Thursday 9 December 2010

Is Mark Arbib just the tip of an iceburg?

I got a good chuckle out of this mornings news of the outing of Mark Arbib as a US sycophant - it could well be the end of his political career which probably wouldn't be a bad thing for either the country or the ALP.

However, there is a sub-plot in this story which needs a bit more exposure and that is about the role of the Australian-American Dialogue organisation in the Abib Affair and more broadly in Australian Politics over recent decades.

I first became aware of the Australian-American Dialogue during the Hawke years when a Cabinet insider explained their pervasive reach thought the labor party and union movement, the conservative parties and big business.  Their modus operandi was explained as targeting political up-and-comers early in their career, offering free junkets to the States and other general ego stroking in order to build their loyalty to the alliance (read, the US) and to build relationships which are able to be called on over the careers that follow.

Hopefully the Arbib-saga will shine a bit of light on this extremely well funded lobby group.  I'd suggest as a starting point, a bit of a trawl through the MP register of pecuniary interests.

1 comment:

rebecca said...

I was 24 when I read John Pilger's account of the US/CIA involvement of the Whitlam dismissal in his book, The Secret Country. I was still reading the book when I happened to meet former Deputy PM, Jim Cairns (who had been rolled as party leader by Whitlam). I said to him, 'Hey, I've just been reading about you', and when I showed him the book he said gravely, 'I believe everything in that book to be true.' That has been documented elsewhere, by those young men who stole CIA documents from the vault, and discovered the same. The US had just killed Salvadore Allende (coz his government was too left wing) and was doing 'regime change' on us....