Kessing should get the Order of Australia for exposing this foul disorder. The govt. should exhume all the other Kessings they’ve surreptitiously disposed of over the last century. They are buried national treasures.

There are many aspects of this case deserving criticism. The previous Howard government was absolutely disgusting in its treatment of this man. The current Labor government has done SFA to help him, and equally the Fairfax press appear to have ignored his case because it was a story initially broken by the Australian newspaper which is its deadly enemy.

Recent disclosures that our ports are similarly predisposed to allowing criminals and miscreants free rein would indicate that the Customs service is either under resourced, incompetently managed or in probability both descriptions are accurate. When we have an informal unholy alliance between big business which does not want to behave responsibly, and unions whose members involved some criminal activity, we are in serious trouble.

We have to endure removal of our shoes and belts in a futile display of security at airports whilst baggage handlers and stevedores with criminal backgrounds are ostensibly operating with minimal restraint. It is about time the Rudd government did something serious about addressing these issues.

I reproduce for the benefit of crikey readers the text of the letter recently published in the Australian Newspapernin relation to Mr. Kesssing’s case.

The Lonely Whistleblower

The recent disclosure (Australian 7 September) that the Labor Party turned away whistleblower Allan Kessing and refused to act is not surprising. When he provided opposition ALP MP Anthony Albanese ( now the Transport Minister) with access to a secret report on security flaws at Sydney airport he created some difficulty. To act whilst in a opposition would encourage future whistleblowers which is a problem when you are in government. The sad fact of the matter is that politicians of all persuasions hate whistleblowers because they all have skeletons in their cupboards. In opposition, they pay lip service to disclosure but in power they do their best to suppress dissent.

The sad case of Alan Kessing is a classic example. Whilst Labor was in opposition, and the Liberals were copping flak over Sydney airport Customs debacle Labor politicians displayed some overt sympathy with Kessing’s case. However as we can now see they failed to act even when given the information prior to its public disclosure. Furthermore they have done absolutely nothing effective in relation to his case since they got into power.

It should be noted that in Kesssing’s case, the Howard government didn’t have the guts to go after the journalists concerned in the disclosure (which led to $200m of reforms at Sydney airport), but they prosecuted Kesssing (the poor retired public servant) who was presumably a softer touch. This is straight out of the Mao Zedong management philosophy of “execute one educate a thousand”.

The current Whistleblower legislation, State and Federal is ineffective and provides little practical protection to public servants or journalists. A government serious about good governance would facilitate whistleblowing, and give some effective statutory protection to both the whistleblower and the channels through which information is publicised.. However no such reform is ever likely from government intent on protecting its own backside from whistleblowers.

Greg Angelo

What was the Howard Govt thinking? That if they left the ‘door’ open long enough that sure enough some violent extremist would give them the missing Iraq WMD rationale?

It’s quite a mystery. What level of responsibility does Mr Kessing attribute to that nice Mr Anderson I wonder. Resignation? Hardly the accountability I have in mind.