His intent or whether he is a real “hero” is not relevant to his conditions of imprisonment or his status as a whistleblower. The information he disclosed was clearly in the public interest and the ABC certainly seemed to agree when it used the information to publish a seven-part series. Isn’t it funny how the tune changed under threat of prosecution?

It’s important to recognise the mechanism is more important than the intent. If people cannot blow the whistle safely, then the “government” can freely keep secrets. “Government” is in air quotes here because often it’s the spooks or the military who get to keep secrets, often from the elected officials. This means that MPs are often kept in the dark (and sometimes on purpose, in a Berejiklian-style “I don’t need to know about that” sense) and this means that a bunch of people who we pay taxes for can do what they like with impunity.

If the secrets are kept, then the people keeping the secrets are not accountable to anyone. This is a serious problem if they start to violate the rights of people on Australian soil. You might feel like it’s not going to be you, but it well could be. There is no safety on that gun. The only way around it is to make whistleblowing safe.

You’ve commented the exact same thing in a previous post on this. Please actually engage with the counter-arguments and materials I responded with here .

That is some twisted narrative the abc has been spinning about their own source.

If David hadn’t wanted to expose the murders, he wouldn’t have leaked evidence of it. What’s more, he leaked evidence of their cover-up up to the highest ranks, which could be argued is he graver war-crime, since it fosters a culture of impunity.

It is true that David saw some soldiers, who served in Afghanistan the year after a lot of those murders took place, prosecuted unfairly, the way he saw it. He believes the Defence leadership were scape-goating these soldiers to be seen to be doing something about war crimes when in reality they continued the cover-up for the murderers. This flauting of command responsibility is the bigger story which the abc continues to ignore.

Edit: also, motive was never discussed during trial. Trial only ever got as far as pre-trial, where the justice ruled on the meaning of ‘duty’ (just follow your orders) and in a closed session allowed the govt to scoop away David’s evidence, leading him to plead guilty.

Regardless of David’s original intentions, he is being victimised for exposing war crimes. There is nothing just in his incarceration.