Secrets and lies: gagging the RBA

This is a little out of date, seems I saved it as a draft and forgot it:

One thing that very few people really campaign for but that would immensely help us all is Freedom of Information. The record of the governments, politicians and officials regarding freeing of information is that they don't. "National Security" and other such loose terms are routinely slung at any suggestion that our elected representatives actually provide the reasoning and records of the decisions they make.

Honestly, is there any conceivable reason Howard's briefing by Navy officials regarding the "children overboard" could not be broadcast on national TV? If the best Colin Powell had to offer as proof of (ghostly) WMD's was a bunch of photographs taken from a satellite why did it take a year to come out and why were American briefings with Australian government officials behind closed doors?

The answer is obvious of course, there is a premeditated intention to deceive the public. And the cornerstone of all political lying is the ability to deny ever having been told something and ever having said something. If the information available to the government and the discussion leading up to a decision was on the public record it would be an Aweful lot harder for politicians to lie.

So where does our current government stand on this issue? Howard has systematically politicized the civil service and repeatedly left them flapping in the breeze when it became politically expedient. His latest effort involves the Reserve Bank. As we all know, Australians voted Howard back into office to protect the low interest rates on the mortgages they've used to pay for their house, car, pool and sundry renovation and holiday exploits.

Now, the civil servants who control those interest rates in order to maintain a stable Australian economy are the ones who work in the Reserve Bank. Crikey is reporting that Reserve Bank governor Ian Macfarlane has used extraordinary legal powers to keep the central bank's deliberations on interest rates secret. This news is actually originally from Rupert Murdoch's Australian, God bless him, and it seems they are the only national paper even showing an interest in the story.

Basically the RBA's govenor has put a gag order on it's interest rate discussions. That means it doesn't have to publish the fact that it's taking orders from Howard at the risk of national economic chaos.

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