In The Third Reich in Power, 1933-1939 (2005), Richard Evans says of concentration camps in the Reich that officers and guards were banned from talking about their work:

Communication between inmates and their relatives or friends was restricted; officers and guards were banned from talking about their work to outsiders.  What happened in the camps was meant to be shrouded in mystery.  Attempts by the regular police and prosecution authorities to investigate murders that took place there in the early years were generally rebuffed.  By 1936, the concentration camps had become institutions beyond the law.  On the other hand, however, the regime made no secret at all of the basic fact of their existence.  The opening of Dachau in 1933 was widely reported in the press, and further stories told how Communist, and Reichsbanner and ‘Marxist’ functionaries who endangered state security were being sent there; how numbers of inmates grew rapidly into the hundreds; how they were being set to work; and how lurid atrocity stories of what went on inside were incorrect.  The fact that people were publicly warned in the press not to try and peer into the camp, and would be shot if they tried to climb the walls, only served to increase the general fear and apprehension that these stories must have spread.  What happened in the camps was a nameless horror that was all the more potent because its reality could only be guessed at from the broken bodies and spirits of inmates when they were released.  There could be few more frightening indications of what would happen to people who engaged in political opposition or expressed political dissent, or, by 1938 – 9, deviated from the norms of behaviour to which the citizen of the Third  Reich was supposed to adhere. 

Well, that kind of evil madness could only happen in a totalitarian state like Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s USSR, could it not?  No.  It is happening here.  The Australian Border Force Act 2015 is presumably part of what Tony Abbott calls his legacy.  S 42 provides for secrecy in terms that Stalin and Hitler would have gazed on in wonder.

Secrecy

             (1)  A person commits an offence if:

                     (a)  the person is, or has been, an entrusted person; and

                     (b)  the person makes a record of, or discloses, information; and

                     (c)  the information is protected information.

Penalty:  Imprisonment for 2 years.

Exception

             (2)  Subsection (1) does not apply if:

                     (a)  the making of the record or disclosure is authorised by section 43, 44, 45, 47, 48 or 49; or

                     (b)  the making of the record or disclosure is in the course of the person’s employment or service as an entrusted person; or

                     (c)  the making of the record or disclosure is required or authorised by or under a law of the Commonwealth, a State or a Territory; or

                     (d)  the making of the record or disclosure is required by an order or direction of a court or tribunal.

Note:          A defendant bears an evidential burden in relation to a matter in subsection (2) (see subsection 13.3(3) of the Criminal Code).

The relevant terms are of course defined in cascading rainbows or snow jobs, but doing the best I can to apply this law – which like most contemporary legislation is just about indecipherable – a person employed in one of our offshore camps would breach this law if she told her husband that a colleague at work had broken wind after biting into a bad mandarin.

This law is a confession of our shame at the highest and most formal level.  No wonder people look on us so darkly in Europe.  We should all be ashamed.  Instead, we just shoot the messenger.

Poet of the Month: Verlaine

Through Interminable Land…

Through interminable land

Ennui of the plain,

Vague snow once again

Gleams like sand.

The sky is copper

Devoid of any light,

You might almost gather

The moon had lived and died.

Floating clouds

Grey oak-trees lift

In near-by woods

Among the mists.

The sky is copper

Devoid of any light,

You might almost gather

The moon had lived and died.

Wheezing crow

You gaunt wolves too,

When north winds blow

How do you do?

Through interminable land

Ennui of the plain,

Vague snow once again

Gleams like sand.