The Attorney General’s break with tradition


The standard response of the Federal Attorney General for 50 years has been to refuse to answer questions about national security. That tradition was broken last week when Robert McClelland released this press statement:
This unequivocal response to suggestions that Ms Helen Liu was some kind of security risk would satisfy any reasonable person. In this age of whistle blowers, neither an Attorney General nor a head of ASIO would expose himself to being proved wrong by the leaking of information to the contrary. Yet the slur of being called a spy continues to be fostered by the Murdoch press — no doubt at the urging of members of the Federal Opposition who have no concern at trashing an innocent woman’s reputation in their pursuit of the political scalp of the Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon.
It is ugly politics at its worst.

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