Italian woman in Vatican financial scandal investigation arrested

Rome: A 39-year-old Italian woman has been arrested in connection with the Vatican's latest financial scandal, police said.

Cecilia Marogna had worked for Cardinal Angelo Becciu, a top Vatican official who was fired by Pope Francis last month and accused of embezzlement and nepotism. Becciu has denied all wrongdoing.

Becciu emerged as a figure who clashed with Cardinal George Pell during his time as the prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy at the Vatican.

An Italian finance police official said Marogna was arrested in Milan on Tuesday. Italian media reports said she was arrested under an international warrant issued by Vatican magistrates.

In recent days, Italian media have run interviews in which Marogna said she had received €500,000 ($818,850) from Becciu to run a "parallel diplomacy" to help missionaries in conflict zones.

She has denied wrongdoing in the interviews.

Her purported work for the Vatican's Secretariat of State, where Becciu held the number two position until 2018, was not previously known.

A senior Vatican source said Holy See magistrates suspected Marogna of embezzlement and aggravated misappropriation in complicity with others.

Becciu's lawyer Fabio Viglione, has said the cardinal knew Marogna but that his dealings with her had been "exclusively about institutional matters".

Marogna, who like Becciu is from Sardinia, has said that the funds she allegedly received from Becciu went through a company she started in Slovenia.

Vatican documents leaked to the newspaper Corriere della Sera showed Marogna reportedly spent some of the money she received on shoes, clothes, handbags and other luxury items.

During Becciu's tenure as No. 2 in the Vatican's Secretariat of State, that department purchased a luxury building in London as an investment.

A Vatican investigation into that deal, which involved several Italian middlemen, led to the suspension last year of five Vatican employees, the resignation of the city-state's the police chief and the departure of the former head of its Financial Information Authority.

Becciu has denied all wrongdoing in the deal and defended the purchase, saying the property has increased in value.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/italian-woman-in-vatican-financial-scandal-investigation-arrested-20201014-p564vd.html

‘The Feed’ Tackle How To Talk To Your QAnon-Obsessed Friend In This Painfully Real Sketch

by JARED RICHARDS - 14 OCTOBER 2020

As the collective delusions of QAnon pepper their way through Facebook groups and social media feeds, you might find yourself confronted with a conspiracy theory or two when seeing friends or family members. Thankfully, SBS’s The Feed has the answer. Well, kind of.

In their latest sketch, comedy duo Freudian Nip (Jenna Owens and Victoria Zerbst) meet up with an old friend (Alex Lee) who is quick to mention how 5G is destroying our brains. They try their best to ignore it, but the friend keeps bringing things back to delusional theories about child traffickers and the like. What to do?

The duo strike a deal with their friend: they miss the old batshit her, the one obsessed with essential oils and trying to get them into her multi-level marketing business.

They’ll allow that kind of crazy — you know, the kind that’s merely linked to widespread financial ruin and exploitation of people’s health concerns, rather than acts of terrorism.

“This ‘Donald Trump is going to save the world from vaccine-mind control shit’, that is our line, Chantelle, okay?”, says Owens.

“Okay, this is what we’re gonna do,” adds Zerbst. “You’re allowed to keep one crazy belief, as a treat. Just write it down, and then eat it. And then never talk about it again.”

Chantelle goes with Bigfoot is real, for those keeping record — not exactly a QAnon conspiracy, but definitely found within similar rabbit-holes. Then, she resumes her old Goop-esque wellness bullshit.

For those unsure what exactly QAnon is, Business Insider reporter Cameron Wilson has an excellent explainer on the theory’s roots and how it’s taken shape in an Australian context, too.

In short, it began as a theory that Donald Trump is covertly taking down a cabal of elite and Satanic child traffickers — pointedly, the belief conflates ‘elites’ with ‘Jewish’, and stems from 20th century anti-Semitic conspiracies.

It is a malleable beast, and quickly absorbs all manner of beliefs, including that COVID-19 is a hoax, as well as the anti-5G movement — many of the anti-lockdown protests around the world are a hodgepodge of QAnon signs and placards.

We’re not exactly sure, unfortunately, that bargaining over which conspiracies friends can espouse is the best way to tackle the spread of QAnon, but it’s certainly a way to stop hearing about it, at least.

