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Australia is the most secretive liberal democracy in the world.  We’d love to tell you more about it, but need our lawyer present. In this special edition of A Rational Fear where we’ll rip into Australia’s most closely-guarded secrets. How did ▓▓▓▓▓ ▓▓▓▓ drown? And why can’t you say a ▓▓▓▓ has arrived from ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓?

On this very special edition of A Rational Fear live on stage at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, we bring together some big names in journalism, comedy and whistleblowing to examine what went wrong with Australian Secrecy.

05:21 Dan Ilic sets the context for the ultra secretive world we live in now.
16:10 Damien Cave points out that Australia is secretive for no good reason.
26:29 Amber Schultz highlights that the press also have secrets when they shouldn't.
37:18 Kate McClymont gives you tips on how to remain secret.
43:35 David McBride talks about the personal toll for doing the right thing.
50:15 Lewis Hobba says we're all being told things we shouldn't, and none of the things we should.

Big thanks to everyone who came to the live show.

Please support the podcast on Patreon and Subscribe to the email list. We can't keep doing this kind of stuff without your help.

🤑 CHIP IN TO OUR PATREON https://www.patreon.com/ARationalFear
📨 SUBSCRIBE TO OUR EMAIL LIST: http://www.arationalfear.com/

Dan Ilic 0:00

Oh, hello everyone. Yay round of applause We haven't even done anything. It's it's fantastic.

Joy. We're recording a live podcast of our show. So you are an integral part of the show. So it's important to clap and cheer and laugh at all the jokes no matter the quality of the jokes. Yeah, that's right. Yes. Like,

move that person to the front. Yeah. Well, we've got a seat down here for you. Particularly at the top. At the very start of the show. Dan likes to start the show with three big jokes. terrible jokes very, very in quality.

And they are wafting. Terrible, yeah, really.

Lewis Hobba 0:42

For his sake. I beg if you clap, and she just pretend they're really good.

Dan Ilic 0:49

It's a format point of the show. We want to we want to be as close to the weekly as possible.

Lewis Hobba 0:56

It's gonna be a really fun show. This is an incredible house. And let's firstly just give it a huge round of applause. Yeah. Carriageworks festival dangerous idea.

Dan Ilic 1:03

Yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm Dan. And I'm Louis. Yeah. And we'll introduce these folks in a second. All right, great. I'm recording my end of irrational fear on Gadigal land in the urination sovereignty was never seated when at a treaty. Let's start the show.

Simon Chilvers 1:17

A rational fear contains naughty words like bricks, Canberra, fed gum, and section 40 of a rational fear recommended listening by immature audience.

Dan Ilic 1:31

leaked documents show that top defense officials were kept in the dark about submarine contracts. When asked about it, Scott Morrison said he wouldn't talk about ongoing underwater matters.

And in order to increase transparency Anthony Albanese auditor or government ministers to leave their dream journals unlocked. And Governor General David Hurley becomes a Patreon supporter of irrational fear. No jokes. He is the best Governor General ever. Viva la Governor General. It's the 17th of September 2022. And you'll if you're listening to this it means I'm in a secret prison in Tuggeranong. This is a rational

irrational fear on your hosts former sovereign Daniel itch and this is the show live at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. This is the podcast where we make fun of the toughest topics because you know if we don't we try. Let's meet our fear mongers for tonight. She's been uncovering lies in Sydney for over 25 years. Tonight we'll ask her for her tips about how to lie to her face. It's the host of Leia Leia, Kate McClymont.

Now Kate is not what we're talking about tonight. But everyone in this room wants to know did the husband do it?

Kate McClymont 2:55

Oh, you haven't left me with a foot to stand on.

Dan Ilic 3:00

Don't be fooled by this man's accent. He's so Australian. He makes the rest of us look like immigrants from the New York Times it's Damien caves. Damien when it comes to learning about Australia, is this something you haven't quite mastered yet?

Damien Cave 3:15

You know, I just discovered what it means to have a smoker still there.

Dan Ilic 3:22

And she's covered everything this year from Canberra to Kyiv tonight will be her toughest assignment yet, please give it up for Amber shocks.

And as a cranky journalist who is more transparent Russia or Australia

Amber Schultz 3:39

spends the metrics transparent about body composition that's transparent about ability to succumb to peer pressure. That's elbow.

Dan Ilic 3:49

And he's the former Australian Defense Lawyer turn whistleblower now professional panel guest is David McBride. David, is there anything funny about the being the enemy of the state?

David McBride 4:04

Well, it certainly makes your dating life a lot better. Say, Oh, I'm a lawyer. They're like, Oh, sickness, my boyfriend. You say I'm facing unlimited time in jail. You must be

Dan Ilic 4:22

really up for a one night stand.

Very day. And he's a government employee who's seen too much. And he's come here tonight to say enough is enough. It's Louis harbor. Lewis some. What secrets will you be revealing tonight?

What secrets? Yeah. Gosh, I'm gonna tell you. I can't What can I tell you who's gonna win the 100 100 next? The audience here would probably really care about that. All these

people are aging into the demographic. And he's on the paths and paths tonight is still in vain for the news fighters podcast.

Oh, this is great. Well, what a stellar lineup, we have got more influence and power on this panel than inside Scott Morrison's head. It's very exciting. And I don't blame him for signing up for more than one job. There's, there's, of course a labor crisis going on. It's very hard to find good help. We'll have more on the Morrison ministries a little later on. In fact, we'll hear from all of our fear mongers in just a second. But first, I'm going to do a bit of a deep dive to set the context for tonight's performances. I'm here to tell a story. There's an island in the Pacific that is on the verge of autocracy, its leaders have acquired a huge amount of power over its citizens. They raid journalists are reporting on crimes the state has committed, they lock up whistleblowers, for calling out corruption. If doctors and teachers talk about the jobs on social media, they could go to jail. And they banned reporting on certain modes of transport. So where the bloody hell are you? Well, if you answer that question out loud, you could go to jail, but I say because I'm brave. I'm not a coward. It's New Zealand and we need to keep an eye on. No, it's us. It's Australia. Prior to the National Security Information Act of 2004. The top three Australian secrets were the Vegemite recipe, the Australia two winged keel and Harold Holtz post Prime Ministerial career as a taxi driver in Bundaberg. No one ever talks about it. That's it. That's all the secrets we had in Australia, pre 2004. There was, of course, our Pine Gap. But that's more of an American CSR secret. Yeah. And the only person that can lose their job if they talk about is the prime minister. Everything else? Yes. Oh, because everything else is on the table until 911, which was or in Australia's case, our 911 was the tamper crisis. And that's when the National Information Security Act came in. And then the She'll be right. No walk and fairies version of Australia was locked away in John Howard's basement never to be seen again. Instead, we have a bunch of legislation that makes transparency harder than ever. The National Information Security Act is one thing up is the big one. Okay. Anything deemed by the government that is of a national security risk can't be reported on or it can't even go to court. And if it does go to court, you'll never hear about it. Like the case of witness J discovered in 2019, a person who was secretly jailed in the ICT, we don't know their name. We don't know their crime, their sentence or what they were sentence for. The only thing we do know is what they might look like thanks to a court sketch from the secret trial. Yeah. Look around you. It could be could be any one of us and how we know they exist in the first place was that they actually writing a memoir in jail. And the AFP went and raided their cell and they were so pissed off that the AFP raided their cell to take their memoir away. They took the ICT government to court to complain about it, and then we only find out about it because a Judge Burns read it out in court. And everyone's like, what the fuck with this secret guy got from? There was witness Kay a secret trial against a whistleblower who revealed that Australian secret agents bugged East Timor Prime Minister's office when we were negotiating Castile that was in 2004. That deal got torn up went to The Hague. There's a whole deal. They got renegotiated again, and then it wasn't until 2014. Witness Kay went to trial in secret in Australia, a decade later. Now, this should be concerning, because we don't know how many secret cases there are like this. They could be 1000s. I'm not an expert. But I think we should definitely investigate witnesses a true i. Now, that's one part secret trials, right. A couple of other things you should think about is this misnamed Freedom of Information Act, because it's not free, and you don't get any information. Journalists or anyone who is interested can actually request documents from the government. But it costs a shitloads of money. And if you're a journalist, it can take forever and go past your deadline. And they're pretty much useless when it comes back. When news organizations have the resources and time to challenge the government. It's a whole process, you got to go through the Information Commissioner, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, and then the federal court. And that process can take up to three fucking years to do that which case in our hypothetical, that journalist would have been laid off by several news organizations. But on the upside is now working inside the Prime Minister and Cabinet so they can look at all the documents they want. And then this is this is the national cabinet, a regular meeting of premiers and First Ministers and the Prime Minister. It was created during COVID to talk about what COVID Presumably, we actually don't know because it's secret. South Australia might want to change the size of their rail gauge again and ruin the dream to boomers across the country in the Indian Pacific. We don't know we need to know. We just have a minute song. So that joke.

Really excited for that. Used to be called COAG I don't know if anyone remembers this. The Commonwealth Heads of Government But it was changed for two reasons. First of all, it sounded like a brand of glue. And then Scott Morrison renamed the national cabinet that so he could basically claim that all the meetings were cabinet in confidence like the real Commonwealth cabinet, but it's not. It's just made up. Morrison just fucking made it up

Lewis Hobba 10:21

for now he's a cabinet maker as well. He's a cabinet maker.

Scott Morrison 10:29

That was good. Thank you.

Dan Ilic 10:32

Thank you, sir. You're allowed to lobby. You don't have to say that was good. But I'll tell you.

There are heroes on this island like the Auditor General whose great work includes sifting through tons of Excel spreadsheets to find any anomalies exposed waste and conflicts of interest. Here's what the Auditor General has done in the last little bit. You may remember the leppington triangles sportswriting carpark roads. Yeah, pretty good. What an incredible group of public service heroes give a round of applause pretty amazing work and what was their reward? Well, the Morison government defunded the pump by $14 million. Meaning that the Australian National Audit Office can now only complete 38 audits a year 38. That's not many. I think Angus Taylor has more offshore bank accounts than that. So yeah, I don't know if you've picked up a trend here. But these secrecy laws have been around a while, but it seems like they've only been used in the last 10 years or so.

It could have gotten into power 10 years or so. Is anyone who got their theory first public ministry 10 years or so. One prominent Senior Counsel Geoggrey Watson points the day that transparency died in Australia. Here's the exact date transparency died on Friday, the eighth of November 2013. It happened at a media briefing called then by the Immigration Minister Scott Morrison, you may remember it the overnight

Unknown Speaker 11:55

incident. What's become a vet photo of asylum seekers. I will not comment further in relation to onboarding matters. Thank you. This is a great public intro. In relation to on water matters. Have they been coming further in relation to on water matters? I think we've dealt with that question.

