “There’s a reason why surveillance states aren’t the ones that flourish; it’s profoundly inhumane.”

Despite protests from the country’s civil liberties organisations, the government is pushing ahead with its program.

General Manager for the Department of Human Services, Hank Jongen, said checks of social media channels were conducted by the department’s trained fraud investigation team.

“We have an obligation to the taxpayer to use all avenues available to us when we are investigating fraud. Social media is used by the department as an information source,” he said.


Bruce Schneier is an expert on cryptography, computer security and privacy. Photo: Getty

“The eBay data-matching program cross-checks Centrelink records against the details of 15,000 eBay users who have sold upwards of $20,000 worth of goods during the last financial year.”

The government claimed to have recovered some $2 million in overpayments from monitoring social media accounts, and $1.7 million by scanning eBay.

Both the general manager Mr Jongen and Human Services Minister Stuart Robert pointedly refused to answer any questions from The New Daily on whether there had been any cost benefit analysis of the operations, how many public servants were employed monitoring social media websites, and whether there had been any research on the negative psychological impacts of their programs.

The taxpayer might be paying for all this mass surveillance, but they are not being given any information on how their money is being spent.

Just last month the names of more than 60 government agencies seeking to access telecommunications data gathered on Australian citizens was released under Freedom of Information legislation. They included the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, the Australian Postal Corporation, the Australian Taxation Office, as well as many government departments and financial control agencies.

Even the RSPCA in Victoria wants access to your metadata, which includes all your emails, every website you have ever visited, every phone call you’ve made and your location at any given time.
Click the owl to view the full list of agencies that applied for access to the data

Gerard Thomas, a spokesman for the NSW Welfare Rights Centre, told The New Daily that only 0.02 per cent of 7.3 million Centrelink recipients were prosecuted for fraud and they were seeing cases, for example, of schizophrenics being criminalised.

“Errors and mistakes are not the same as fraud,” he said. “A lot of people make mistakes because the system is incredibly complex, and then they can’t get on the phone to report changes of circumstances. People are not happy with the level of intrusion.”

Vice Chairman of the Australian Privacy Foundation, David Vaile, told The New Daily the monitoring of social media sites by government agencies was now ubiquitous. The levels of surveillance of ordinary people was often exactly the same as that feared by the clinically paranoid.


Civil liberties groups have questioned the use of mass surveillance.

“When people discover this it comes as a shock,” he said. “Because a lot of it is done in secret and is not transparent, you can’t audit back up the chain, were they justified, did they have a warrant? The uncertainty and invisibility of who is at the other end is a significant, corrosive influence.

“Facebook exposes a lot of people to privacy and security risks. Whether it is for a government to say ‘suckers’, whether that is morally and ethically and policy-wise appropriate is another question.”

Laurie Patton of the lobby group Internet Australia toldThe New Daily it was an important lesson for people to be aware that all their social media activities were monitored.

“A lot of people are unaware to the extent to which their private information is available to governments and other agencies,” he said. “A significant issue is that people are entitled to know what their information is being used for.”

Senior lecturer in law at UNSW Dr Fergal Davis told The New Daily laws introduced as national security legislation were being misused.

“In Britain it was found under Freedom of Information that data retention was being used predominantly by local government authorities; people not picking up their dog’s waste, leaving their bins out. These are not national security risks. We are seeing the normalisation of that kind of surveillance in Australia.”

John Stapleton has worked as a journalist at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian. His most recent book, Terror in Australia: Workers’ Paradise Lost is available in digital format at all major outlets, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Google Books and at Australia’s major online bookstore Booktopia.

‘You are being targeted’: former terror suspects The New Daily. 7 February 2016

http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2016/02/07/targeted-former-terror-suspects-tells-students/

‘You are being targeted’: former terror suspects

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Feb 7, 2016
JOHN STAPLETON

16


Islamic activists tell a conference of young Muslims they will not seek social cohesion at the expense of honour and dignity.



British Islamic activist Moazzam Begg speaks in London. Photo: AP


A former Guantanamo Bay detainee has told a conference of young Muslims in Sydney that they were being targeted in an unprecedented way and Australian anti-terrorist laws were even more draconian than those in Britain.