For advice, you could hit up the sub-Reddit QAnon Casualties, where people worried about their friends and family share ways to best tackle the delusional thinking. Cult deprogrammer Steve Hassan also shared some tips with Forbes.

On a lighter note, watch the sketch below.

https://junkee.com/feed-qanon-sketch/274353

—

Comedy: Dealing with your QAnon friend

Freudian Nip.

We all have that friend who's always "been doing some research" … Our latest for The Feed SBS

https://www.facebook.com/thefeedsbs

https://www.facebook.com/freudiannip/videos/2869873763240980/

Nurse in Tasmania unmasked as serial paedophile who groomed, molested kids

A nurse who spent decades working in a children’s ward has been outed as a monster who drugged and molested little kids – using the hospital as his hunting ground.

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A serial paedophile who spent almost three decades grooming, drugging and molesting vulnerable children – also filming and bragging about his crimes online – has been unmasked as a paediatric nurse who worked for 18 years on the children’s ward at Launceston General Hospital in Tasmania until 2019.

Last October, police in Launceston laid more than a dozen charges against James ‘Jim’ Geoffrey Griffin, a 69-year-old man from Legana, who since 2001 had worked on Ward 4K, the paediatric unit attached to Launceston General Hospital.

The charges relate to sexual offences against children as young as 11 – abuse which Griffin admitted to during police questioning last year. The details of some crimes are so disturbing that news.com.au cannot publish them all.

The seven-page charge sheet, obtained exclusively by news.com.au, spans 28 years, with sex crimes dating back to at least 1987, when Griffin worked as a volunteer ambulance officer for the Tasmanian Ambulance Service. The sexual crimes continue through to 2019, at which time Griffin was working at the hospital while also volunteering as “medic” and “masseuse” for a local children’s sporting team.

On his arrest in October last year, police also discovered a “significant amount” of child pornography downloaded from the internet, as well as child pornography he had self-created. Some included children from the hospital ward.

On internet chat sites, detectives then uncovered examples of Mr Griffin “bragging” to others, outlining how he would use various drugs to sedate little girls “in order to sexually abuse them.”

Now, nurses from the hospital are breaking their silence, revealing how he would use the ward as his own personal hunting ground to “groom” and “target” sick and vulnerable kids. In some cases, he even preyed upon the children of his own colleagues.

The explosive revelations have been unearthed by investigative journalist, Camille Bianchi, who is set to expose all in a compelling true crime podcast called The Nurse.

‘BRAGGING HOW HE WOULD DRUG YOUNG GIRLS TO SEDATE THEM’

Keelie McMahon was about seven years old the first time she met Griffin at a hospital Christmas party which she was attending with her mother, Annette, a fellow nurse on the children’s ward.

“They used to do Christmas parties for the 4K Ward and obviously quite often he’d be there,” says Keelie, now aged 23.

“My little sister was about two, I think, so I would have been about seven and that’s the first Christmas party I remember meeting Jim at.”

For years, Annette and her family trusted Griffin, spending weekends and sharing vacations with him and his family.

“I was about 14 [when he] started to groom me,” says Keelie.

“It was just showing me a lot more attention than he would most people. He used to hug everyone so that was nothing unusual but he started getting a bit more hands on, longer hugs. I remember him introducing me as his ‘special girl’. If we were staying at his house he’d offer to give us back rubs to help us sleep. But I still tried to convince myself he was just being Jim, he was just being friendly.”

That grooming escalated and one night in 2011, while 14-year-old Keelie was attending a sleepover at his place, Griffin came up to where she was laying.

“There were a fair few of us there watching movies and then once we decided to go to sleep, that’s when he decided to take it a bit further with me.”

With other children sleeping close by, Griffin brazenly sexually assaulted Keelie.

(continued)

>>11063089

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“I remember waking up the next morning and going out to the kitchen and Jim just acted like nothing had happened. He just kept talking to me normally and went about his day like it hadn’t happened, which made me second guess what had happened and I started to question myself.”

Keelie sent her mum a text message asking to be picked up.

“Me and mum are like best friends. She’s definitely the person I tell everything to, except one of the most important things that ever happened to me. She was such good friends with Jim, I didn’t want to put a strain on their relationship,” says Keelie.

