Melbourne WikiLeaks Forum Update

The Age newspaper has two items today that follow up Thursday's Melbourne WikiLeaks Forum.

A MELBOURNE lawyer and former boss of Prime Minister Julia Gillard has criticised her government for its handling of WikiLeaks and its Australian founder, Julian Assange.

Peter Gordon, whose legal firm made Ms Gillard the first female partner of Slater and Gordon, said her comment that Mr Assange had broken the law was baseless.

He said the fact that people such as Ms Gillard and Attorney-General Robert McClelland - both of whom he knew to be good lawyers and decent people - could be driven to behave in this way was a sobering reminder of ''the seductive and compulsive draw of power''.
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Legal fury at 'war on free speech' (The Age 11 Sep 2010)

There is also an opinion piece by Peter Gordon:

If the WikiLeaks disclosures tell us anything, it is that no political leader, whatever their colour, is going to hesitate for a nanosecond to conflate the notion of ''national security'' with ''my own career security''. It's time to provide genuine protection for people who take the bold step of coming forward with important information. It's time to make the process cheaper and speedier.

...I always admired John Brumby. To hear him say that he needed to know certain information about the desalination plant, but we didn't, was a disappointment. Likewise Attorney-General Robert McClelland and Prime Minister Julia Gillard. I have worked with both of them and know them to be decent people. It is disappointing to me that their approaches to the WikiLeaks disclosures have seemingly lost sight of three of our democracy's real ''foundation stones'': the presumption of innocence, the right to free speech and the protection of the rights of Australian citizens abroad.
Insidious attack on free speech (The Age 11 Sep 2010)

The political implications of the Australian government's response may be far reaching. Watch this space for some reflections.