Marcus and Michael broadcast this edition of the Grumpy Strategists from two secure locations: Marcus kicking back birdwatching from SAA’s home bunker in the Brindabellas outside Canberra, and from an undisclosed site in Secret Harbor WA. They apply Hemingway’s line about bankruptcy (how does it happen? Slowly, then quickly) to the changes unravelling the world of Australian cricket, the conduct of war, political parties across Australia and the climate (with graphic evidence from the recent Nepal glacier disaster).

It’s not easy moving from cricketer Marnus Labuschagne to the performance of senior Commonwealth bureaucrats in parliamentary hearings. But the ambitious attempt by the leadership group of Public Servants running Australia’s Federal departments and agencies to control what the public see of officials’ performances and behaviour in open public hearings is an extraordinary example of overreach.

It shows that Australia’s most senior bureaucrats have a highly developed – and wholly misjudged – sense for the level of deference they should receive, even from our elected representatives in Parliament. It also shows that our nation’s most senior public officials have a tin ear for how their own and their colleagues’ obstructive and unimpressive public performances appear to anyone not in the Senior Executive Service of a government department in Canberra.

This attempt at censorship of one of the few remaining key places where government policy and officials’ expenditure of public money takes place – the Federal Parliament’s open inquiries and hearings – builds on the last three decades of increasing government and official secrecy. It’s a demonstration of why public distrust in our leaders and our institutions is falling, and why politics is now so volatile.

Government ministers and senior officials attempting to control “the narrative” and withhold information that might be controversial or embarrassing is the opposite to what Australians need right now. This type of linguistic misdirection ensures public distrust in the Government decisions and directions will grow. It’s the opposite to the open government that makes democracies powerful and successful through time.

As an example, the gymnastic contortions Deputy Prime Minister (and still Defence Minister) Richard Marles has been exhibiting around his work to increase the US military’s presence and operations out of Australia seems designed to maintain two fictions:

1. that Australian has sovereign control of these US activities and would exercise that control in a crisis, and

2. that the US presence, although permanent and getting larger, involves no basing of the American military in Australia.

It’s likely only Mr Marles and his mirror are convinced by these language games. It’s certain decision makers in Beijing are more interested in physical facts than in detailed language that pretends a duck is not a duck.