Delivering a videotaped address from London, Moazzam Begg, who was held at Guantanamo from 2002 to 2005 but later awarded compensation by the British government for his imprisonment, said his most powerful memory of the infamous prison was at sunset, when the American soldiers were obliged to salute their national flag while Muslims prayed.

“Both were saluting the objects of their devotion,” he said. “One salutes a flag, the other salutes the creator of the universe.”

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Mr Begg, who was also jailed in 2014 in the UK on charges of training terrorists and providing terrorist funding following a trip to Syria only to have the charges dropped, then asked which was the most sincere of the two groups.

To paraphrase him: Is it the soldiers who were honour bound to defend freedom while imprisoning people without trial, or those who stood firm in the face of great difficulties?

“We know they want to extinguish the light of Allah. These governments are targeting our belief system.”


The Facebook page of The Confident Muslim. Image: Screenshot

Tilted ‘A Confident Muslim’, the conference was closed by Wassim Doureihi, a spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia, the same group former Prime Minister Tony Abbott tried desperately to ban.

Mr Abbott frequently labelled the Hizb, as they are often called, as un-Australian and apologists for terror.

Student associations involved included those from the universities of Sydney, Macquarie, Western Sydney and the University of Technology Sydney. A federally-funded Migrant Resource Centre also made presentations.

As is customary at such events women were seated on one side of the hall while men sat on the other side.

Within the hall there was little interaction between the two genders, but women played a strong role from the stage, with a number of addresses, performances and presentations.


Speaker Aisha Ali at The Confident Muslim conference. Image: Facebook

The first speaker, psychologist and university lecturer Hanon Dover, said anti-radicalisation and countering violent extremism programs being peddled by government were “past flimsy”, were not based on research and were stigmatising normal Islamic behaviour.

Praying five times a day, respecting traditional Muslim gender roles and opposing Australia’s foreign policies, behaviour and views common to many of the country’s Muslims, were all being regarded as signs of radicalisation.

“Countering Violent Extremism programs are not working in the USA or the UK, but they are being adopted in Australia,” she said.

“Once we alter our behaviour to conform to the government we become trapped. They are trying to stop us for our beliefs, our ideas. Allah has given us the solution. We have the Koran.”

Ms Dover said Muslims did not want social cohesion at the expense of their honour and dignity.

The single most visually and emotionally dramatic moment of the conference came with the re-enactment of a terror raid, accompanied by news footage of Australian police operations.

Lights flashed and sirens screamed as a line of actors dressed in black uniforms blazoned with authentic-looking police insignia, stormed the stage, manhandling a young boy and throwing his middle-aged mother to the floor. The treatment of women during terror raids has been an incendiary issue within the Muslim community.

The scene closed with the woman standing in full burqa on stage.

“I heard the police sirens coming down the street. There was a silence and my heart stopped as I heard the crash at the front door. There were so many of them,” she said.

“My son is now in solitary confinement, despite being young and with no criminal record. For the Muslims in the Goulburn Supermax there is only the presumption of guilt. No one deserves to be treated in such a way. We must stand up and speak against repressive laws targeting Muslims. We will not accept being made to feel inferior.”

The ever-controversial Hizb spokesman Wassim Doureihi praised the activism of a younger generation of Australian Muslims and said he refused to accept the narrative of moderate and extreme Muslims. He closed the conference saying: “Our history is a history of the best of mankind, sent to us from Allah.”

The proceedings were filmed and will be placed on the Confident Muslim Campaign’s Facebook page.

John Stapleton has worked as a journalist at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian. His most recent book, Terror in Australia: Workers’ Paradise Lost is available in digital format at all major outlets, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Google Books and at Australia’s major online bookstore Booktopia. It will also be released in paperback in March 2016.

Abbott Credlin kept Defence Minister on short lease, The New Daily, 2 February, 2016.

http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2016/02/02/abbott-credlin-kept-defence-minister-short-leash/

Abbott, Credlin kept Defence Minister on short leash

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Feb 2, 2016
JOHN STAPLETON

19


Defence Minister David Johnston confided that he had trouble getting time alone with Prime Minister Tony Abbott.


Tony Abbott wanted David Johnston (L) kept under control. Photo: AAP


Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his Chief of Staff Peta Credlin directly interfered in the operations of the Defence Ministry, undermining and ultimately destroying former Defence Minister David Johnston, according to a new book.

Senator Johnston was a little-known Liberal Senator from WA who held the shadow portfolio for several years before assuming the role in government as Mr Abbott’s first Defence Minister.