Unknown Speaker 12:16

And in terms of making that judgment, if they've done something because do customer Australia, doesn't that mean that your tax base policy

Scott Morrison 12:22

is kind of? Well, you've made a whole bunch of presumptions there, which I'm not about to speculate, maybe you can make them up for? Well, you're the one making the presumptions that may

Unknown Speaker 12:30

be the case of the overnight incident is not resolved. And that's why more information is not forthcoming. It's an ongoing

Scott Morrison 12:35

operational matter. And the persons that were at risk have all been accounted for. We're not going to go into the micro detail of these operational matters. What we are saying is that we rendered assistance, and all the people and all the people have been accounted for. So we can go around this for a lot longer. But that is the position. Scary what you get now, isn't it? Wow,

Dan Ilic 13:01

absolutely wild. You'll remember that.

David McBride 13:03

You notice Angus Campbell, before he became

Dan Ilic 13:07

chief of the defense straight after this? Yeah, like a year later, he was a chief of talent spawn. Yeah, so if you remember, do you remember that phrase, I will not comment in relation to home order matters, man. It was unrepeated every press conference for like six months until the press got bored and stopped going to those press conferences. He was even number five on the hottest 100 of that. Which is amazing. Also, it was on afternoon game shows as well. The

Unknown Speaker 13:33

final question was $7,000 Go to you go take a look at this picture. What's the well known catchphrase? It's an ongoing operational matter. Close Hey, I bet the audience knows what it was sadly, Scott, you missed out on the $7,000 which isn't enough to buy you a journalist. These are the happy you get anyway, tonight.

Scott Morrison 14:06

Yeah, I didn't get a logo.

Dan Ilic 14:09

That joke relies so heavily on people remembering birthdays catch.

Instead of showing the first competition is shown.

As Jeffrey watched an SC put it there was a hint in those words that it might have something to do with national security. But that was never the case. There was no evidence was ever produced at once the government got away with it once they got a taste for it. And that kind of secrecy is alluring and has an addictive quality. As what's inputted to me by phone, just like in sports. Once one side of the game starts cheating and gets away with it. Both sides start cheating and we're already seeing labor, hinting that they will continue on with national cabinet in secret. So this is where we are on this island today laws designed to protect its citizens instead use to protect the fragile egos of megalomaniacs. We elect. Yeah. And it seems today everything on this island is secret for no good reason as Damian cave put it in a great 2019 article titled Australian might be the world's most secretive democracy. This is what he wrote. The most recent expansion of government secrecy came last year with an espionage bill would increase criminal penalties for sharing information declassified, even if even if a document happened to be as harmless as a cafeteria menu. So the other day, I tested it out, I reached out to Aziz cafe, in the middle of Parliament House, you need a pass to get into it. Or the politicians and lobbyists go there. And I sent them a text and asked them to send me a photo of the menu and they sent it through. Fantastic and don't worry, the sources were redacted.

And in case you're wondering, they're the soup of the day is chicken. Yeah, so the guy

apparently got a problem for me to check. That's good, though. Very happy. So there we go. ever run a Festival of Dangerous Ideas, please give it up for Damien cage.

Damien Cave 16:12

Thank you. Thanks. So when I when I wrote that article, actually, you know, people thought I was crazy, calling Australia this extremely secretive democracy. But now that we have a prime minister with lots of secret jobs, maybe it's not so crazy. And maybe it's not just a crazy American who's, who's saying it? You know, since I wrote that story, there have been many more examples, lots of which you went into. But, you know, I think it's important to recognize that it's not just Canberra that this problem exists in. And, you know, I run into it all over the country when I'm dealing with people as a reporter. And I have a small story, a small example that will show you just how much it handles some of the most important issues at the local level. Like, can we get this image perhaps the giant banana, giant caveman banana? Let me back up for a minute. So we have a newsletter that The New York Times publishes every week called the Australia letter, which is basically a reporter riffing about the news of the week with a little bit of perspective. And so one week better, Odell was a wonderful writer for us. And Melbourne said, you know, I want to write about this public art thing. It's involves bananas and frogs and, and babies, and I had no idea what she was talking about. But I figured, yeah, for sure, go for it. So shockingly, after it runs, I get this email from somebody that says the subject line is immediate removal of article. And I'm wondering what on earth this is about, right. So I look in and I see that it's about the newsletter, which makes me go back and try to understand what this giant banana he-man thing is all about. And it turns out that there was an exchange being offered between, you know, a local council in Melbourne, and John Oliver, the comedian who John basically wanted to take this lovely piece of art off the hands of Melbourne and trade, and give them basically some frogs with some legs that were open a little bit wider than his approach. And along with that, he also had some babies that had been washed up on the shore and Texas, beautiful babies like this. And so he offered to trade these wonderful pieces of art for the he-man Banana. Basha was in favor of this plan. She loved the frogs, I think. So as you can see, this was a serious job of public interest journalism in Australia's greatest interests, which is why I was really surprised when I got an email and concerned I should say, and the subject line was immediate removal of article. I mean, that's a pretty big request. We don't take down articles from the New York Times, sometimes we attach a correction, maybe an Editor's Note, but take it down, I literally can't think of a single time that that's happened. And I worry that there must be some serious flaw in what beshear had written. But no, it turns out that the person in local government had an email exchange with her about whether the dollars could go into the recycling machine. And she was quoted as saying, and this is the exact quote, I don't know what the dolls are made of. So I can't officially comment either way. She wrote that in the email that her name was attached, and that it wasn't supposed to be because she did not consent to it, and was not an authorized spokesperson for the council, this council policy, she said, so at this point, I feel kind of bad. And I'm wondering like maybe this is just the person who happened to be in the office that day. So I go out and I look on LinkedIn and I discover that her actual title is Senior Advisor for media and communications. We had a bit more back and forth by email and she said that she was when she was quoted it was always without a name. Now at no point in this exchange with special did she request anonymity not that we would have granted it but the whole thing started to feel pretty ridiculous to me. I mean, here's a person who was being paid with tax dollars to give the media information demanding an article be spiked because she kind of did her job with a weird nothing burger. Have a comment about scary rubbery baby dolls. Like really, this is how far down the rabbit hole Australian secrecy is gone. But the thing is, I'd been around and I could also see this It really wasn't just her fault, right? This was bigger than her. This council did have a secrecy policy for almost everything. And everyone, just like Australia has a secrecy default for far too many things. As Dan mentioned, it's a habit, it gets addictive. She was just following the written and unwritten rules for the world's most secretive democracy. And I was pretty sure she didn't even see the context that way. So I tried to write back to her politely. And this is what I wrote. The problem here, it seems to me is the Australian practice of withholding names. In general, if you work for a public entity in a democracy, anonymity is not assumed you work for the public at taxpayer expense. And so in the future, if you don't want to be named, please make that clear in your exchange with New York Times reporters, and we can respond accordingly. She wrote me back and said, Thank you. This has been a huge lesson for me, in terms of dealing with reporters. Now again, this was her job.

Scott Morrison 20:50

So she was she was the senior media advisor.

Damien Cave 20:53

Yeah, exactly. Now, I wish that this was the only absurd example of Australia secrecy default in the years since I wrote that article, but it's not. There was also the time when I filed a public records request for some insight and what kinds of things the Foreign Investment Review Board was rejecting. I started out asking for companies and industries in the countries involved for every decision, I wanted to basically know what kinds of things were being rejected from China, in particular what or not, they said no to that. So then I just asked for numbers, lands statistics for which countries had applied and been rejected. I asked for ratios of accepted investments, anything that would give me any insight into what this very important government body was doing. And they said no to all of it. They just assumed it was a national security threat, whether or not China bought a dairy farm or not. More recently, and I'll end with this, I run into a senior Australian diplomat at an event who told me a handful of mildly insightful things about Australian foreign policies. At the end of our little chat, he looked at me in the eyes and he said, You can't quote or refer to anything I told you. I told them not to worry that I've been talking to a lot of Western officials from the US the UK a whole bunch of things on this story I was working on. So the most that I could imagine doing was combining what he said with others, and referring it to something like Western officials, in his eyes when Drew wide with fear. No, I've gotten in trouble for that. I've gotten in trouble for that, too. You can't do that you just can't. And again, none of what he told me amounted to state secrets, but he was completely stressed. It was like he feared being jailed or fired or killed for saying very, very little out. And that's really the problem here. The culture of secrecy has become so dominant in Australia that it muzzles, voices and sensors, people who are responsible for this democracy. Instead of recognizing that their roles include an obligation to the public to explain why they are what they are doing is good for the country. They behave as if telling the media and the public anything is a violation of ethics. And they are disciplined with that priority in mind, stay silent, keep information private, or else. Don't make any mistake. This is an authoritarian instinct. I've seen it in dictatorships around the world, and it's toxic and contagious. It's an attitude that strikes fear into everyone and anyone who has an urge to share important information that we deserve to know. One more thing, though some figures in Australian life, perhaps that former Prime Minister perhaps another member who we've tussled with, I think in the media quite a bit named Peter Dutton, have a far worse reputation on secrecy than others. But it is not a partisan problem. It's a political problem and a power problem and a habit problem. Even after Scott Morrison took on all those extra jobs, you did not see the Albanese government immediately promised to tackle the problem of secrecy all over government. And it's not clear if the Prime Minister ever will get around to dealing with it. This is the case even though countless studies show that secrecy undermines trust in democracy and creates the conditions for corruption and mismanagement. Australians really deserve better. My hope is that someday we get to a place where every official can speak freely, including those who have something to say about a gross baby doll washing up on shore, or a banana he-man public art project and

David McBride 23:54

I want to jump in because what you said rang true and I and I get it forget it later. But the they had a thing in the defense was about privacy, the Privacy Act, and I think people understood the idea obviously, you don't want people finding out about your sexual preference or whatever, because through some sort of a lake, but they took it very seriously. And we were in in dropping bombs on people in the Middle East. And I kid you not. There was like a senior defense lawyer. It was sort of like targeting this terrorist. It's gonna say to say a Hellfire besar they were like, I'm not sure we may be breaching their privacy guideposts the whole action

Dan Ilic 24:42

Damian has anything else? Kind of you've been here five years. Does anything else surprise you at all now due to kind of around secrecy in Australian Government?