But six months later, during a shared family camping trip, Griffin – then aged 62 – sexually assaulted Keelie again.

“I thought maybe I had provoked him somehow — I don’t know how, that’s just the conclusion I came up with: that I had somehow invited him to touch me inappropriately and assault me as a 14-year-old girl,” she says.

Ashamed and scared, Keelie stayed silent.

Until, that was, she learned that she wasn’t alone.

In May last year, another young woman, Alice* walked into a Launceston police station revealing that between the ages of 11 and 14, Griffin had groomed and repeatedly sexually assaulted her.

According to the charge sheet, the abuse against Alice involved “sexual intercourse” at which time he was aged between 58 and 63.

In another Australian jurisdiction, Griffin might have been charged with rape of a child, but in Tasmania, the name of the offence he was charged under was the euphemistically titled “maintaining a sexual relationship with a young person under the age of 17 … to whom you were not married”.

Griffin was then interviewed by police where he “made admissions of criminal sexual misconduct in relation to her.”

As happens in small communities, news soon got around that Alice had reported Griffin to police, and when Keelie learned that Alice had also been sexually assaulted by the same man who had preyed upon her, she decided to open up and tell her mother. Annette went into shock and had to take stress leave from the ward.

“When I finally realised ‘yes this is what happened’ I can remember crying and that primal scream,” says Annette. She fired off a text message to her “old friend” Jim.

“How dare you Jim. How f*g DARE you. I trusted you. My daughter trusted you. She never told me until now because ‘he’s such a nice man’ and she ‘didn’t want to ruin your life’ … Well, consider it well and truly ruined. Don’t bother replying.”

Keelie remembers that moment well: “Mum was obviously very shocked and then I think the anger started to come out. Once I told Mum, everything happened so quickly. A Detective from the police got in touch with me and I had to go in and make my statement.

“Two weeks later I got a message from the Detective that said they had charged Jim.”

That was September last year.

By October, a total of five female victims had come forward to police, making similar complaints of sexual abuse ranging from the late 1980s through to 2012.

Police then searched Mr Griffin’s Legana home where they located extensive amounts of child pornography and in an online forum dated March 2015, they also discovered a post of his. He was bragging to others, explaining how he would drug young girls to sedate them so that he could film himself abusing them.

The details of that abuse are so perverse that news.com.au has elected not to publish further information.

In yet another search, police then unearthed “electronic devices” which contained indecent images “of children apparently taken in his role as paediatric nurse” as well as other indecent images of yet another colleague’s child, who is not Keelie.

(continued)

>>11063100

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‘IT’S LIKE VOLDEMORT, YOU AREN’T ALLOWED TO SAY HIS NAME’

On October 3 charges were laid. But then, 10 days later, Griffin attempted to take his own life. He was found on October 14 in his home, sitting in a chair. There was paperwork and bills organised on his dining room table – as if he was putting his affairs in order – along with family photo albums and sealed letters addressed to his family containing cash.

But James Griffin was not dead.

He’d threatened to kill himself earlier, even telling one victim he would “die before going to prison.”

Griffin was rushed to the same hospital where his own colleagues were required to try to revive him.

“Some had heard rumours by then,” says podcast host Camille Bianchi “but most had no idea.

“A lot of the staff had been ‘groomed’ by him too. They’d seen him befriend patients on social media, or give them backrubs, or even carry naked little girls back from the shower. They might have raised an eyebrow, but he was so convincing: he was part of the furniture, a trusted friend, someone who made everyone believe he was just a ‘father figure’ willing to extend an extra arm of support to vulnerable families like single mums, or patients with mental health issues.”

But they were also beginning to learn of the charges and the events which triggered his suicide attempt.

“How can you be that person and be so evil at the same time? I thought he was genuine,” says one nurse on the condition of anonymity.

“He groomed a lot of us,” says another. “I think he showed a different side of himself to different people.”

And then, suddenly, he died.

On October 18 in Launceston General Hospital, Griffin was pronounced dead. A coroner’s report would later find that “when he took the drugs which caused his death he did so with the express intention of ending his own life voluntarily and alone. No doubt the charges he was facing at the time of his death motivated his action.”

On Ward 4K though, nurses were in shock as gradually news of both the death and the charges began to leak out.

The whole ward was “genuinely traumatised”, says Bianchi.

