Canberra has become a fascinating place in the last week. However, fascinating in this instance does not necessarily bestow a grace, but might as easily raise some serious questions. Apparently, as a senior parliamentarian, when you are invited around to Embassies you can, if you choose, start giving away highly confidential information about our nation’s senior office holders and the organising of changes forthwith. It had never crossed my mind, on the rare occasion I went to another nation’s Embassy, to do anything but shut up about sensitive information regardless of whether I was in Government or Opposition.
I think Senator Arbib should now inform all of us in the political field about what we can say to which Embassies and when and how we go about getting that special designation that he attained from the US of “No Forn”. If it is alright to tell the American Embassy things about the prospective changes at the highest level in Australia before even those office holders themselves know about it then can we also tell the British, the French, the Iranians, the Chinese, the Kenyans or are there some that we can and some that we cannot tell?
Senator Arbib apparently has an innate knowledge to determine what can and cannot be said and he apparently also has the authority to say it. If Senator Arbib could put this into a booklet it would be very handy for the rest of us to clear up any confusion at future evening soirées at the pleasure of His or Her Excellency of wherever. We could carry it with us in case we needed a guide to become really interesting, unnervingly interesting, in the middle of dinner as the guest of another nation.
It is reported that Senator Arbib told the American Embassy that he wanted the disclosure of this information to be kept secret. He did not mean secret from the US government, he meant secret from the people of Australia. Did Senator Arbib have authority to do this and if so who gave him that authority? Can the Prime Minister go on the record and confirm where his authority to act in this manner came from?
At the very least, Senator Arbib has put himself in a position where people will be very circumspect to trust him again. His name will be associated with a very bad taste in your mouth about exactly who this person is and what he is up to. Just for the minute, imagine the hue and cry in the media if these reports had filtered back to the Australian public about a person from any other party being noted as “No Forn” disclosing information to the US Embassy about top level highly secretive political movements within Parliament House.
Because of the pathos of the Labor party at the moment you cannot help but draw the absurd spoof metaphors of the wannabe secret agent. But on quiet reflection, it is far more serious than that. If this episode just goes straight through to the keeper, then we have really lowered the bar as to what will happen next time. It’s not a case of disclosure to friend and not to foe. It is a case of not disclosing to anybody outside your role and in the form clearly designated by your job.
There have been claims that these leaks to the US are the same as “backgrounding the media”, but I find these issues fundamentally different. Backgrounding the media means that you are disclosing information that is meant for public consumption which you believe the public have a right to know but you are scared about what will happen if you are found disclosing it. Yes, at times, that’s cowardice. To give information to another nation’s government that is private or secret, is to give another nation an advantage. If the foreign power did not gain an advantage from the information, they would not be interested in it.
In an ironic way, this is one good thing which has come to light from Wikileaks and it obviously needs to be dealt with. No one is denying these discussions happened. They happened. They argue about the extent and the gravitas of it, but they are not denying that they happened. The vast majority of Wikileaks are just salacious echoes of the bleeding obvious, but these revelations about Senator Mark Arbib are something entirely different.