Damien Cave 24:51

You know, I think I'm constantly surprised by moments like the one I just described where it's it's so deeply ingrained in the culture that the default setting is to just not attach a name or under an understanding of accountability at the low, low level. So that's the first thing. It's just throughout the culture. And then the second thing is, though, that I'm so pleasantly surprised when people actually trust me and do help me like there was one time I was in like the small town in South Australia doing a story about I think there was a it was a memorial to a massacre against the local Aboriginal people. And somebody in government, this was a very, really big controversial conflict in this small town. But someone quietly at some point, handed me the small blue book, and he said, This is the phone numbers for everyone in this town. You can call it whatever you want. Don't tell anyone I gave. And I don't know why he trusted me with that. But I'm so grateful to those people who, who, you know, feel that they've taken a chance on me as a journalist, and I'm and that surprises me, because it's so rare, unfortunately. Yeah.

Dan Ilic 25:49

Great. And what was the diplomat? What was he saying to you? Was he saying stuff? Like, you know, we sell a lot of shape in Australia.

Damien Cave 25:56

You know, he was like talking about like other leaders and like things that were totally part of the public record. Like, I think he maybe he thought he was saying these brilliant things, but I'd heard all of it. But

Amber Schultz 26:06

how much that has trickled down to normal conversation for I'll have dinner with a friend and they're just talking about the average Wednesday and they'll stop themselves and they'll be like, this is off the record.

Unknown Speaker 26:17

Yeah, exactly.

Damien Cave 26:18

That sense of self importance to I guess it's part of the secrecy thing. It's like whatever I'm doing it. I think it helps people sort of feel important to feel as though the menu for a restaurant might be secret.

Dan Ilic 26:27

All right, great. Well, I'm looking forward to the next secret spilled by Amber Schultz.

Amber Schultz 26:38

Last week, I went to this really glamorous event called the midwinter ball. So for those of you that don't know it's in Parliament, and it's an opportunity for journalists to cosplay as stage three tax cut recipients. We all go and the whole point of the event is to suck up to politicians and staffers and lobbyists. But what's weird is the entire thing as soon as you step through those doors, the entire event is off the record. It's all secret, which why you would have an event invite journalists and keep it off the record bewilders me it's not an ACO meeting. It's not an August meeting because if it was Scott Morrison would have leaked the Testaments and it's not despite what Senator Sarah Hanson young seem to think Met Gala event is the parliamentary ball. You know, Australia is addicted to secrecy. We've got witness que je lawyer X, you know, it sounds like a wiggle soul was Scott Morrison's ministerial appointments, whistleblowers a silence secret midwinter ball speeches, it's absolutely absurd. freedom of information requests in Australia across the past decade, have been rejected 50% year on year, those that are accepted, which is rare, but those that are accepted return pages upon pages of redacted information, so you just get a wall of black and it makes trying to figure out what the hell is going on about as difficult as reading a George RR Martin novel. But well, the government doesn't want to share any information with the public. It turns out the public is really, really happy to share information with the government. Yeah, we are we're a nation of dubbers. We love snitching It's absolutely absurd. And we didn't start like this. You know, Australia is, you know, our colonial history is a nation of convicts, and obviously the convicts aren't snitching, because the ones that snitched got stay in England. Our snitching culture is the result of some really, really successful marketing campaigns. So the government really does want whistleblowers that really wants people to come forward with information, provided, you're coming forward with information about Gen three doors down. So the first marketing campaign was Crimestoppers that started in the 80s. And that's been really successful. There's like 350,000 Tip offs per year. And about half of those actually result in a police report, which is hugely successful. And then of course, 911 happened and the government decided we need a national security hotline, we need something more tailored to terrorism. And conveniently, a lot of these national security hotline campaigns were released during elections because nothing else buys a vote like fear. So we had the if you see something, say something we had Be alert, not alarmed, and we had if it doesn't add up, speak up, we moved from loose lips sink ships to spy on your neighbor. It's normal behavior. But you know, a lot of these national security tips obviously a steeped in racism and prejudice. So Australia, we are trying to be better we are trying to be, you know, less divisive, more inclusive. So COVID presented a really fantastic opportunity of that because it meant we could dive on our neighbors regardless of race or background or socioeconomic class. It's progress, really. There was one example so there was so many people calling the police on one another often for really, really trivial things. One example was woman she's sitting home and she sees a photo scrolling through photos and she sees one where she looks absolutely shredded in her bikini from a holiday a year ago. She decides to post it on Facebook and suddenly the police are at a door. One of her Facebook friends saw that photo thought it was current and called the police on Yeah, that's how much we love snitching you know and you're worried about Zuckerberg spying on you. It's not so good for your old high school friend from 20 years ago. You know, we love snitching we have a dubbing hotline for almost everything. We have Dobbin a dealer that was launched in 2016. And DUBNER dealer has actually seen since the campaign launched, the number of people calling up about dealers double it's been really successful. Unfortunately, unfortunately, a tip off about AFLW style way Macquarie's dealer turned up nothing but crushed up bags of ibuprofen. It's a real hit and miss. We've got the job seeker Dobbin hotline which was cruelly caused it's not funny.

Kate McClymont 31:07

Scott Morrison was ringing constantly.

Amber Schultz 31:12

Which was currently called Adobe and Adobe Lightroom. Now that wasn't actually as successful because people didn't, you know, didn't really like the idea of dubbing in someone on the doll. But the people that did complain was small to medium businesses who said people that had applied for their jobs had lied on their CV, which is really funny because it just means the public is looking to John Barilaro. And taking a bit of a we also were used to we don't know, but we used to even have a hotline to dub in mislabeled seafoods. That's how much we love dubbing. Yeah. Yeah, there was a specific one for mislabeled seafood. Wow.

Damien Cave 31:47

Sounds like a micro detail.

Scott Morrison 31:50

RAM sticks.

Amber Schultz 31:53

So tip offs and Dobbins are a dime a dozen. I mean in this economy, who knows, but really a diamond doesn't. So while you can't know what subpar jokes Albanese staff wrote for him at the midwinter ball speech he can know about that job interview, you didn't show up for you know, he can know about that crushed up bag of ibuprofen you bought, or he can know about that weird photo you posted on Facebook. So while the government you know, wants information from you, but only wants really, really trivial trivial information, you know, try snitching about something of importance and you know the thing snitches get stitches closed or prosecution

Dan Ilic 32:37

and, you know, it costs money to do foi stuff. But what's the most you've ever cost Crikey. In your career as a journalist,

Amber Schultz 32:48

I probably set a record for the fastest lawsuit from a new hire because I hit three days and immediately got a consent notice. So, you know, I don't know if you know this. But Craig, he has a very long rich history of being sued for defamation. So I was proud to join that on day three.

Dan Ilic 33:05

It's kind of interesting, like you're talking about midway to Boulder, and the inverse, the immediate comparison is the White House press correspondents dinner in DC and which is like public broadcast celebrities, everyone wants to go to it. It's like, if you're a leader and you're at that event, you are going to get roasted and you if you if you fuck up on stage, you're going to eat it in front of everyone. It's like that is like the absolute icon of like that when you look at both countries, Australia and America, that's like transparency back to back

anytime you are looking at America with respect and thinking like that they are more relaxed than us. Like, we need to have a good hard look at ourselves. It's like secret dinners for the whatever for the President and wave laws. Like what are we doing? Yeah, but it's weird those because we there's a not a bowl but there's a annual invite by ABC employee like the a bunch of ABC employees get basically instructed to go down to Parliament House and kiss the ring to suck up tour, isn't it? Well, yeah. And so one no, well, one year I was told to go down and as you know, the face of youth as I was back then and and it's so weird because obviously all politicians hate young people. So they were just like, get the fuck out of here. But then they everyone was like all of the ABC celebs out there trying to like impress you know, someone who would give us money and they didn't give a shit until b one and B two came out. And those politicians were fucking bananas. Like they were all grabbing photo like they were so excited. We're just like, well, I just wouldn't got drunk with Costa

those politicians weren't obviously from Fitzroy. Exactly. And but when you're around Parliament House lately, can you tell If there's like a tone changed since the new government is coming like is there, is there a different feeling around the press color?

Amber Schultz 35:07

There is I mean slightly. We've got the little, like little postcards that have the one 800 parliamentary support services number on it, but that they're everywhere. But aside from that, the only difference is people constantly if anyone like gets too close or accidentally brushes past someone, someone will yell Jenkins about the only difference.

Dan Ilic 35:28

That's great. It's easy to make fun of the press gallery for kind of hypocrisy. They're under pressure from the government. It it's kind of interesting to see over the last couple of years how news reports have changed, particularly under the Morison government I don't know if you've noticed. Here's a clip from Channel 10 News.

Unknown Speaker 35:48

Here are the headlines approved by the Department of Communications on 10. The Royal Commission into how good is Australia has found that Australia is very good and colder than many estimates predicted. The Department of Fair go agrees with the findings saying that Aussies are getting fair a goes and more goes than ever before. And Australia's most prestigious honor the Order of Australia is having a makeover with a brand new category added to the list. So move over items and AM's there's a new metal on the podium. It's the QA, which will be awarded to the most quiet Australian and that's someone who excels at showing complete disinterest in the affairs of government and goes about their day unquestioning the world around them. Nominations are now open. So good luck to everyone. And in sports, Australia's cricket team are the best and they will win the ashes if any of the current deliver want to see the loved ones again, turning to the weather, despite what it looks like out of the window, it is fine. And definitely average temperatures for this time of year. Definitely not white hotter than usual. That is, of course all the approved news for now in the greatest country in the world. And remember, it's on Australian to not have private health insurance.

