PLEA Network

1 September 2023, The New Daily: What is Albanese hiding? Maybe it’s the experts’ vision of the climate hell ahead. A good way to scare people is to suggest your chief security body has written something so frightening that you can’t possibly let anyone read anything about it. Or maybe your top spooks have just produced something that would embarrass the government greatly, and therefore it really must stay hidden. It’s more likely to be the latter, of course, but we don’t know, can’t know, when even the date the report was filed is secret. (Maybe the UFO carrying the aliens vetting the text crashed …) Nature abhors a vacuum. When the government isn’t game to tell us anything about the Office of National Intelligence (ONI) report on the national security threats posed by climate change, it’s left to others to fill in the space. Such information vacuums occur from time to time. Most memorably, there was that period when it wasn’t possible to know if then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison was a nutter. We eventually worked that one out though. The ONI folk proclaim: “We provide Australia with a strategic advantage through our analytical insight, our intelligence community leadership and our focus on the future.” That sounds impressive, but don’t get your hopes too high. The re-named Office of National Assessments hasn’t prevented our several security and intelligence blunders in its 46 years and is run by Mr Andrew Shearer, former adviser to prime ministers Howard and Abbott, Mr Morrison’s cabinet secretary and noted China hawk and Americanophile. It has been suggested that the AUKUS submarines were Mr Shearer’s idea. Read more here