GOVT.FAIL.AU: Labor tough on whistleblowing

Labor tough on whistleblowing  - The Canberra Times   

The Labor Government is a far more ferocious prosecutor of whistleblowers and leakers than the Howard government, with Kevin Rudd overseeing a doubling of leak referrals to the Federal Police during his time as prime minister.  

New figures obtained during a Fairfax investigation into Federal Police leak probes show that while the Howard government referred 16 leaks of government material to Federal Police between 2005-07, the Rudd Government referred 32.  The surprising figures reflect a similar trend in US politics, where the more liberal Obama Administration has become known for taking a harder line on whistleblowers than the previous Bush administration.  

The Federal Police unit the investigations are run out of is a section called Special References, and most investigations are run by a Canberra-based million-dollar-a-year, 17-officer unit called Head Office Investigations.(snip)   ''If the government want us to do it, they're our masters, so we do it ,'' the source said. ''And that's not just a particular government, both Labor and Liberal and everyone in between gets the shits when their policies are undermined or their big announcements appear on the front page of the newspapers 24 hours before they announce it.''

Now we see why the Prime Minister set herself against Julian Assange and the release of Cablegate.  Without whistleblowers, our democracy is degraded as there is no other way to monitor the activities of those who we elect to govern on our behalf.  Our governments must be held accountable.