First Julia Gillard bitterly attacked Wikileaks and Julian Assange. Then the Attorney General Robert McClelland suggested that Assange’s passport may be cancelled.
Now the member for Sydney, Tanya Plibersek is sinking the boot in.
She says she’s progressive and a member of the ALP left. But it seems Tanya Plibersek agrees with her bosses – Wikileaks is bad news and Julian Assange is a law breaker.
Here some of what Plibersek said this week:
"I don't think that it's a terrific thing for world security for people to go stealing classified documents and sticking them on the internet," she said.
"I think everyone in the Left of the party, the Right of the party and the Australian public would expect that Julian Assange would face the law, as any other Australian citizen would face the law."
Some of Plibersek’s left colleagues don’t agree with her. As outlined in the Australian:
She broke ranks with some of her factional colleagues in the Labor Left, who told The Weekend Australian the government had overreacted to the leaks and should stop treating Mr Assange like a criminal.
Backbencher Laurie Ferguson said the information the 39-year-old Australian had released was crucial to democracy and to exposing the truth.
Plibersek also lied about the way the secret documents were released. She tried to claim that the documents were not vetted in any way.
Quote: “It is irresponsible just to whack them up on the internet without knowing what's in them, without knowing what the consequences are."
She knows this is not true. The documents were vetted by journalists at several major newspapers before being published, including the New York Times and The Guardian.
So is Tanya Plibersek really a good inner city lefty, doing her best to “reform” the ALP from the inside
Or just another Labor hack, toeing the line all the way?