The article doesn’t say what arguments were disallowed: he is not allowed to cite the public interest as a defense for his actions, because the Australian military supposedly must follow orders over considering the public’s wellbeing.
They just said out loud that the military are goons that serve the ruling class.
Yeah?
This wasn’t a secret, it’s really only American propaganda that’s got them thinking soldiers are hero’s and protector’s or something.
It was an open secret, but codifying it into law is yet another sign of the country’s rightward slide into fascism. Now they can’t deny it.
Man what the fuck are we even doing. Are the war-criminals at least going to be investigated as well? I can’t believe this country, really wish things were different.
Sadly, It’s like that in a lot of places. This guy had a huge amount of integrity and did something about a crime and he’s getting punished over it
Jesus
Ones already in court, Roberts-Smith and others are still under investigation.
And we completely axed two regiments of the SAS.
Other than going after the whistleblower, the response has been okay.
Man, awful that he is being punished for objectively exposing warcrimes.
They want to send the message that whistleblowers will be punished. They want to silence people from speaking out.
Free speech, but only if it doesn’t harm the government.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A whistleblower who helped expose allegations of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan has pleaded guilty to leaking classified information.
David McBride was due to face trial next week, but changed his plea after a legal ruling scuppered his defence.
McBride admits he gave troves of documents to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), because he was concerned about what he then thought was the “over-investigation” of troops, the court heard.
The information he provided underpinned a series of reports in 2017 called The Afghan Files, which gave unprecedented insight into the operations of Australia’s elite special forces in Afghanistan, and contained allegations of war crimes.
Months after McBride’s arrest in 2019, the ABC was raided by federal police, who were also building a case against the journalist, Dan Oakes, who wrote the reports.
McBride - who initially faced five charges - had intended to argue his disclosure was protected by whistleblower safeguards in Australia.
The original article contains 439 words, the summary contains 153 words. Saved 65%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
