this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2024
105 points (91.3% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26249 readers
1401 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I don't know that much about the process of selecting the court or corrupting it, but in Australia in the last little while we've had three whistleblowers tried in our supreme court.

One was exposing the government illegally spying on East Timorese diplomats to gain bargaining power. The trial was held in secret because of "national security concerns". The accused was only known as Witness K, and he managed to avoid jail time.

Richard Boyle exposed abusive practices by our welfare and tax offices to illegally share information in a "robodebt" scheme that fraudulently sent poor people crushing amounts of debt. A lot of people committed suicide as a result. He may go to prison for a long time. (Edit: he's facing up to 46 years, ~~and it seems the robodebt scandal was separate, but the ATO was part of that as well~~ EDIT 2: It was in fact about robodebt and the predatory culture in the ATO that spurred it)

David McBride exposed war crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan and was given six years jail time. His identity was exposed when our previous right wing government raided our national journalists' offices and stole documents regarding their investigation into the war crimes.

Our current nominally-leftist government could have stopped the last two of these prosecutions at any time and they just let them continue.

Oh and of the three incidents, only the whistleblowers were prosecuted. None of the people doing the crimes have been charged with anything.

Our government and its courts have made their priorities extremely clear: snitches get stitches.