“I absolutely condemn the placement of this information on the WikiLeaks website,” Gillard said today. ‘It is a grossly irresponsible thing to do and an illegal thing to do.’’
From today:
But asked directly what Australian laws had been broken by either WikiLeaks or Assange, Ms Gillard said the Australian Federal Police were investigating.
"The foundation stone of it is an illegal act," Ms Gillard said today.
But the "foundation stone" was the leaking of the documents to the website, not the publishing of the cables.
"It would not happen, information would not be on WikiLeaks, if there had not been an illegal act undertaken," Ms Gillard said.
Obviously the spinmeisters told this lawyer (who should have known better) that calling things illegal without basis probably wasn't terribly wise. Now of course there will be the plausible deniability that she was only ever talking about the 'foundation stone'(?) and not any action of wikileaks ... although to suggest that from her first statement above really beggars disbelief.
Well at least the opposition - deceitful hypocrites though they are - are making some noise about this, finally spotting what an outrageous statement it was for the country's leader to make. The greens could be a bit more vocal mind you (although that may simply be the media's tendency to ignore them).
Update: The ABC has just published an open letter from more than a few influential people who aren't too happy with the bend-over behaviour of the supposedly sovereign and free democratic government of ours.
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