CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Both sides of politics are in a panic today, after realising the laws they passed to invade the privacy of their own citizens might also result in them being charged for corruption.
In December last year, Australia passed controversial laws designed to compel technology companies to grant police and security agencies access to encrypted messages.
This bipartisan policy was pitched as something that would help protect us from terrorists, however, the only thing these laws seem to have achieved so far is the incessant AFP raids against journalists who write things that make politicians look bad.
However, these Orwellian laws look to be repealed this week, after another law was passed that means our federal politicians may actually get in trouble for being wildly corrupt.
This comes as the traitorous Australian Greens put forward bill to hold fellow politicians to account by establishing a federal anti-corruption commission. Just so, you know, the National Party’s cronyism is reigned in… Just to stop things like Murray-Darling water theft and the $500 million grant to a made-up Great Barrier Reef Foundation from happening again. Or, to just basically make sure Peter Dutton is no longer able to give private $500 million security contracts for offshore detention centres to close friends who run their businesses out of the Cayman Islands. Or to, you know, prevent our politicians from granting Gina Rhinehart a new coal mine every time she sneezes. Or, possibly to prevent people like Former Australian trade minister Andrew Robb from walking straight out of Parliament and into an $880,000-a-year job with a billionaire closely aligned to the Chinese Communist Party and its key trade policy after orchestrating the 99-year lease of the Port Of Darwin to a Chinese corporation.
The Bill has passed the Senate with the backing of a few Labor senators and the minor parties, piling pressure on the Coalition to support the proposal. But also resulting in a rapid response to binning the laws that allow investigators to go through our politicians phones.
“Fuck, we need to move quick!” Labor leader Anthony Albanese said to Prime Minister Morrison in Parliament House today.
“I wholeheartedly agree!” said Morrison.
“I know we watered down this ICAC proposal a fair bit, but fuck me, there could be a lot of people in both sides of the chamber going to Long Bay if we don’t move quick”
In a tight vote in the Senate on Monday, the Greens were able to secure enough support for the bill to pass after One Nation’s two senators abstained, because their entire political party exists because of dodgy donations.
The legislation passed 35 votes to 32, with Cory Bernardi siding with the government, and Labor, Centre Alliance and Jacqui Lambie joining the Greens.