Unknown Speaker 37:09

Ladies and gentlemen,

Dan Ilic 37:10

please give it up for Kate McClymont

Kate McClymont 37:19

Right, I'm going to give you some tips tonight on how to avoid me. So I find now that often when I ring people up, I can hear them and I say, oh, it's Kate McClymont. Here, I can hit and go. But anyway, if you want to be secret, one of the things I want to advise you is not to buy a voice distorter. So I did have someone ring up to give me some very highly confidential information. And they've gone to the trouble of buying a voice distorter and it did sound like a crazed robot. But the information was absolutely fabulous. And I said at the end of the conversation, thank you so much. And now I can get you on this number for safe forgotten. Voice distorter that number still came up. Don't buy voice disorder. And too. If you want to remain secret, please use Australia Post snail mail, it's still the best way to send things. However, if you are one of the bead family, and you are sitting there sending me death threats, please wear gloves. Your fingerprints were on the envelope. And on the inside. So gloves if you really don't want to be. And one other thing I'd like to advise Eddie obeyed was in the past. When I rang his office to get some questions. He forgot to hang up. The phone on and I listened for 20 minutes, as they discussed how they were going to lie to me what they were going to say. And in the end, I had to call in on the office spoke. And I said look, Eddie, it's been so lovely hearing you talk about me. It's been so lovely hearing your plants. However, I really need a comment and I just heard them go off. They hung up. Another thing is that when a major crime figure has died, don't go behind the crypt at the funeral to discuss where the money is. This happened at many Macpherson's funeral, and I'd already been threatened so I thought I would hide behind the crypt. But on the other side of the crypt was Lenny McPherson solicitor, who was chatting away about where the money was hidden, what companies they had. So that was very handy. And having said those things I Do want to just take one moment to say that I am also an idiot when it comes to, you know, giving my own things away, Louis reminded me today that I accidentally sent a pin with my location on it to the head of the Hells Angels. Caitlin climber is here. Not so good. Then I sent a photo of my ear. How would you take a photo of your ear and send it, but I sent that to one of my colleagues who thought I, somebody had cut it off. And I was like, and then the last thing I did was that I did have my phone in my pocket. And I sent a whole lot of gibberish to Twitter. And people contacted me saying, should they call the police? Had I been kidnapped? Had I been kidnapped? And was this a secret cry for help? So I would just like to say that I too, like many of the criminals I cover am an idiot

Dan Ilic 41:10

Do you ever feel honestly feel like your life is in danger?

Kate McClymont 41:16

I always take the one of my contacts who was a detective said to me, Kate, don't worry about the ones that threaten you. It's the ones that don't. And I did get a death threat death threat delivered to my house and that did have 303 on it. And I said to my husband what that's actually our address 303 And he said it's a rifle, you idiot. And it doesn't help when you don't actually understand that you are a threat to your own house. Oh,

Dan Ilic 41:47

so if we were to send a death threat to you, what's the best kind of

Kate McClymont 41:53

with the with the fingerprints? And what

Dan Ilic 41:55

is the best way to actually stay secret from me rather than you know all the mistakes? But like, How does someone? How does someone truly avoid Kate McLemore?

Kate McClymont 42:03

No, it's very hard. Because the first thing I do is, if you come across my radar, the first thing to do is don't behave badly. That's how you can avoid me. But the first thing I do is I will do an ASIC search. If you have a company, I will find out how old you were where you used to live, whether you've got a mortgage on your house, how much you paid for your house, who lives next door who lives on the other side? What is your phone number? So

Dan Ilic 42:30

is there like other ways that you do that publicly available?

Kate McClymont 42:35

Just expensive. It's just expensive. I think I have the sort of an ASIC addiction in poker machines. I have that thing of doing an ASIC search, and my heart is racing. I'm waiting to find out who was in that company with that person. I love it.

Dan Ilic 42:53

Some people pay for Paramount plus Did you ever pull up video bed and try to read negotiate a mortgage.

Kate McClymont 43:03

Last time I did ring him up. He said to me, you put one word out of line and I will go for you. I will go for the jugular Have a nice day. So

Damien Cave 43:18

most friends say Have a nice day.

Kate McClymont 43:20

He's now in jail. And I just think having to spend eternity with your son Mosers. Punishment

Dan Ilic 43:37

David McBride is a former military officer who served with both the ADF and British armies in Ireland and Afghanistan. And he now faces unlimited years in jail after exposing cover ups of war crimes committed by Australians in Afghanistan, yet he did not get invited to the Queen's commemorations.

Unknown Speaker 43:55

Everyone please welcome David O'Brien.

Dan Ilic 44:03

David with unlimited jail on the cards, it must play havoc with your psyche. How you preparing?

David McBride 44:12

It's quite a useful terms. At first, when I was first going to court and at a legal aid lawyer, I met a guy who was a lifetime prisoner with tattoos all over me. And he was like, I'm gonna give you some tips when you go to jail, but I was like, Okay. And he said, you know, you got to keep it very tidy because some people's homes and he said, you know, said what's your cover story going to be? I said, Well, why cover story? I'm, I'm a whistleblower, and you know, fighting the government. I can't see what's going to beat me up and he was like, no, no, no. He said, they're gonna beat you up. He said, he said, I might even understand what a whistle blower is. He said, I thought was you I'd say you killed your sergeant. And I made a mental note. I thought I'm gonna get a bigger tattoo. And then And then he said, Well, how many years you're facing anyone? I said, Well, it's unlimited. And he said, What do you mean? I said, it's unlimited. And he said, Well, what? 500 years? I said, yeah, maybe 800? I said you possibly if they just had a bad day? Who knows? And he was like, you're going to do all right. He said, they might give you a double sell. So that was one of the

Dan Ilic 45:24

opioids. When you went through the process of, you know, whistleblowing, did you ever think, oh, geez, I wish I hadn't had exposed the war criminals. Yeah,

David McBride 45:37

I know, I never thought that I must have been, I never thought they were low. In the position I'm in now, where it looks like, you know, I could be going to jail for a long time for doing what I thought was the right thing. But I do sometimes think I've got to sue Hollywood, flick back, he gives me these ideas. Somehow that was the right thing to do. When actually, it was obviously a very dangerous, like

Unknown Speaker 45:58

a few good men that lets me maybe

David McBride 46:01

get a big class, I could be the richest person to jail and never get to be able to spend that money.

Dan Ilic 46:06

The sad thing is like, if you sell your story that goes really well, as a feature film, that would be terrible.

It's quite remarkable what you've done. It's a it's a real act of service for democracy. And it's really astounding, that we all know what, you know, our defense force has done on our behalf. And I think we're all better off than knowing that Does your family know that your hero

David McBride 46:35

could ever be a hero to your family. And I've tried to, I tried to try to pull the hero card a couple of times that they kids, when they're playing after they kind of want this, they want more money for the dress or something. And I'm like, Look, it's it's pretty hard for me and I am standing up for what is right and for your future and your children's future. And, and they go roll their eyes and they go dead. That's all very well when you get to get an actual job. So it doesn't cut my job. That's for sure ever with my ex wife. And I was like, telling her about try to break the news to her that the cops could be coming in numbers. I'd had secret documents that I was like, Look at Skinner, for taking on the Defence Force. And she was like, Oh, that's wonderful. Darlings was good. The falling and nails. And then I'm like I tried to make she didn't seem that impressed. I'm like, I'm really taking on the whole government that she's like, oh, yeah, that's good, darling. And I'm like, she wasn't very impressed. And I was trying to get a bit of hero. Record here. I create exactly what you think you get. And I'm like, an effectively because orchestrate everything I'm really taking on the American government and the CIA. You're upping the stakes. Yeah, I'm

Unknown Speaker 47:56

trying to get a bit of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

David McBride 47:59

She's looking at a little bit of rough nails going on. It's nice, darling. She said, But I remember I've got Pilates tonight. So make sure you're home to pick up the kids job.

Dan Ilic 48:10

Yeah. When you're going through the process of whistleblow. What's the most absurd thing that you kind of encountered in with the authorities? You know, what's, what's the craziest thing?

David McBride 48:20

There's a lot that this is, you know, I went through all the secret files when I decided something was very wrong. And that offense was and I spent about six months working at night, looking for incriminating documents. And I got download them all and gave them to the ABC and said, Look, these ones, they're all selected. They're all I've highlighted the sections. Anyway, I knew these documents very well. And I'd selected them and that's why I'm facing trial. But when I was on trial, they used to take us into the Attorney General's office and especially as with all the documents were extensively to prepare our case. We're security guards and tourney generals, people watching us prepare our case in secret. And the documents were there and they were like to put it to me, he can't look at the documents because he doesn't have a security clearance at least classified and I'm like, I know what's in the fucking the documents I stole. They're like no, no exceptions. You can't look at them. And so then they these documents is precious documents. And as the time went on, I had to move them around in a safe the security guards would come around. And I think they got sick of it at one time. They had to call us up and said well, you can't have the documents today because the consignment order got mixed up and they've you know, gone to a double glazing office and we're trying to get them back as soon as we can.

Kate McClymont 49:53

Do they arrested double glazed

Dan Ilic 49:58

the rest of the Korea they came back and now framed Well, David, thank you for joining us. I hope we can get you again soon before at least before or after

Lewis Hobba 50:18

everyone understand that no, fuck yeah. That's right. We're about to get dangerous. This guy's standing up. Okay. Now secrets. We all have them. People on this panel they don't like a much zeal for disclosure is almost religious, but I'm an agnostic member in the church of full disclosure bit like the actual church. Boy, do they have some secrets? Of course some secrets deserve to be revealed. But be honest. Every now and then. A journalist uncovered something and you think to yourself, wish you hadn't told me that? Like why is it that we still don't know if the Queen killed Diana, but we do know that King Charles wants to be his wife's tampon didn't help me to know that hasn't stopped him being king. What's the point? You've just made me sad? I don't want to know these types of secrets. Oh, I haven't been out asleep for years because of this. But people like you had to go digging around. You know, when this whole thing broke the other nationals MP who thought that Barnaby should be sacked for cheating on his wife was this guy. And then you know what secrets the damn journalists found out about him. They found out that he'd been chatting to a woman who wasn't his wife using a sugar baby website. And that could have been enough. You could have stopped there. But no, you had to tell me the sex heroes. Do you remember this? When the woman said that she liked her Australian accent and he wrote I pull your clothes. Run my strong hands down your back. Softly kiss your neck and whisper get a mate

I still shudder every time someone says g'day to me. I can't you journalist has put out an article every week that says old men still gross. This specifics are ruining me. And it's not just the gross secret. See, though, like this week, someone discovered that a glazier in Chile had collapsed. No, keep that to yourself. You know, I know climate change is happening but I can't stop the glaciers from falling in Chile. I'd love to but I can and it's stressing me out. Some things are need to know right? But some things I don't need to know some things. I just need to know that the people who need to know know you know. You can just leave me out of it. Like journalists need to remember that snitches get stitches. He is a dangerous idea for you, Zipit knowing everything that's your interest. It's a great hobby. Keep it to yourself. Oh, great. You found out that the Prime Minister had 10 Secret jobs and gave out hundreds of millions of dollars. So they were basically bribes. Oh, good. Good. Now I'm confused and angry. Oh, great. We found out that dead shit politicians getting paid millions to move overseas when they get chased out of their current jobs here for being shitted them. Oh, great. Well, now I have to think about that. Well, I have to go to my poorly paid work and be competent. It's killing me. I think every journalist should be restricted to one secret per annum. On your birthday, you can tell me one secret as a treat 364 days to plan your next one. Just give me a chance to recover. And you want to be a whistleblower? Great. You can only blow one whistle at a time. I don't want to be told any more about all people secretly fucking their staff or publicly fucking the planet. Like I want to know the secret to cooking a good pizza at home. One that tastes as good as a restaurant. How do they do it? I want to know the secret to ordering clothes online that fit me the first I just want to know the secret to not being anxious all the time. And I think that starts with not knowing This stuff. Thank you.

