One of my projects is to unwrap neoliberal, libertarian framings of our collective lives. I don’t think it’s…

One of my projects is to unwrap neoliberal, libertarian framings of our collective lives. I don’t think it’s widely understood just how deep these are, how entrenched in how we see the world. One that I think may challenge many is secrecy and freedom of information. /1 https://t.co/aF4k1IJRxJ

I think most of us instinctively get warm feelings about freedom of information legislation. And about whistleblowing warriors who use it and even go well beyond, breaking the law to release restricted information. But do we stop to think about why we instinctively love this? /2

Here’s a first warning bell. It’s neoliberal, libertarian governments who are often the greatest champions of FOI, and who write the legislation for it. It’s not hard to figure out why, they despise government, and love nothing more than a narrative that suggests it’s corrupt. /3

Ask anybody who processes FOI requests what the bulk of their work involves. Very little of it is Assange-type exposure of corruption in government. Nearly all of it is crackpot conspiracy theorists determined to prove the guv’ment is screwing them in some way. /4

FOI is a magnet for libertarian loons, entire departments are bogged down constantly processing their relentless, never-ending crusades. This was the intent of the libertarians, to add another layer of assault upon public institutions. And how they FRAMED it is key here. /5

Sure, FOI has also exposed corruption and maladministration that should be exposed. But it’s ALWAYS about the framing. This exposure takes place within a framing that says individuals face off against the ‘government’, to protect the free flow of information between them. /6

Ringing any alarm bells yet? The idea of societies composed of individuals and governments? It’s the neoliberal/libertarian model of society. Devoid of all of the institutional mediation between these two that do most of the actual work in society. The institutions the…/7

…libertarians despise and are committed to destroying. Look at how our ex-PM almost spat out his contempt for the institutions of government and the UN, in this week’s jolly over at the Margaret Court do. It’s their deepest passion. Think for a minute how powerfully we’ve…/8

…nearly all swallowed this framing, how easy it is to mobilise people on all ‘sides’ of politics to smash the ‘secrecy of government’, to ‘expose its lies’. We’re doing the libertarians work for them, and that’s what framing is meant to do, to twist your opponents’ energy…/9

…towards your own cause. I can imagine some asking, but shouldn’t government be held accountable? It is, *that’s what the institutions were designed to do*. That accountability is what professional civil servants were invented to maintain. The same institutions the…/10

…libertarians destroy with such relish, and the same civil servants they sack with such glee whenever ‘savings’ are required. They don’t want to be accountable. They support FOI, but anybody who tries using it on them will encounter an avalanche of redactions. /11

They don’t support FOI to hold government to account, they support it to destroy civil institutions. There are good uses of FOI, institutional uses too, it’s a staple of political journalism for example. And institutions themselves need their own accountability mechanisms,…/12

…and this is one of them. But again, ask anybody who processes FOI requests as part of their job what proportion of the ones they see are a noble holding to account, and what proportion are just vexatious libertarian spite. It’s unpopular to say it, but secrecy is also…/13

…a good and sometimes necessary thing. Even in a relationship, it’s that. Societies function with the trust that we can delegate a lot of what we need to other people to do. Libertarians attack that trust. Societies then collapse. There are many ways to have accountability,…/14

…without using the big libertarian framings of individual v government. /end