I wrote a piece about #cable­gate last week in the con­text of open gov­ern­ment. Since then I’ve read and thought about it much more, and my view hasn’t changed.

Here in Aus­tralia, the response from the media and politi­cians is largely as vacant of sub­stance as it has been else­where. Though here in Aus­tralia, there’s an addi­tional point of con­text that both­ers me more than any­thing else.

The rhetoric from the PM and AG is espe­cially wor­ry­ing. The Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment has a duty to express con­cern for and pro­tect any Aus­tralian cit­i­zen at risk over­seas, whether or not they agree with what they’ve done. Talk of Julian Assange being “not wel­come in Aus­tralia” and can­celling his pass­port, let alone the PM declar­ing his actions “ille­gal” are nas­tily off beam. They rep­re­sent a world­view that unsur­pris­ingly can’t con­ceive of a par­a­digm where a small group (dare I say oli­garchy?) is the controlling force.

Until Assange (who bugs me no end, some­times) is actu­ally charged some­where (any­where) with a crime related to the work Wik­ileaks does, talk like that is dan­ger­ous indeed.

On the off chance oth­ers have missed them, there’s been some excel­lent cov­er­age in sev­eral media includ­ing The Drum (Loewenstein’s piece espe­cially), The Econ­o­mist and The Atlantic. Do your­self a favor and read them for con­text on this matter.