Dan Ilic 55:02

Thank you Liz. That is it for rational Phoebe kinky for our guests. Dylan Lewis and Damien diamond MacDrive also big thanks to Robert mark our new patreon supporters Kelly Katherine Jenny the new work Daniel hobby Cecily Hardy Beck flight the official Avengers it has taken Brandon Aptech and our tech team here. Until next time, there's always something to be scared of Good night. Your fear is rational

Dan Ilic 0:00
Oh, hello everyone. Yay round of applause We haven't even done anything. It's it's fantastic.

Joy. We're recording a live podcast of our show. So you are an integral part of the show. So it's important to clap and cheer and laugh at all the jokes no matter the quality of the jokes. Yeah, that's right. Yes. Like,

move that person to the front. Yeah. Well, we've got a seat down here for you. Particularly at the top. At the very start of the show. Dan likes to start the show with three big jokes. terrible jokes very, very in quality.

And they are wafting. Terrible, yeah, really.

Lewis Hobba 0:42
For his sake. I beg if you clap, and she just pretend they're really good.

Dan Ilic 0:49
It's a format point of the show. We want to we want to be as close to the weekly as possible.

Lewis Hobba 0:56
It's gonna be a really fun show. This is an incredible house. And let's firstly just give it a huge round of applause. Yeah. Carriageworks festival dangerous idea.

Dan Ilic 1:03
Yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm Dan. And I'm Louis. Yeah. And we'll introduce these folks in a second. All right, great. I'm recording my end of irrational fear on Gadigal land in the urination sovereignty was never seated when at a treaty. Let's start the show.

Simon Chilvers 1:17
A rational fear contains naughty words like bricks, Canberra, fed gum, and section 40 of a rational fear recommended listening by immature audience.

Dan Ilic 1:31
leaked documents show that top defense officials were kept in the dark about submarine contracts. When asked about it, Scott Morrison said he wouldn't talk about ongoing underwater matters.

And in order to increase transparency Anthony Albanese auditor or government ministers to leave their dream journals unlocked. And Governor General David Hurley becomes a Patreon supporter of irrational fear. No jokes. He is the best Governor General ever. Viva la Governor General. It's the 17th of September 2022. And you'll if you're listening to this it means I'm in a secret prison in Tuggeranong. This is a rational

irrational fear on your hosts former sovereign Daniel itch and this is the show live at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. This is the podcast where we make fun of the toughest topics because you know if we don't we try. Let's meet our fear mongers for tonight. She's been uncovering lies in Sydney for over 25 years. Tonight we'll ask her for her tips about how to lie to her face. It's the host of Leia Leia, Kate McClymont.

Now Kate is not what we're talking about tonight. But everyone in this room wants to know did the husband do it?

Kate McClymont 2:55
Oh, you haven't left me with a foot to stand on.

Dan Ilic 3:00
Don't be fooled by this man's accent. He's so Australian. He makes the rest of us look like immigrants from the New York Times it's Damien caves. Damien when it comes to learning about Australia, is this something you haven't quite mastered yet?

Damien Cave 3:15
You know, I just discovered what it means to have a smoker still there.

Dan Ilic 3:22
And she's covered everything this year from Canberra to Kyiv tonight will be her toughest assignment yet, please give it up for Amber shocks.

And as a cranky journalist who is more transparent Russia or Australia

Amber Schultz 3:39
spends the metrics transparent about body composition that's transparent about ability to succumb to peer pressure. That's elbow.

Dan Ilic 3:49
And he's the former Australian Defense Lawyer turn whistleblower now professional panel guest is David McBride. David, is there anything funny about the being the enemy of the state?

David McBride 4:04
Well, it certainly makes your dating life a lot better. Say, Oh, I'm a lawyer. They're like, Oh, sickness, my boyfriend. You say I'm facing unlimited time in jail. You must be

Dan Ilic 4:22
really up for a one night stand.

Very day. And he's a government employee who's seen too much. And he's come here tonight to say enough is enough. It's Louis harbor. Lewis some. What secrets will you be revealing tonight?

What secrets? Yeah. Gosh, I'm gonna tell you. I can't What can I tell you who's gonna win the 100 100 next? The audience here would probably really care about that. All these

people are aging into the demographic. And he's on the paths and paths tonight is still in vain for the news fighters podcast.

Oh, this is great. Well, what a stellar lineup, we have got more influence and power on this panel than inside Scott Morrison's head. It's very exciting. And I don't blame him for signing up for more than one job. There's, there's, of course a labor crisis going on. It's very hard to find good help. We'll have more on the Morrison ministries a little later on. In fact, we'll hear from all of our fear mongers in just a second. But first, I'm going to do a bit of a deep dive to set the context for tonight's performances. I'm here to tell a story. There's an island in the Pacific that is on the verge of autocracy, its leaders have acquired a huge amount of power over its citizens. They raid journalists are reporting on crimes the state has committed, they lock up whistleblowers, for calling out corruption. If doctors and teachers talk about the jobs on social media, they could go to jail. And they banned reporting on certain modes of transport. So where the bloody hell are you? Well, if you answer that question out loud, you could go to jail, but I say because I'm brave. I'm not a coward. It's New Zealand and we need to keep an eye on. No, it's us. It's Australia. Prior to the National Security Information Act of 2004. The top three Australian secrets were the Vegemite recipe, the Australia two winged keel and Harold Holtz post Prime Ministerial career as a taxi driver in Bundaberg. No one ever talks about it. That's it. That's all the secrets we had in Australia, pre 2004. There was, of course, our Pine Gap. But that's more of an American CSR secret. Yeah. And the only person that can lose their job if they talk about is the prime minister. Everything else? Yes. Oh, because everything else is on the table until 911, which was or in Australia's case, our 911 was the tamper crisis. And that's when the National Information Security Act came in. And then the She'll be right. No walk and fairies version of Australia was locked away in John Howard's basement never to be seen again. Instead, we have a bunch of legislation that makes transparency harder than ever. The National Information Security Act is one thing up is the big one. Okay. Anything deemed by the government that is of a national security risk can't be reported on or it can't even go to court. And if it does go to court, you'll never hear about it. Like the case of witness J discovered in 2019, a person who was secretly jailed in the ICT, we don't know their name. We don't know their crime, their sentence or what they were sentence for. The only thing we do know is what they might look like thanks to a court sketch from the secret trial. Yeah. Look around you. It could be could be any one of us and how we know they exist in the first place was that they actually writing a memoir in jail. And the AFP went and raided their cell and they were so pissed off that the AFP raided their cell to take their memoir away. They took the ICT government to court to complain about it, and then we only find out about it because a Judge Burns read it out in court. And everyone's like, what the fuck with this secret guy got from? There was witness Kay a secret trial against a whistleblower who revealed that Australian secret agents bugged East Timor Prime Minister's office when we were negotiating Castile that was in 2004. That deal got torn up went to The Hague. There's a whole deal. They got renegotiated again, and then it wasn't until 2014. Witness Kay went to trial in secret in Australia, a decade later. Now, this should be concerning, because we don't know how many secret cases there are like this. They could be 1000s. I'm not an expert. But I think we should definitely investigate witnesses a true i. Now, that's one part secret trials, right. A couple of other things you should think about is this misnamed Freedom of Information Act, because it's not free, and you don't get any information. Journalists or anyone who is interested can actually request documents from the government. But it costs a shitloads of money. And if you're a journalist, it can take forever and go past your deadline. And they're pretty much useless when it comes back. When news organizations have the resources and time to challenge the government. It's a whole process, you got to go through the Information Commissioner, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, and then the federal court. And that process can take up to three fucking years to do that which case in our hypothetical, that journalist would have been laid off by several news organizations. But on the upside is now working inside the Prime Minister and Cabinet so they can look at all the documents they want. And then this is this is the national cabinet, a regular meeting of premiers and First Ministers and the Prime Minister. It was created during COVID to talk about what COVID Presumably, we actually don't know because it's secret. South Australia might want to change the size of their rail gauge again and ruin the dream to boomers across the country in the Indian Pacific. We don't know we need to know. We just have a minute song. So that joke.

Really excited for that. Used to be called COAG I don't know if anyone remembers this. The Commonwealth Heads of Government But it was changed for two reasons. First of all, it sounded like a brand of glue. And then Scott Morrison renamed the national cabinet that so he could basically claim that all the meetings were cabinet in confidence like the real Commonwealth cabinet, but it's not. It's just made up. Morrison just fucking made it up

Lewis Hobba 10:21
for now he's a cabinet maker as well. He's a cabinet maker.

Scott Morrison 10:29
That was good. Thank you.

Dan Ilic 10:32
Thank you, sir. You're allowed to lobby. You don't have to say that was good. But I'll tell you.

There are heroes on this island like the Auditor General whose great work includes sifting through tons of Excel spreadsheets to find any anomalies exposed waste and conflicts of interest. Here's what the Auditor General has done in the last little bit. You may remember the leppington triangles sportswriting carpark roads. Yeah, pretty good. What an incredible group of public service heroes give a round of applause pretty amazing work and what was their reward? Well, the Morison government defunded the pump by $14 million. Meaning that the Australian National Audit Office can now only complete 38 audits a year 38. That's not many. I think Angus Taylor has more offshore bank accounts than that. So yeah, I don't know if you've picked up a trend here. But these secrecy laws have been around a while, but it seems like they've only been used in the last 10 years or so.

It could have gotten into power 10 years or so. Is anyone who got their theory first public ministry 10 years or so. One prominent Senior Counsel Geoggrey Watson points the day that transparency died in Australia. Here's the exact date transparency died on Friday, the eighth of November 2013. It happened at a media briefing called then by the Immigration Minister Scott Morrison, you may remember it the overnight

Unknown Speaker 11:55
incident. What's become a vet photo of asylum seekers. I will not comment further in relation to onboarding matters. Thank you. This is a great public intro. In relation to on water matters. Have they been coming further in relation to on water matters? I think we've dealt with that question.

Unknown Speaker 12:16
And in terms of making that judgment, if they've done something because do customer Australia, doesn't that mean that your tax base policy

Scott Morrison 12:22
is kind of? Well, you've made a whole bunch of presumptions there, which I'm not about to speculate, maybe you can make them up for? Well, you're the one making the presumptions that may

Unknown Speaker 12:30
be the case of the overnight incident is not resolved. And that's why more information is not forthcoming. It's an ongoing

Scott Morrison 12:35
operational matter. And the persons that were at risk have all been accounted for. We're not going to go into the micro detail of these operational matters. What we are saying is that we rendered assistance, and all the people and all the people have been accounted for. So we can go around this for a lot longer. But that is the position. Scary what you get now, isn't it? Wow,

Dan Ilic 13:01
absolutely wild. You'll remember that.