“They felt like they lost him twice. The day he died, and then the days later when they found out who he really was.

“They were grieving both Jims: the loss of the Jim they knew and the horror of the one they were just beginning to meet.”

Speaking to Bianchi, one nurse commented: “It’s like Voldemort, you aren’t allowed to say his name”.

HE ROBBED US OF OUR DAY IN COURT

Of course, the nurses weren’t the only ones impacted.

“I didn’t know how I was meant to feel or how I was allowed to feel,” says Keelie.

“Jim was charged with indecent assault against me and then he died. That was it. It all just happened so quickly: it would have been within a month [of reporting and] it was over.”

Keelie and the other survivors are now frustrated that the court system failed to hold him in jail or prevent him from taking the coward’s way out.

“His suicide was a ‘f*** you’ to the victims and to the whole process,” says Bianchi.

“He took the easy way out. He deprived his victims of their day in court and the chance to look their predator in the face and say ‘this is how you hurt me’.

“These people – the ones he hurt as children, the ones who came forward and reported him to police – they were just beginning to find their voice and agency again. They had waited years. They wanted answers. But he was released by the courts without adequate supervision and now they will never get justice.

“There will be no answers, no resolution, no validation of their suffering. When he died the cogs of justice just creaked to a halt. It was ‘case closed’.”

(continued)

>>11063112

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Comparing Griffin’s death to the alleged suicide of infamous paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, Bianchi says she was determined to make a podcast to give the survivors their chance to be heard.

“He got to choose his way out. He got to have power over the outcome which is, once again, power over his victims too.

“There was too much ‘unfinished business’, and up until now, he’s been able to write his own ending. This podcast is their day in court.”

HOSPITAL REFUSES TO RELEASE MORE THAN 100 SECRET DOCUMENTS

Ordinarily, one might expect that the story of a paediatric nurse killing himself directly after being charged with molesting multiple children would make huge headlines around the country.

But even in a town ripe with gossip, the case has been all but hushed up.

“This is a story you don’t know, unless you live in Launceston” says Bianchi, “and even then, it’s been whispered to you in the pub, or passed only by word-of-mouth.

“People are scared. Scared to lose jobs. Scared to upset those who are covering up what’s happened.”

Griffin was connected in various circles of power and the hospital has so far not co-operated with the investigation.

“Nothing about this has been straight forward. The story that was first brought to me was that these women wanted to speak and no media was interested or willing to touch it. People had tried, but it always fell over,” says Bianchi.

“I’m not the first journalist to know about it. Multiple journalists do. But local media is often under-resourced and the ramifications of publishing something like this are very different in a small community where everyone knows each other, compared to a capital city.

“In regional media you can’t burn your sources and when you start to call some of these big institutions to account and lay hefty allegations, or even just ask too many questions, you can put a target on your back.

“You can come under pressure from editors not to burn bridges because you’ll be cutting off a future pipeline of information and stories, not just for yourself, but you may in fact be jeopardising your entire team’s access to politicians and information.”

Protecting an investigation against leaks is also extremely difficult in a small community, as probing questions have a way of tipping off subjects, and can even trigger defamation proceedings if the questions themselves are deemed libellous.

“If you don’t know something and you’re trying to firm it up in good faith you have to be very, very careful in how you do it,” says Bianchi. “Many journalists tried to do this story, but it always ended up in the ‘too hard’ basket, because local newsrooms just don’t have the bandwidth.”

News.com.au and Bianchi have now both obtained the coroner’s report and the original police charge sheet, but even that took months to obtain.

A further Freedom of Information request (known as Right to Information in Tasmania) has so far been completely blocked by Tasmania’s Health Department.

The request was first submitted in April 2020. It asks for any information relating to complaints about James Geoffrey Griffin, along with various other information.

The request yielded a schedule of 101 documents, but all 101 have been redacted with the department citing ‘privacy concerns’.

However what that schedule of redacted documents does confirm, is that Launceston General Hospital was in receipt of complaints against Griffin dating back to at least 2009. When Bianchi and news.com.au contacted the federal health watchdog, AHPRA, to determine whether the complaints were ever passed along to them, as required, that line of questioning revealed they had no record of the hospital ever having forwarded the 2009 complaint, or another complaint which had been lodged in 2017.

