Dick
Airservices Australia has done the wrong thing, and I support the principle of your argument.
However, and unfortunately, the ‘Australian government’ is now so deeply infected by spivs and camp followers, second-rate Pollyanna graduates who either know no better or barely touch the ‘stepping stone’ on the way to a real job, and drones who are too scared and lacking in self-esteem to walk away, that it doesn’t really matter what’s right and wrong any more.
This government’s run by people who don’t comprehend the difference between right and wrong, or if they do, they’re either ambivalent or too scared to do anything about it. In any event, they’re ready and able to spend loads of taxpayers’ cash to defend their position. The government’s flush with cash as a consequence of its unparalleled capacity to tax on one the hand but spend little on infrastructure on the other, and it’s happy to use that cash to defend the indefensible, litigate people into the ground, and trash people’s reputations – it’s all a part of ‘good government’, don’t you know.
It must be in the public interest to shut down dedicated FIS: the government decided to do it, or at least decided to allow a government agency to do it. The government is, by definition, the only body in a position to determine what the public interest is.
No, that last sentence isn’t a quote from Orwell’s 1984: it’s what Dr Peter Shergold, the current Secretary of the Australian Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, believes.