If you want proof the rule of law in Australia is a JOKE, it’s now a crime to report a crime!

 

{Edit: the above video was deleted to conform with Australia’s anti-terrorism legislation. What a joke!}

This is a shameful story about political bullying, criminality, the attempted cover-up, and how perverted the law has become.

 

A former spy and his lawyer who accused the Australian government of illegally bugging the East Timorese Cabinet while negotiating a deal to share oil and gas revenue have been charged with conspiring to disclose secret information.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie used parliamentary privilege to reveal in Parliament on Thursday that the Australian Secret Intelligence Service spy, who cannot be identified, and his lawyer Bernard Collaery had been charged over an espionage scandal that became public after the neighboring countries struck a deal on sharing Timor Sea energy royalties in 2006.

Wilkie alleged the bugging occurred during treaty negotiations in Dili in 2004. Australia won’t comment on secret service operations.

“Spying on East Timor was indeed illegal and unscrupulous,” Wilkie told Parliament. “Now this government wants to turn the former ASIS officer and his lawyer into political prisoners.”

The spy, known as Witness K, was to testify at the International Court of Justice in The Hague in 2014 in support of East Timor’s challenge to the validity of the 2006 treaty. East Timor argued the alleged espionage gave Australian negotiators an unfair advantage.

But ASIS officers raided Collaery’s offices and K’s home in Canberra in late 2013, using counterterrorism powers introduced after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. They seized documents and also K’s passport, preventing him from leaving the country.

The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions office confirmed that Collaery and K had been charged under the Intelligence Services Act with conspiracy to communicate ASIS information. The office said in a statement it would not comment further as the matter was now before the court.

They face a potential 2-year prison sentence if convicted. Since the alleged offenses, the maximum sentence has been increased to 10 years.

Collaery said he had also been served with a gag order under counter-terrorism laws introduced in 2004 that limited what he could say about the allegations, and might even prevent him from revealing he had been charged.

K and his lawyer are due in the Canberra Magistrates Court on July 25, when prosecutors will argue for aspects of the hearing to be kept secret.

Collaery said the charge related to K complaining about the illegal bugging to the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, an independent watchdog that reviews the activities of Australia’s six intelligence agencies and investigates complaints against them.

Collaery said police had never investigated K’s allegations that the bugging had breached the Intelligence Services Act.

Remember, in 2002, the then Howard government decided to limit Australia’s acceptance of the compulsory jurisdiction of the international court of justice and international tribunal for the law of the sea.

The government was at the time involved in sensitive maritime boundary negotiations with Timor-Leste that would split the lucrative oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea.

The move effectively shielded Australia from cases lodged in the international courts about maritime boundary disputes, denying Timor-Leste an avenue of recourse it enjoyed under international law.

Later of course Australia illegally bugged the Timor Cabinet offices to gain an advantage in the negotiations, which would have remained secret without the actions of Witness K, an Australian intelligence officer, and the lawyer Bernard Collaery.

Their actions led to the renegotiation of the maritime boundary, and the signing of a second treaty, which gave Timor-Leste a far better deal.

 

            Australia has gone wrong. What we have is not a democracy. We have the rule of the pig-people.