“This was a serial premeditated predator,” says Bianchi. “James Griffin planned how and when he could abuse young children – and put himself in the best possible situations to do it: he preyed on sick kids. I don’t understand how or why complaints weren’t forwarded, or why we are being stonewalled now.

“The victims want this information released. The public will want to know. It is most certainly in the public interest to release those 100 plus secret documents.”

(continued)

>>11063124

5/5

A complaint has now been lodged with the Tasmanian Ombudsman, requesting that they review the Health Department’s decision not to release documents – but that process may take up to 400 days on average.

The Department of Health has been contacted for comment.

THE COST OF SPEAKING UP

Despite these hurdles, the podcast has now been released and is expected to send shockwaves through Tasmania.

“For the nurses who are speaking up, their priority is that it never happens again and that all victims have support and opportunity to get redress,” says Bianchi.

“They want it publicly known and acknowledged that the children in their care were exposed to a predator and they want answers, too.

“It sits heavily on them that a child may come back one day and say ‘what did you do once you knew?’ and they want to be able to answer that question’.”

Bianchi says they are also risking their careers to do so: “In a small town there aren’t many other employment prospects for them and they are very fearful.”

For the survivors, of course, the potential cost is even higher.

“Not everyone in Launceston can accept that he was a monster or had that duality. These people’s lives are all intertwined and it’s a very painful process for people to come to terms with what’s happened,” says Bianchi.

“This makes the burden on survivors that much higher. They are weighing up the cost of silence and the cost of speaking. Sometimes it’s not as clear cut as saying ‘the truth will set you free’, because in many cases the truth will add an extra burden of scrutiny and trauma and they are risking friendships and relationships by speaking out.”

And yet, Keelie, Annette and others remain determined to speak.

They want other children and survivors of sexual abuse to feel less alone and to know that help is available and that the victim is never at fault.

“I think when I first started talking to police and my counsellor, that’s when I realised he didn’t assault me because of something I did,” says Keelie.

“He did it because of how messed up he is and that has nothing to do with me. It was just the wrong place, wrong time, really. And I had no place to be blamed for it.”

* Name changed.

https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/lifestyle/nurse-in-tasmania-unmasked-as-serial-paedophile-who-groomed-molested-kids/news-story/4808c6c47c825112075def6bf01247e4

—

The Nurse - True Crime podcast

Camille Bianchi

In a quiet town in Tasmania, James Griffin was the kind of person you would trust to look after your kids. As a paediatric nurse, netball medic and grandfatherly figure in the community, people trusted him.

At work he was "Just Jim", but he was he hiding something? If you have any information on this unfolding story contact thenursepodcast@gmail.com or Signal +61 437 639 211

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-nurse/id1533629268

Ghislaine Maxwell urges US court to keep damaging deposition on Jeffrey Epstein secret

A lawyer for Ghislaine Maxwell has urged a US appeals court to overturn a ruling that the long-time associate of late financier Jeffrey Epstein says jeopardises her ability to defend against charges that she enabled Epstein's sexual abuse of girls.

The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals is reviewing a judge's order to unseal sworn testimony related to Epstein, including a April 2016 deposition from Ms Maxwell, citing the presumption of the public's right to have access to it.

Ms Maxwell, 58, has said bad publicity from disclosing "intimate, sensitive, and personal" details from her deposition would violate her right against self-incrimination, and imperil a fair trial because prospective jurors may hold it against her.

"We're concerned about preserving the status quo," Ms Maxwell's lawyer Adam Mueller told a three-judge panel.

"There's going to be a public criminal trial, and this will all be aired in open court … We think that vindicates the public interest as well."

Ms Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to charges she helped Epstein recruit and groom underage girls as young as 14 years old to engage in illegal sexual acts in the mid-1990s, and not guilty to perjury for having denied involvement under oath.

Her 418-page deposition came from a civil defamation lawsuit against her by Virginia Giuffre, who has said Epstein kept her as a "sex slave" with the British socialite's help, and now believes the public has a right to see Ms Maxwell's deposition.

The defamation case settled in 2017, and US District Judge Loretta Preska ordered the deposition unsealed in July.

Mr Mueller, however, said the deposition was filled with suggestive questions akin to "when did you stop beating your wife?" and that Ms Maxwell's denials to certain questions could be as "revealing" as admissions.

