Quite right

Silence on missing asylum seeker boat a disgrace to the nation

Julian Burnside ends his column with this:

And whatever the facts turn out to be, Morrison has treated theAustralian public with contempt. The public have a legitimate interest in knowing what is being done, in our name, to people who have done nothing worse than ask for our help. Morrison either knows the fate of the refugees or he does not.  If he does, he should tell us: either that
they have been rescued or helped, or that they have been sent to Sri Lanka.  The alternative is that he does not know, in which case he should be sacked for incompetence.

We should no longer be treated as if we do not care about the fate of other human beings.

I maintain my opinion that the media as a profession is not reacting strongly enough to the military junta-like behaviour  of this government.  It's not just wrong or annoying that Morrison and Abbott keeps secrets on this from the Australian public; it's positively outrageous.

Stop shrugging your shoulders, newspaper editors and columnists, and saying "we don't like this, but we can see that the Coalition does not fear public backlash against them as long as boats don't arrive."  You need to complain that you and the public are being treated as children in a way previous "tough" Coalition governments dealing with the boats have not, and that the reasons given are patent crap.  

Update:  I was reminded of this in a comment at The Guardian.  Tony Abbott during last year's election campaign:

QUESTION:
Will you commit to putting out an alert when every boat comes through?
TONY ABBOTT:
Well, I absolutely accept that you need to know how we're going. You absolutely need to know how we are going, and if we have a good week, a bad week, an in-between week, you will know all about it. One way or another, we will get full disclosure to the Australian people. The only point that Scott was making is that in the end, there are some bits of information which are operationally sensitive and that particular judgment has to be left to the commander of Operation Sovereign Borders.