Secret: The Making of Australia’s Security State, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2019
Elected governments pose the greatest threat to Australians’ security. Political leaders increasingly promote secrecy, ignorance and fear to introduce new laws that undermine individual liberties and magnify the risks of being dragged into a horrific new war for no good reason. It is a criminal offence to receive or publish a wide range of information unrelated to national security. Our defence weapons are so dependent on US technical support that Australia couldn’t defend itself without US involvement. The Commonwealth is amassing comprehensive databases on citizens’ digital fingerprints and facial recognition characteristics. True? False? Read Secret: The Making of Australia’s Security State and you decide. Fresh archival material and revealing details of conversations between former CIA, US State Department and Australian officials will make you reconsider the world around you. (blurb)
The book is reviewed for Honest History by Alison Broinowski. Deborah Snow in the Sydney Morning Herald. Richard Broinowski on Pearls and Irritations. Rebecca Ananian-Welsh on Inside Story. ASIO website. ASIS website. Toohey in Pearls and Irritations. Toohey with Adams on Late Night Live. For related material, search the Honest History website with terms like ‘ASIO’, ‘ASIS’,’atomic’, ‘alliance’, ‘Burton’, ‘Maralinga’, ‘Pine Gap’, plus this on ‘Witness K’ and Bernard Collaery.
