This is not about referees, umpires or who else it is the controls a sporting match with a whistle, but about those who disclose government information. News Corp says that an Australian Law Commission report tabled in parliament wants to protect whistleblowers.

The Australian Law Reform Commission report into secrecy laws, tabled in Parliament today, says criminal sanctions should only be imposed when disclosure of government information is likely to harm essential public interests.

I think I'd have to agree. Whistleblowers are something that those in government hate, and those not in government love.

The RBA has come out with a statement that confirms what I have been saying on here for a while, that the banks are using the GFC as a cover for increasing their profits by increasing the margin between the cash rate and their loan rates. The SMH says:

In an analysis of bank interest rate movements, the RBA has said the major banks were the worst offenders when it came to excess pricing, with lending rates outpacing rises in funding costs by as much as 25 basis points since the onset of the credit crisis, equal to billions of dollars in additional revenue.

I have used this graph before. It is from Feb 2010. I have another graph somewhere and I will try to find it to show the actual increases in the gap.

This shows how the banks have increased the margin between the RBA rate and their Standard Variable Rate.

Will they ever return it to the level it used to be? Not bloody likely when they just want bigger and bigger profits.

Even I think this is far fetched, but The Independent is reporting that the former head of MI5 implied that the TV show 24 influenced the Bush administrations torture policy:

In her speech, highly critical of the US's conduct during the war on terror, the former secret service chief implied that the leadership in Washington was inspired by watching the TV espionage thriller 24. She said: "Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld certainly watched 24". Dame Eliza said: "The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing." She insisted that she had been unaware of what was going on until her retirement in 2007.

Oh come on, the TV show 24 influenced their decisions?

But then again - perhaps it was the other way around. The Bush administration used TV to soften the public for the use of torture. And it seems that I am not the only one to think this. Archie Bland has an opinion piece in the same paper where he says:

It's likely that this is the wrong way round. The whole point about the neocons, after all, is that they've been itching to get their hands on a bucket of water and a fishy-looking foreigner since about 1987. 24 has simply caught up.

Could it be that Wag the Dog is not fiction after all?

I actually shed a little tear when I saw this article hit SMH.

The federal parliament today passed laws that ensure the death penalty can never be reintroduced by any state or territory in Australia.

A great day for Australia.