A Secret Australia: Revealed by the WikiLeaks Exposes, edited by Felicity Ruby and Peter Cronau
The rain drizzled around me like shards of disillusionment as I turned the last page of A Secret Australia: Revealed by the WikiLeaks Exposes, edited by Felicity Ruby and Peter Cronau. The collection of essays by barristers, journalists, researchers, and public servants provided hard evidence for what I had long known but not always been able to articulate: that the Australian Government favours their US alliance over our lives, economy, and well-being. From foreign affairs to the granting of intellectual property patents, war crimes, and embassy agendas, the breadth of the analysis provided by the 18 contributors illuminates the extent of WikiLeaks’ damage to Australia’s self-image. Faced with Julian Assange’s premier enactment of verification journalism and digital commons, politicians’ claims of ‘mateship’, ‘fair-go’, and ‘supporting Australian interests’ become nebulous at best and deliberate falsehoods at worst. The authors do not merely applaud the work of Julian Assange, but also reveal the duplicity of the Australian Government.
All essays in the book were provided by contributors without receiving payment and all proceeds from the project were donated directly to the Courage Foundation, an international fund supporting the legal and public defences of journalists and whistle-blowers. Some of the essays were marvellous; some were convoluted; some assumed a lot of prior knowledge; and some explained every acronym to a fault. But the book’s variety is its strength as it explores how Julian Assange’s work has touched all of our lives as contemporary Australians, global citizens, users of technology, and consumers of journalism. If nothing else, the book will force you to do at least one Google search, or one browse of WikiLeaks to form your own opinion on public officials, which is the constitutional right of Australians, and the aim of Assange’s work, all along.
Book review by Ashton Darracott
This article appeared in the The Gavel #1 ‘The Among Us Issue’ (2021) Publication