A barrister who specialised in mining cases and had an interest in defence technology, he oversaw a sprawling bureaucracy which spent $25 billion a year.

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Senator Johnston’s low profile suited Mr Abbott, who wanted to make many of the major decisions in the portfolio himself. He also wanted Senator Johnston kept firmly under control.

Credlin & Co: How the Abbott Government Destroyed Itself, written by respected senior journalist Aaron Patrick, a deputy editor at The Australian Financial Review, explores not just the the dysfunctional relationships at the heart of the Liberal government but how Mr Abbott and Ms Credlin used their power to destroy the careers of others.


Defence Minister David Johnston was dumped in favour of veteran MP Kevin Andrews. Photo: AAP

As Mr Patrick writes: “The most remarkable example of Abbott and Credlin’s interference in the affairs of government ministers came in the defence portfolio. Rarely in modern Australian history has a minister had his or her power so eviscerated by political functionaries.”

Shortly before assuming government, Defence Minister Johnston’s long-time political adviser was replaced with a Credlin loyalist.

In opposition, Senator Johnston’s office had been run by Russell Stranger, who was admired as having a strong grasp of the portfolio. He drafted the Opposition’s Defence policy for both the 2010 and 2013 elections.

But six months before the election, Ms Credlin told Mr Stranger he would not be the Defence Minister’s chief of staff in government, and would have to settle for a job as a senior adviser, a position which paid less and carried less authority.

Mr Stranger ultimately left the Defence Minister’s office altogether, accusing the Prime Minister’s office of running the Defence portfolio by stealth, micro-managing the portfolio, sidelining the Defence Minister and undermining Senator Johnston’s reform agenda.


Peta Credlin was influential in making decisions. Photo: AAP

Instead of Mr Stranger, Mr Abbott and Ms Credlin had their own defence adviser, Andrew Shearer, a Liberal Party loyalist, former employee of John Howard and a close ally of Ms Credlin.

Mr Patrick writes: “Shearer enjoyed wielding power from the shadows. It took about a month for Shearer to start throwing his weight around. Shearer knew he was in a strong position. He had a direct line to Abbott through Credlin, while Johnston confided to people that he was having trouble getting time alone with the prime minister.”

Mr Patrick told The New Daily interference by Mr Abbott and Ms Credlin in defence was “extremely blatant”.

“It was a classic example of how they operated. They wanted to control everything and they marginalised ministers. Decisions got made in the Prime Minister’s office and others could not have an input. A lot of people in the government became very disillusioned about the way defence policy was managed,” he said.

Senator Johnston had other problems, including a protracted dispute over the Defence White Paper.

Senator Johnston had wanted an outsider to write a blueprint for the government’s defence strategy, and engaged Alan Dupont, a former army officer, diplomat and academic. Critics argue Professor Dupont’s belief in climate change as an impending security threat ensured his sacking, with Mr Abbott believed to have personally made the decision.

Senator Johnston was so embarrassed he couldn’t bring himself to tell Professor Dupont personally.

Professor Dupont, who specialises in International Security at the University of NSW, told The New Daily the interference from Mr Abbott and Ms Credlin in the development of the Defence White Paper was “substantial, even unprecedented”.

“It was very disruptive procedurally to have the leader changed after four months, regardless of what you think of the credentials. And there is a lot of virtue in having an external leader, you have greater objective independence and a greater variety of views.”

Another disaster was the dismissal of passionate public servant Ross Babbage, who had written several books about Australia’s defence needs. Senator Johnston asked him to lead a “first principles review” of the defence forces, a document arguably more important than the White Paper and which could ultimately save the government billions in defence expenditure. Even though he was one of Australia’s foremost strategic experts, Mr Abbott’s office ultimately chose a businessman from the coal and iron ore industry.

Mr Patrick concludes: “Part of Johnston’s problem was self-inflicted. He was afraid to stand up to Credlin.”

Senator Johnston told The New Daily he had made it his policy not to speak about his time as Defence Minister in the Abbott government.

In December 2014, Senator Johnston was replaced by Kevin Andrews, a staunch social conservative Christian and Abbott loyalist who distinguished himself by being unable to name the leader of Islamic State in an excruciatingly embarrassing interview with the ABC’s Leigh Sales.

