The real plague on Australian democracy is insider journalism

Where even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Musee des Beaux Arts —W. H. Auden

Matthew Ricketson from Deakin University has a very good piece in The Conversation about the new book, Plagued, the tome that revealed (rather than exposed) the fact that Scott Morrison had installed himself in five other ministries while he was PM without bothering to tell anyone.

Ricketson documents the failures of the book, the way in which the author’s allow their independence to be compromised by the promise of fly-on-the-wall access, and how, consequently, they write almost exclusively from Morrison’s point of view without really revealing that fact, let alone interrogating it:

Benson and Chambers have not only failed to give readers any idea of the source of their exclusive material, but aggravate matters by rendering numerous pa…