"It certainly implies that the other side has an evidentiary basis to ask the question," he said.

A 'presumption' of public access

David Boies, a lawyer for Ms Giuffre, countered that there was a "substantial presumption" of public access, but drew scepticism from the panel about why his client deserved it.

"What does she care about it?" Circuit Judge Rosemary Pooler asked.

"Sure she wants the whole thing out, but what's the legally cognisable interest?"

Mr Boies responded that it was important for materials to be unsealed in an "even-handed way," to ensure that no context was lost.

Christine Walz, a lawyer for the Miami Herald, which also wants the deposition unsealed, said "mere speculation" that releasing the deposition could deprive Ms Maxwell of a fair criminal trial was not sufficient justification to block it.

Ms Maxwell was arrested on July 2 in New Hampshire, where prosecutors said she had been hiding out.

She has been locked up in a Brooklyn jail after US District Judge Alison Nathan, who oversees the criminal case, called her an unacceptable flight risk. A trial is scheduled for July 2021.

Epstein, a registered sex offender, took his own life at age 66 in August 2019 at a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

The appeals court is also considering a second Maxwell appeal, from Judge Nathan's refusal to modify a protective order and let her access confidential materials produced by the Government.

Prosecutors have countered that Maxwell has shown no need for the materials, and that her appeal was a "thinly veiled attempt" to have the appeals court declare they gathered evidence illegally.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-14/ghislaine-maxwell-us-appeals-deposition-on-epstein/12764228

'An apocalyptic list': Pezzullo says climate change, pandemics warrant security rethink

One of Australia's most senior public servants has warned the threats of extreme weather, climate change and pandemics require the country to think differently about how to secure itself.

Home Affairs secretary Michael Pezzullo said Australians have come to fear assaults from the natural world and it is no longer tenable to think of security as only about defence from armed attacks.

An "extended state" was now required, Mr Pezzullo said, whereby security is a partnership involving all tiers of government, relevant business sectors and wider society.

In a speech which referenced "super volcanic eruptions which block the sun", the "Terminator AI threat" and the "killer asteroid", the veteran public servant said there are a number of ways humanity might become extinct - but it is important not to overarm the state.

"Today, one of the most vital security practices in the face of the threat of COVID-19 is hand-washing and good hand hygiene, a measure which is as far removed from the appearance and character of a complex weapon system, and yet of more importance to the current security of the population than every weapon in our armed forces," Mr Pezzullo told the National Security College in Canberra.

Referencing a number of philosophers and Western thinkers including Hobbes, Foucault, Heidegger and Schmitt, Mr Pezzullo said security in the context of armed conflict and violence was still important.

"However, a view of security which is concerned exclusively with the administration of violence does not assist us to prepare for other dilemmas which might impinge on civil peace, such as a global pandemic, or a potentially catastrophic geomagnetic storm which could well occur on a scale which would render most electrified technologies inoperable," Mr Pezzullo said.

"Who is the attacker in this latter instance – the Sun, Nature, or perhaps God Himself?"

While security should be openly discussed across our democracy, Mr Pezzullo stressed secrecy was a reasonable tool if imposed reasonably and legitimately with appropriate oversight mechanisms.

He said Australia's security arrangements needed to be informed by a "realistic" anxiety, not a neurotic one, adding the hard language of armed conflict shouldn't be used in the context of domestic security.

"Security should not be conflated with fear and anxiety," he said.

Expanding on a speech he gave last year which outlined "seven gathering storms" for national security, Mr Pezzullo provided an expanded list of 25 security threats.

These included great power war, nuclear conflict, a catastrophic cyber-attack on critical infrastructure, supply chain vulnerabilities exploiting the nation's sovereignty and climate change and natural disasters.

"This is an apocalyptic list to be sure. Indeed, in relation to ways in which humanity might become extinct you will find arguable cases for the following scenarios, amongst others: a deliberately released, humanity-killing synthetic virus; super volcanic eruptions which block the Sun; the Terminator AI threat; a nuclear apocalypse; and, yes, the killer asteroid," Mr Pezzullo said.

"Complacency is certainly not warranted in the face of this register, but nor is an existentially pessimistic fatalism. An exaggerated sense of danger is positively harmful, as is the over application of threats. Over-arming the state is as great a danger as under-powering it."