David McBride 13:03
You notice Angus Campbell, before he became

Dan Ilic 13:07
chief of the defense straight after this? Yeah, like a year later, he was a chief of talent spawn. Yeah, so if you remember, do you remember that phrase, I will not comment in relation to home order matters, man. It was unrepeated every press conference for like six months until the press got bored and stopped going to those press conferences. He was even number five on the hottest 100 of that. Which is amazing. Also, it was on afternoon game shows as well. The

Unknown Speaker 13:33
final question was $7,000 Go to you go take a look at this picture. What's the well known catchphrase? It's an ongoing operational matter. Close Hey, I bet the audience knows what it was sadly, Scott, you missed out on the $7,000 which isn't enough to buy you a journalist. These are the happy you get anyway, tonight.

Scott Morrison 14:06
Yeah, I didn't get a logo.

Dan Ilic 14:09
That joke relies so heavily on people remembering birthdays catch.

Instead of showing the first competition is shown.

As Jeffrey watched an SC put it there was a hint in those words that it might have something to do with national security. But that was never the case. There was no evidence was ever produced at once the government got away with it once they got a taste for it. And that kind of secrecy is alluring and has an addictive quality. As what's inputted to me by phone, just like in sports. Once one side of the game starts cheating and gets away with it. Both sides start cheating and we're already seeing labor, hinting that they will continue on with national cabinet in secret. So this is where we are on this island today laws designed to protect its citizens instead use to protect the fragile egos of megalomaniacs. We elect. Yeah. And it seems today everything on this island is secret for no good reason as Damian cave put it in a great 2019 article titled Australian might be the world's most secretive democracy. This is what he wrote. The most recent expansion of government secrecy came last year with an espionage bill would increase criminal penalties for sharing information declassified, even if even if a document happened to be as harmless as a cafeteria menu. So the other day, I tested it out, I reached out to Aziz cafe, in the middle of Parliament House, you need a pass to get into it. Or the politicians and lobbyists go there. And I sent them a text and asked them to send me a photo of the menu and they sent it through. Fantastic and don't worry, the sources were redacted.

And in case you're wondering, they're the soup of the day is chicken. Yeah, so the guy

apparently got a problem for me to check. That's good, though. Very happy. So there we go. ever run a Festival of Dangerous Ideas, please give it up for Damien cage.

Damien Cave 16:12
Thank you. Thanks. So when I when I wrote that article, actually, you know, people thought I was crazy, calling Australia this extremely secretive democracy. But now that we have a prime minister with lots of secret jobs, maybe it's not so crazy. And maybe it's not just a crazy American who's, who's saying it? You know, since I wrote that story, there have been many more examples, lots of which you went into. But, you know, I think it's important to recognize that it's not just Canberra that this problem exists in. And, you know, I run into it all over the country when I'm dealing with people as a reporter. And I have a small story, a small example that will show you just how much it handles some of the most important issues at the local level. Like, can we get this image perhaps the giant banana, giant caveman banana? Let me back up for a minute. So we have a newsletter that The New York Times publishes every week called the Australia letter, which is basically a reporter riffing about the news of the week with a little bit of perspective. And so one week better, Odell was a wonderful writer for us. And Melbourne said, you know, I want to write about this public art thing. It's involves bananas and frogs and, and babies, and I had no idea what she was talking about. But I figured, yeah, for sure, go for it. So shockingly, after it runs, I get this email from somebody that says the subject line is immediate removal of article. And I'm wondering what on earth this is about, right. So I look in and I see that it's about the newsletter, which makes me go back and try to understand what this giant banana he-man thing is all about. And it turns out that there was an exchange being offered between, you know, a local council in Melbourne, and John Oliver, the comedian who John basically wanted to take this lovely piece of art off the hands of Melbourne and trade, and give them basically some frogs with some legs that were open a little bit wider than his approach. And along with that, he also had some babies that had been washed up on the shore and Texas, beautiful babies like this. And so he offered to trade these wonderful pieces of art for the he-man Banana. Basha was in favor of this plan. She loved the frogs, I think. So as you can see, this was a serious job of public interest journalism in Australia's greatest interests, which is why I was really surprised when I got an email and concerned I should say, and the subject line was immediate removal of article. I mean, that's a pretty big request. We don't take down articles from the New York Times, sometimes we attach a correction, maybe an Editor's Note, but take it down, I literally can't think of a single time that that's happened. And I worry that there must be some serious flaw in what beshear had written. But no, it turns out that the person in local government had an email exchange with her about whether the dollars could go into the recycling machine. And she was quoted as saying, and this is the exact quote, I don't know what the dolls are made of. So I can't officially comment either way. She wrote that in the email that her name was attached, and that it wasn't supposed to be because she did not consent to it, and was not an authorized spokesperson for the council, this council policy, she said, so at this point, I feel kind of bad. And I'm wondering like maybe this is just the person who happened to be in the office that day. So I go out and I look on LinkedIn and I discover that her actual title is Senior Advisor for media and communications. We had a bit more back and forth by email and she said that she was when she was quoted it was always without a name. Now at no point in this exchange with special did she request anonymity not that we would have granted it but the whole thing started to feel pretty ridiculous to me. I mean, here's a person who was being paid with tax dollars to give the media information demanding an article be spiked because she kind of did her job with a weird nothing burger. Have a comment about scary rubbery baby dolls. Like really, this is how far down the rabbit hole Australian secrecy is gone. But the thing is, I'd been around and I could also see this It really wasn't just her fault, right? This was bigger than her. This council did have a secrecy policy for almost everything. And everyone, just like Australia has a secrecy default for far too many things. As Dan mentioned, it's a habit, it gets addictive. She was just following the written and unwritten rules for the world's most secretive democracy. And I was pretty sure she didn't even see the context that way. So I tried to write back to her politely. And this is what I wrote. The problem here, it seems to me is the Australian practice of withholding names. In general, if you work for a public entity in a democracy, anonymity is not assumed you work for the public at taxpayer expense. And so in the future, if you don't want to be named, please make that clear in your exchange with New York Times reporters, and we can respond accordingly. She wrote me back and said, Thank you. This has been a huge lesson for me, in terms of dealing with reporters. Now again, this was her job.

Scott Morrison 20:50
So she was she was the senior media advisor.

Damien Cave 20:53
Yeah, exactly. Now, I wish that this was the only absurd example of Australia secrecy default in the years since I wrote that article, but it's not. There was also the time when I filed a public records request for some insight and what kinds of things the Foreign Investment Review Board was rejecting. I started out asking for companies and industries in the countries involved for every decision, I wanted to basically know what kinds of things were being rejected from China, in particular what or not, they said no to that. So then I just asked for numbers, lands statistics for which countries had applied and been rejected. I asked for ratios of accepted investments, anything that would give me any insight into what this very important government body was doing. And they said no to all of it. They just assumed it was a national security threat, whether or not China bought a dairy farm or not. More recently, and I'll end with this, I run into a senior Australian diplomat at an event who told me a handful of mildly insightful things about Australian foreign policies. At the end of our little chat, he looked at me in the eyes and he said, You can't quote or refer to anything I told you. I told them not to worry that I've been talking to a lot of Western officials from the US the UK a whole bunch of things on this story I was working on. So the most that I could imagine doing was combining what he said with others, and referring it to something like Western officials, in his eyes when Drew wide with fear. No, I've gotten in trouble for that. I've gotten in trouble for that, too. You can't do that you just can't. And again, none of what he told me amounted to state secrets, but he was completely stressed. It was like he feared being jailed or fired or killed for saying very, very little out. And that's really the problem here. The culture of secrecy has become so dominant in Australia that it muzzles, voices and sensors, people who are responsible for this democracy. Instead of recognizing that their roles include an obligation to the public to explain why they are what they are doing is good for the country. They behave as if telling the media and the public anything is a violation of ethics. And they are disciplined with that priority in mind, stay silent, keep information private, or else. Don't make any mistake. This is an authoritarian instinct. I've seen it in dictatorships around the world, and it's toxic and contagious. It's an attitude that strikes fear into everyone and anyone who has an urge to share important information that we deserve to know. One more thing, though some figures in Australian life, perhaps that former Prime Minister perhaps another member who we've tussled with, I think in the media quite a bit named Peter Dutton, have a far worse reputation on secrecy than others. But it is not a partisan problem. It's a political problem and a power problem and a habit problem. Even after Scott Morrison took on all those extra jobs, you did not see the Albanese government immediately promised to tackle the problem of secrecy all over government. And it's not clear if the Prime Minister ever will get around to dealing with it. This is the case even though countless studies show that secrecy undermines trust in democracy and creates the conditions for corruption and mismanagement. Australians really deserve better. My hope is that someday we get to a place where every official can speak freely, including those who have something to say about a gross baby doll washing up on shore, or a banana he-man public art project and

David McBride 23:54
I want to jump in because what you said rang true and I and I get it forget it later. But the they had a thing in the defense was about privacy, the Privacy Act, and I think people understood the idea obviously, you don't want people finding out about your sexual preference or whatever, because through some sort of a lake, but they took it very seriously. And we were in in dropping bombs on people in the Middle East. And I kid you not. There was like a senior defense lawyer. It was sort of like targeting this terrorist. It's gonna say to say a Hellfire besar they were like, I'm not sure we may be breaching their privacy guideposts the whole action

Dan Ilic 24:42
Damian has anything else? Kind of you've been here five years. Does anything else surprise you at all now due to kind of around secrecy in Australian Government?

Damien Cave 24:51
You know, I think I'm constantly surprised by moments like the one I just described where it's it's so deeply ingrained in the culture that the default setting is to just not attach a name or under an understanding of accountability at the low, low level. So that's the first thing. It's just throughout the culture. And then the second thing is, though, that I'm so pleasantly surprised when people actually trust me and do help me like there was one time I was in like the small town in South Australia doing a story about I think there was a it was a memorial to a massacre against the local Aboriginal people. And somebody in government, this was a very, really big controversial conflict in this small town. But someone quietly at some point, handed me the small blue book, and he said, This is the phone numbers for everyone in this town. You can call it whatever you want. Don't tell anyone I gave. And I don't know why he trusted me with that. But I'm so grateful to those people who, who, you know, feel that they've taken a chance on me as a journalist, and I'm and that surprises me, because it's so rare, unfortunately. Yeah.