John Stapleton has worked as a journalist at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian. His most recent book, Terror in Australia: Workers’ Paradise Lost is available in digital format at all major outlets, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Google Books and at Australia’s major online bookstore Booktopia.

Tony Abbott Used Terror Threat as Political Weapon The New Daily 1 February 2016

http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2016/02/01/abbott-manipulated-public-terror-threat/


Tony Abbott ‘used terror threat as political weapon’

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Feb 1, 2016
JOHN STAPLETON

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The former PM believed the threat of terrorism was one of the government’s most potent political assets, according to a new book.


Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin were desperate to stay in power.


Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his controversial Chief of Staff Peta Credlin manipulated public opinion in relation to national security and the terror threat “on a mass scale” in a desperate effort to stay in power, according to a new book published this week.

Credlin & Co: How the Abbott Government Destroyed Itself, written by respected senior journalist Aaron Patrick, a deputy editor at The Australian Financial Review, explores in detail the dysfunction at the heart of the Abbott government.

Throughout 2015, Mr Abbott’s office concentrated on the issue of terrorism, which the Prime Minister and his advisers saw as the best way of defeating Bill Shorten and the Labor Opposition, as well as silencing the many critics within his own party.

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But as Mr Patrick writes: “Abbott and Credlin believed the threat of terrorism from Islamic fundamentalists was one of the government’s most potent political assets. It also illustrated the weakness at the heart of the government. After the failure of its first budget, Abbott mostly dodged issues of substance and concentrated on crowd-pleasing gestures aimed at middle Australia. Supported by backroom operatives . . . Abbott and Credlin stoked the public’s fear of terrorism on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. They exploited the media’s natural respect for the prime minister and national security policy.”

As one example, nine months after 18-year-old Numan Haider was shot dead outside the Endeavour Hills police station in Melbourne during an incident with a police officer, Mr Abbott organised a press event at the station to publicly thank the officers involved.

Mr Abbott described Haider as “Australia’s first actual terrorist”.

It was not just an historically inaccurate claim, as Mr Patrick notes, “it was a rhetorical over-reach typical of Abbott’s personal war on terror”.

“Haider was a troubled adolescent from an Afghan family, a young man attracted to fundamentalism because of his alienation from Australian society. He was a danger to himself and others,” Mr Patrick writes.

Describing Haider as Australia’s first terrorist magnified the importance of his death, while seeking to turn the tragedy of a teenager’s suicidal actions into a photo opportunity, showed zero understanding of the forces driving Australian Muslim youth into the arms of Islamic State.

Terror was good for ratings. As Mr Patrick observes: “Mainstream media outlets, desperate to staunch the loss of their audiences to the internet, were willingly used. The Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun, Australia’s two biggest daily newspapers, ran front-page stories about terrorism dozens of times. The commercial television news bulletins mentioned terrorism almost every night.”

Mr Patrick told The New Daily that for a time the strategy worked.

“It was quite effective,” he said. “The Prime Minister had the News Corp tabloids and the TV networks with him.


Numan Haider was shot dead by police outside a Melbourne police station after stabbing two officers. Photo: Facebook

“There are a few people out there who said this was going too far, but overall most people were too nervous to take on Abbott over terrorism because it was a life and death issue.

“Credlin was his primary political adviser and he would not have done it without her agreement, which I am sure he got. They were constantly looking for ways to discuss the terrorism threat. They created opportunities for media coverage that would highlight their policies on terrorism.

“Politics is a tough game. I would not go so far as to say it was immoral. As a political strategy it was understandable as they were so far behind in the polls. The problem was the government wasn’t achieving enough in the economy. It was on the nose because of how it operated, but if it had been able to introduce important policies that would have made Australia a better place it would have survived. It was a matter of substance.”

In a government run by a remote Prime Minister and an intimidating Chief of Staff who had helped create a climate of fear across the government, the few Liberal MPs brave enough to express the view that hyping the terrorism threat could backfire were drowned out.

If the fickle public mood had shifted, Mr Patrick says, “as a weakening economy began to bite”, Australians might have realised “the government was saying, ‘Look over there!’ while their houses were on fire”.

John Stapleton has worked as a journalist at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian. His most recent book, Terror in Australia: Workers’ Paradise Lost is available in digital format at all major outlets, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Google Books and at Australia’s major online bookstore Booktopia.