PLEA Network

21 March 2025, Pearls & Irritations: Government refuses to articulate ‘frankly terrifying’ security risks. The Albanese Government has jammed itself by trying to not talk about the greatest threat to Australia’s future, but has now opened itself to the charge of playing politics with security issues. The absurdity was on full display in a front-page story last weekend, when The Saturday Paper reported that the government gave a secret briefing on 9 December last year to a number of Teal and independent members of parliament on the contents of the Office of National Intelligence assessment of climate-related security risks — one which the government has classified and refused to release in a declassified form for two years. In fact, Pearls and Irritations broke the story on 15 January: “Just before Christmas, a number of independent MPs and senators received a confidential briefing on the report from ONI. This means they are not able to discuss what they learned.” Senator David Pocock was at the secret briefing, which was in effect the selective leaking by a government of an intelligence report it had classified. The briefing occurred after Pocock, the Greens and the Teals had consistently pressed the government on the ONI assessment which was delivered in December 2022 and immediately locked in a bottom drawer after it was seen by members of the security committee of Cabinet. The independents have consistently said that as parliamentarians it was not possible for them to do their job and oversee the government’s security and climate agenda if the key information on the nature of those risks was deliberately being withheld from them. This was in sharp contrast to the government’s preferred narrative of China as the number one security threat, which ministers were only too willing to constantly articulate in public, often without a great deal of substance. Read More Here