Let the sunlight in

Your editorial rightly highlighted Scott Morrison’s unprecedented use of secrecy and celebrated the win by Rex Patrick in the Federal Court exposing the “faux” national cabinet (“You call that a cabinet?”, August 7-13). But Morrison’s government has other form. In 2019, it raided the ABC and the home of a journalist, prompting The New York Times to run the headline, “Australia May Well Be the World’s Most Secretive Democracy”. More recently, The Australia Institute called the 2020-21 budget the least transparent on record, with 384 secret items. Governing by secrecy is at best a sign of incompetent leadership, and at worst a symptom of corruption. Given robo-debt, the Leppington Triangle, the sports and car park rorts, the treasurer’s $60 billion Jobkeeper miscalculation, and the resistance on ICAC, it’s possibly both. Bring on a summer election. As United States Supreme Court judge Louis D. Brandeis once said, “Sunlight is the greatest disinfectant.”

– Ray Peck, Hawthorn, Vic