Dan Ilic 25:49
Great. And what was the diplomat? What was he saying to you? Was he saying stuff? Like, you know, we sell a lot of shape in Australia.

Damien Cave 25:56
You know, he was like talking about like other leaders and like things that were totally part of the public record. Like, I think he maybe he thought he was saying these brilliant things, but I'd heard all of it. But

Amber Schultz 26:06
how much that has trickled down to normal conversation for I'll have dinner with a friend and they're just talking about the average Wednesday and they'll stop themselves and they'll be like, this is off the record.

Unknown Speaker 26:17
Yeah, exactly.

Damien Cave 26:18
That sense of self importance to I guess it's part of the secrecy thing. It's like whatever I'm doing it. I think it helps people sort of feel important to feel as though the menu for a restaurant might be secret.

Dan Ilic 26:27
All right, great. Well, I'm looking forward to the next secret spilled by Amber Schultz.

Amber Schultz 26:38
Last week, I went to this really glamorous event called the midwinter ball. So for those of you that don't know it's in Parliament, and it's an opportunity for journalists to cosplay as stage three tax cut recipients. We all go and the whole point of the event is to suck up to politicians and staffers and lobbyists. But what's weird is the entire thing as soon as you step through those doors, the entire event is off the record. It's all secret, which why you would have an event invite journalists and keep it off the record bewilders me it's not an ACO meeting. It's not an August meeting because if it was Scott Morrison would have leaked the Testaments and it's not despite what Senator Sarah Hanson young seem to think Met Gala event is the parliamentary ball. You know, Australia is addicted to secrecy. We've got witness que je lawyer X, you know, it sounds like a wiggle soul was Scott Morrison's ministerial appointments, whistleblowers a silence secret midwinter ball speeches, it's absolutely absurd. freedom of information requests in Australia across the past decade, have been rejected 50% year on year, those that are accepted, which is rare, but those that are accepted return pages upon pages of redacted information, so you just get a wall of black and it makes trying to figure out what the hell is going on about as difficult as reading a George RR Martin novel. But well, the government doesn't want to share any information with the public. It turns out the public is really, really happy to share information with the government. Yeah, we are we're a nation of dubbers. We love snitching It's absolutely absurd. And we didn't start like this. You know, Australia is, you know, our colonial history is a nation of convicts, and obviously the convicts aren't snitching, because the ones that snitched got stay in England. Our snitching culture is the result of some really, really successful marketing campaigns. So the government really does want whistleblowers that really wants people to come forward with information, provided, you're coming forward with information about Gen three doors down. So the first marketing campaign was Crimestoppers that started in the 80s. And that's been really successful. There's like 350,000 Tip offs per year. And about half of those actually result in a police report, which is hugely successful. And then of course, 911 happened and the government decided we need a national security hotline, we need something more tailored to terrorism. And conveniently, a lot of these national security hotline campaigns were released during elections because nothing else buys a vote like fear. So we had the if you see something, say something we had Be alert, not alarmed, and we had if it doesn't add up, speak up, we moved from loose lips sink ships to spy on your neighbor. It's normal behavior. But you know, a lot of these national security tips obviously a steeped in racism and prejudice. So Australia, we are trying to be better we are trying to be, you know, less divisive, more inclusive. So COVID presented a really fantastic opportunity of that because it meant we could dive on our neighbors regardless of race or background or socioeconomic class. It's progress, really. There was one example so there was so many people calling the police on one another often for really, really trivial things. One example was woman she's sitting home and she sees a photo scrolling through photos and she sees one where she looks absolutely shredded in her bikini from a holiday a year ago. She decides to post it on Facebook and suddenly the police are at a door. One of her Facebook friends saw that photo thought it was current and called the police on Yeah, that's how much we love snitching you know and you're worried about Zuckerberg spying on you. It's not so good for your old high school friend from 20 years ago. You know, we love snitching we have a dubbing hotline for almost everything. We have Dobbin a dealer that was launched in 2016. And DUBNER dealer has actually seen since the campaign launched, the number of people calling up about dealers double it's been really successful. Unfortunately, unfortunately, a tip off about AFLW style way Macquarie's dealer turned up nothing but crushed up bags of ibuprofen. It's a real hit and miss. We've got the job seeker Dobbin hotline which was cruelly caused it's not funny.

Kate McClymont 31:07
Scott Morrison was ringing constantly.

Amber Schultz 31:12
Which was currently called Adobe and Adobe Lightroom. Now that wasn't actually as successful because people didn't, you know, didn't really like the idea of dubbing in someone on the doll. But the people that did complain was small to medium businesses who said people that had applied for their jobs had lied on their CV, which is really funny because it just means the public is looking to John Barilaro. And taking a bit of a we also were used to we don't know, but we used to even have a hotline to dub in mislabeled seafoods. That's how much we love dubbing. Yeah. Yeah, there was a specific one for mislabeled seafood. Wow.

Damien Cave 31:47
Sounds like a micro detail.

Scott Morrison 31:50
RAM sticks.

Amber Schultz 31:53
So tip offs and Dobbins are a dime a dozen. I mean in this economy, who knows, but really a diamond doesn't. So while you can't know what subpar jokes Albanese staff wrote for him at the midwinter ball speech he can know about that job interview, you didn't show up for you know, he can know about that crushed up bag of ibuprofen you bought, or he can know about that weird photo you posted on Facebook. So while the government you know, wants information from you, but only wants really, really trivial trivial information, you know, try snitching about something of importance and you know the thing snitches get stitches closed or prosecution

Dan Ilic 32:37
and, you know, it costs money to do foi stuff. But what's the most you've ever cost Crikey. In your career as a journalist,

Amber Schultz 32:48
I probably set a record for the fastest lawsuit from a new hire because I hit three days and immediately got a consent notice. So, you know, I don't know if you know this. But Craig, he has a very long rich history of being sued for defamation. So I was proud to join that on day three.

Dan Ilic 33:05
It's kind of interesting, like you're talking about midway to Boulder, and the inverse, the immediate comparison is the White House press correspondents dinner in DC and which is like public broadcast celebrities, everyone wants to go to it. It's like, if you're a leader and you're at that event, you are going to get roasted and you if you if you fuck up on stage, you're going to eat it in front of everyone. It's like that is like the absolute icon of like that when you look at both countries, Australia and America, that's like transparency back to back

anytime you are looking at America with respect and thinking like that they are more relaxed than us. Like, we need to have a good hard look at ourselves. It's like secret dinners for the whatever for the President and wave laws. Like what are we doing? Yeah, but it's weird those because we there's a not a bowl but there's a annual invite by ABC employee like the a bunch of ABC employees get basically instructed to go down to Parliament House and kiss the ring to suck up tour, isn't it? Well, yeah. And so one no, well, one year I was told to go down and as you know, the face of youth as I was back then and and it's so weird because obviously all politicians hate young people. So they were just like, get the fuck out of here. But then they everyone was like all of the ABC celebs out there trying to like impress you know, someone who would give us money and they didn't give a shit until b one and B two came out. And those politicians were fucking bananas. Like they were all grabbing photo like they were so excited. We're just like, well, I just wouldn't got drunk with Costa

those politicians weren't obviously from Fitzroy. Exactly. And but when you're around Parliament House lately, can you tell If there's like a tone changed since the new government is coming like is there, is there a different feeling around the press color?

Amber Schultz 35:07
There is I mean slightly. We've got the little, like little postcards that have the one 800 parliamentary support services number on it, but that they're everywhere. But aside from that, the only difference is people constantly if anyone like gets too close or accidentally brushes past someone, someone will yell Jenkins about the only difference.

Dan Ilic 35:28
That's great. It's easy to make fun of the press gallery for kind of hypocrisy. They're under pressure from the government. It it's kind of interesting to see over the last couple of years how news reports have changed, particularly under the Morison government I don't know if you've noticed. Here's a clip from Channel 10 News.

Unknown Speaker 35:48
Here are the headlines approved by the Department of Communications on 10. The Royal Commission into how good is Australia has found that Australia is very good and colder than many estimates predicted. The Department of Fair go agrees with the findings saying that Aussies are getting fair a goes and more goes than ever before. And Australia's most prestigious honor the Order of Australia is having a makeover with a brand new category added to the list. So move over items and AM's there's a new metal on the podium. It's the QA, which will be awarded to the most quiet Australian and that's someone who excels at showing complete disinterest in the affairs of government and goes about their day unquestioning the world around them. Nominations are now open. So good luck to everyone. And in sports, Australia's cricket team are the best and they will win the ashes if any of the current deliver want to see the loved ones again, turning to the weather, despite what it looks like out of the window, it is fine. And definitely average temperatures for this time of year. Definitely not white hotter than usual. That is, of course all the approved news for now in the greatest country in the world. And remember, it's on Australian to not have private health insurance.

Unknown Speaker 37:09
Ladies and gentlemen,

Dan Ilic 37:10
please give it up for Kate McClymont

Kate McClymont 37:19
Right, I'm going to give you some tips tonight on how to avoid me. So I find now that often when I ring people up, I can hear them and I say, oh, it's Kate McClymont. Here, I can hit and go. But anyway, if you want to be secret, one of the things I want to advise you is not to buy a voice distorter. So I did have someone ring up to give me some very highly confidential information. And they've gone to the trouble of buying a voice distorter and it did sound like a crazed robot. But the information was absolutely fabulous. And I said at the end of the conversation, thank you so much. And now I can get you on this number for safe forgotten. Voice distorter that number still came up. Don't buy voice disorder. And too. If you want to remain secret, please use Australia Post snail mail, it's still the best way to send things. However, if you are one of the bead family, and you are sitting there sending me death threats, please wear gloves. Your fingerprints were on the envelope. And on the inside. So gloves if you really don't want to be. And one other thing I'd like to advise Eddie obeyed was in the past. When I rang his office to get some questions. He forgot to hang up. The phone on and I listened for 20 minutes, as they discussed how they were going to lie to me what they were going to say. And in the end, I had to call in on the office spoke. And I said look, Eddie, it's been so lovely hearing you talk about me. It's been so lovely hearing your plants. However, I really need a comment and I just heard them go off. They hung up. Another thing is that when a major crime figure has died, don't go behind the crypt at the funeral to discuss where the money is. This happened at many Macpherson's funeral, and I'd already been threatened so I thought I would hide behind the crypt. But on the other side of the crypt was Lenny McPherson solicitor, who was chatting away about where the money was hidden, what companies they had. So that was very handy. And having said those things I Do want to just take one moment to say that I am also an idiot when it comes to, you know, giving my own things away, Louis reminded me today that I accidentally sent a pin with my location on it to the head of the Hells Angels. Caitlin climber is here. Not so good. Then I sent a photo of my ear. How would you take a photo of your ear and send it, but I sent that to one of my colleagues who thought I, somebody had cut it off. And I was like, and then the last thing I did was that I did have my phone in my pocket. And I sent a whole lot of gibberish to Twitter. And people contacted me saying, should they call the police? Had I been kidnapped? Had I been kidnapped? And was this a secret cry for help? So I would just like to say that I too, like many of the criminals I cover am an idiot

Dan Ilic 41:10
Do you ever feel honestly feel like your life is in danger?

