Secret: The Making of Australia's Security State

Elected governments pose the greatest threat to Australians' security. Political leaders increasingly promote secrecy, ignorance and fear to introduce new laws that undermine individual liberties and magnify the risks of being dragged into a horrific new war for no good reason. It is a criminal offence to receive or publish a wide range of information unrelated to national security. Our defence weapons are so dependent on US technical support that Australia couldn't defend itself without US involvement. The Commonwealth is amassing comprehensive databases on citizens' digital fingerprints and facial recognition characteristics. True? False? Read Secret: The Making of Australia's Security State and you decide. Fresh archival material and revealing details of conversations between former CIA, US State Department and Australian officials will make you reconsider the world around you.

Brian Toohey is a columnist with the Australian Financial Review who has also written for The Nikkei Asia Review, The West Australian, The Sunday Age and other publications. He was editor of TheNational Times and a Canberra and Washington correspondent for AFR. He is the author or co-author of four books: Oyster: The Story of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service; Tumbling Dice: The Story of Modern Economic Policy; The Book of Leaks and The Winchester Scandal. Among other subjects, he has written extensively about national security policy since 1973.