The summer's bushfires and the COVID-19 crisis has exposed the need for Commonwealth and states to work together better in responding to national emergencies.

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age last month revealed the Morrison government was working on a plan to create a new federal agency which would lead a national response to a range of different emergencies.

Mr Pezzullo said the nation needed a more agile government and society to secure itself from the emerging threats facing the world.

"Security is a shared responsibility, which should be designed into our plural institutions and processes, in order to ensure the resilience of the prosperity and unity of the nation, and its character as a free and open democratic polity," he said.

"In a democracy, the nation’s security enterprise should be supervised within a juridical framework of separated powers. We should resist the lure of the illiberal discourse which says that unitary authorities are the more effective security performers."

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/federal/an-apocalyptic-list-pezzullo-says-climate-change-pandemics-warrant-security-rethink-20201013-p564lp.html

>>11063585

Securing Australia: In conversation with Michael Pezzullo

ANU TV

Streamed live on 12 Oct 2020

In this address to the National Security College, the Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs shares his perspectives on national security; how we think about national security in an increasingly complex and interconnected world; and how we can work together across Government, the private sector and in our communities to maintain a prosperous, secure and united Australia.

Following his opening remarks, the Secretary joins Professor Rory Medcalf, Head of the National Security College, in conversation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD9lG8WBwpM

>>11007557

Yang Hengjun: Detained Australian set to learn fate in China

Yang Hengjun will learn the proposed sentence for the espionage charge made against him by the Chinese state the day after the Morrison government and Labor opposition launched a bipartisan defence of the Australian citizen.

One of Dr Yang’s lawyers will on Thursday visit the 55-year-old at the Beijing detention centre where supporters say he has been interrogated over 300 times by China’s secret police.

The Australian can also reveal that judges have been appointed to the case, which will be formally held in the Beijing Second Intermediate People’s Court.

“They feel they are ready,” said Feng Chongyi, a friend of Dr Yang’s and a professor at the University of Technology Sydney.

The speedy appointment of judges after the case was formally moved to the Beijing court last week indicates a verdict on the highly politicised 21-month long state security case could be delivered within weeks. A date for the trial is still to be set.

Dr Yang – a charismatic writer on Chinese politics with a huge following, as well as a remarkable backstory as a former Chinese intelligence officer – has become one Australia’s highest profile consular cases.

On Wednesday evening, Foreign Minister Marise Payne said the Australian government was “disappointed and deeply concerned” about the prosecution of Dr Yang, who has a PhD from the University of Technology Sydney.

“We regret that after a lengthy investigation period Chinese authorities have stated that he has been charged with espionage. We have seen no evidence to support this charge,” she said, continuing the government’s unusually public treatment of the case.

In a statement released shortly after Labor’s shadow foreign minister Penny Wong made explicit that the concern was bipartisan.

“Labor is deeply disappointed and concerned that Chinese authorities have decided to prosecute Australian citizen Dr Yang Hengjun on charges of espionage. We join with the Government to call on the Chinese authorities to explain these charges,” said Ms Wong, in the synchronised statement.

She also noted comments made by former Chinese Ambassador to Australia, Madam Fu Ying, last week to Australian media “on the need for both China and Australia to build mutual understanding and trust in our relationship”.

“We share these objectives and believe it is in both countries’ interests to have a productive relationship. The treatment of Dr Yang is detrimental to these objectives,” she said.

Dr Yang has been in detention in the compound in the south of Beijing since he was detained at Guangzhou airport in January 2019 – six months after the Turnbull government became the first in the world to ban Chinese telco Huawei from its 5G network.

Minister Payne noted that he had not been allowed visits from family and had only limited legal access in that almost two year period.

“This falls short of basic standards of justice and procedural fairness, and is not compatible with international norms or best practice,” she said.

On Thursday, Dr Yang will meet his legal team at the Beijing compound under the watch of security guards.

His lawyers on Tuesday were given access to the Chinese state’s indictment documents, which include the charge of espionage, the evidence of the charge and the proposed sentence.

The meeting – expected to run for an hour – will be his first contact with them since the charge was lodged in the court.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/yang-hengjun-detained-australian-set-to-learn-fate-in-china/news-story/18221554dc354533ddce4b9ff45152dc