Kate McClymont 41:16
I always take the one of my contacts who was a detective said to me, Kate, don't worry about the ones that threaten you. It's the ones that don't. And I did get a death threat death threat delivered to my house and that did have 303 on it. And I said to my husband what that's actually our address 303 And he said it's a rifle, you idiot. And it doesn't help when you don't actually understand that you are a threat to your own house. Oh,

Dan Ilic 41:47
so if we were to send a death threat to you, what's the best kind of

Kate McClymont 41:53
with the with the fingerprints? And what

Dan Ilic 41:55
is the best way to actually stay secret from me rather than you know all the mistakes? But like, How does someone? How does someone truly avoid Kate McLemore?

Kate McClymont 42:03
No, it's very hard. Because the first thing I do is, if you come across my radar, the first thing to do is don't behave badly. That's how you can avoid me. But the first thing I do is I will do an ASIC search. If you have a company, I will find out how old you were where you used to live, whether you've got a mortgage on your house, how much you paid for your house, who lives next door who lives on the other side? What is your phone number? So

Dan Ilic 42:30
is there like other ways that you do that publicly available?

Kate McClymont 42:35
Just expensive. It's just expensive. I think I have the sort of an ASIC addiction in poker machines. I have that thing of doing an ASIC search, and my heart is racing. I'm waiting to find out who was in that company with that person. I love it.

Dan Ilic 42:53
Some people pay for Paramount plus Did you ever pull up video bed and try to read negotiate a mortgage.

Kate McClymont 43:03
Last time I did ring him up. He said to me, you put one word out of line and I will go for you. I will go for the jugular Have a nice day. So

Damien Cave 43:18
most friends say Have a nice day.

Kate McClymont 43:20
He's now in jail. And I just think having to spend eternity with your son Mosers. Punishment

Dan Ilic 43:37
David McBride is a former military officer who served with both the ADF and British armies in Ireland and Afghanistan. And he now faces unlimited years in jail after exposing cover ups of war crimes committed by Australians in Afghanistan, yet he did not get invited to the Queen's commemorations.

Unknown Speaker 43:55
Everyone please welcome David O'Brien.

Dan Ilic 44:03
David with unlimited jail on the cards, it must play havoc with your psyche. How you preparing?

David McBride 44:12
It's quite a useful terms. At first, when I was first going to court and at a legal aid lawyer, I met a guy who was a lifetime prisoner with tattoos all over me. And he was like, I'm gonna give you some tips when you go to jail, but I was like, Okay. And he said, you know, you got to keep it very tidy because some people's homes and he said, you know, said what's your cover story going to be? I said, Well, why cover story? I'm, I'm a whistleblower, and you know, fighting the government. I can't see what's going to beat me up and he was like, no, no, no. He said, they're gonna beat you up. He said, he said, I might even understand what a whistle blower is. He said, I thought was you I'd say you killed your sergeant. And I made a mental note. I thought I'm gonna get a bigger tattoo. And then And then he said, Well, how many years you're facing anyone? I said, Well, it's unlimited. And he said, What do you mean? I said, it's unlimited. And he said, Well, what? 500 years? I said, yeah, maybe 800? I said you possibly if they just had a bad day? Who knows? And he was like, you're going to do all right. He said, they might give you a double sell. So that was one of the

Dan Ilic 45:24
opioids. When you went through the process of, you know, whistleblowing, did you ever think, oh, geez, I wish I hadn't had exposed the war criminals. Yeah,

David McBride 45:37
I know, I never thought that I must have been, I never thought they were low. In the position I'm in now, where it looks like, you know, I could be going to jail for a long time for doing what I thought was the right thing. But I do sometimes think I've got to sue Hollywood, flick back, he gives me these ideas. Somehow that was the right thing to do. When actually, it was obviously a very dangerous, like

Unknown Speaker 45:58
a few good men that lets me maybe

David McBride 46:01
get a big class, I could be the richest person to jail and never get to be able to spend that money.

Dan Ilic 46:06
The sad thing is like, if you sell your story that goes really well, as a feature film, that would be terrible.

It's quite remarkable what you've done. It's a it's a real act of service for democracy. And it's really astounding, that we all know what, you know, our defense force has done on our behalf. And I think we're all better off than knowing that Does your family know that your hero

David McBride 46:35
could ever be a hero to your family. And I've tried to, I tried to try to pull the hero card a couple of times that they kids, when they're playing after they kind of want this, they want more money for the dress or something. And I'm like, Look, it's it's pretty hard for me and I am standing up for what is right and for your future and your children's future. And, and they go roll their eyes and they go dead. That's all very well when you get to get an actual job. So it doesn't cut my job. That's for sure ever with my ex wife. And I was like, telling her about try to break the news to her that the cops could be coming in numbers. I'd had secret documents that I was like, Look at Skinner, for taking on the Defence Force. And she was like, Oh, that's wonderful. Darlings was good. The falling and nails. And then I'm like I tried to make she didn't seem that impressed. I'm like, I'm really taking on the whole government that she's like, oh, yeah, that's good, darling. And I'm like, she wasn't very impressed. And I was trying to get a bit of hero. Record here. I create exactly what you think you get. And I'm like, an effectively because orchestrate everything I'm really taking on the American government and the CIA. You're upping the stakes. Yeah, I'm

Unknown Speaker 47:56
trying to get a bit of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

David McBride 47:59
She's looking at a little bit of rough nails going on. It's nice, darling. She said, But I remember I've got Pilates tonight. So make sure you're home to pick up the kids job.

Dan Ilic 48:10
Yeah. When you're going through the process of whistleblow. What's the most absurd thing that you kind of encountered in with the authorities? You know, what's, what's the craziest thing?

David McBride 48:20
There's a lot that this is, you know, I went through all the secret files when I decided something was very wrong. And that offense was and I spent about six months working at night, looking for incriminating documents. And I got download them all and gave them to the ABC and said, Look, these ones, they're all selected. They're all I've highlighted the sections. Anyway, I knew these documents very well. And I'd selected them and that's why I'm facing trial. But when I was on trial, they used to take us into the Attorney General's office and especially as with all the documents were extensively to prepare our case. We're security guards and tourney generals, people watching us prepare our case in secret. And the documents were there and they were like to put it to me, he can't look at the documents because he doesn't have a security clearance at least classified and I'm like, I know what's in the fucking the documents I stole. They're like no, no exceptions. You can't look at them. And so then they these documents is precious documents. And as the time went on, I had to move them around in a safe the security guards would come around. And I think they got sick of it at one time. They had to call us up and said well, you can't have the documents today because the consignment order got mixed up and they've you know, gone to a double glazing office and we're trying to get them back as soon as we can.

Kate McClymont 49:53
Do they arrested double glazed

Dan Ilic 49:58
the rest of the Korea they came back and now framed Well, David, thank you for joining us. I hope we can get you again soon before at least before or after

Lewis Hobba 50:18
everyone understand that no, fuck yeah. That's right. We're about to get dangerous. This guy's standing up. Okay. Now secrets. We all have them. People on this panel they don't like a much zeal for disclosure is almost religious, but I'm an agnostic member in the church of full disclosure bit like the actual church. Boy, do they have some secrets? Of course some secrets deserve to be revealed. But be honest. Every now and then. A journalist uncovered something and you think to yourself, wish you hadn't told me that? Like why is it that we still don't know if the Queen killed Diana, but we do know that King Charles wants to be his wife's tampon didn't help me to know that hasn't stopped him being king. What's the point? You've just made me sad? I don't want to know these types of secrets. Oh, I haven't been out asleep for years because of this. But people like you had to go digging around. You know, when this whole thing broke the other nationals MP who thought that Barnaby should be sacked for cheating on his wife was this guy. And then you know what secrets the damn journalists found out about him. They found out that he'd been chatting to a woman who wasn't his wife using a sugar baby website. And that could have been enough. You could have stopped there. But no, you had to tell me the sex heroes. Do you remember this? When the woman said that she liked her Australian accent and he wrote I pull your clothes. Run my strong hands down your back. Softly kiss your neck and whisper get a mate

I still shudder every time someone says g'day to me. I can't you journalist has put out an article every week that says old men still gross. This specifics are ruining me. And it's not just the gross secret. See, though, like this week, someone discovered that a glazier in Chile had collapsed. No, keep that to yourself. You know, I know climate change is happening but I can't stop the glaciers from falling in Chile. I'd love to but I can and it's stressing me out. Some things are need to know right? But some things I don't need to know some things. I just need to know that the people who need to know know you know. You can just leave me out of it. Like journalists need to remember that snitches get stitches. He is a dangerous idea for you, Zipit knowing everything that's your interest. It's a great hobby. Keep it to yourself. Oh, great. You found out that the Prime Minister had 10 Secret jobs and gave out hundreds of millions of dollars. So they were basically bribes. Oh, good. Good. Now I'm confused and angry. Oh, great. We found out that dead shit politicians getting paid millions to move overseas when they get chased out of their current jobs here for being shitted them. Oh, great. Well, now I have to think about that. Well, I have to go to my poorly paid work and be competent. It's killing me. I think every journalist should be restricted to one secret per annum. On your birthday, you can tell me one secret as a treat 364 days to plan your next one. Just give me a chance to recover. And you want to be a whistleblower? Great. You can only blow one whistle at a time. I don't want to be told any more about all people secretly fucking their staff or publicly fucking the planet. Like I want to know the secret to cooking a good pizza at home. One that tastes as good as a restaurant. How do they do it? I want to know the secret to ordering clothes online that fit me the first I just want to know the secret to not being anxious all the time. And I think that starts with not knowing This stuff. Thank you.

Dan Ilic 55:02
Thank you Liz. That is it for rational Phoebe kinky for our guests. Dylan Lewis and Damien diamond MacDrive also big thanks to Robert mark our new patreon supporters Kelly Katherine Jenny the new work Daniel hobby Cecily Hardy Beck flight the official Avengers it has taken Brandon Aptech and our tech team here. Until next time, there's always something to be scared of Good night. Your fear is rational

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